Patrick County Place Names
Patrick County in two hundred years produced many interesting stories and characters. There are an endless number of stories about Patrick County history and I hope to share them with the readers.
Ararat
Claudville
Claude Augustus Swanson once said, “When in doubt, do right!” He tried to do right serving under Presidents from Grover Cleveland in 1892 until his death in 1939 as Franklin Roosevelt’s Secretary of the Navy. Born in Pittsylvania County on March 31, 1862, Swanson’s life stretched from the Civil War to the Second World War.
An 1885 graduate of Randolph Macon College, Swanson attended law school at UVA and practiced in Pittsylvania County before election to the U. S. House of Representatives from the 5th District including Patrick County in 1892. He served in that office until 1906 when the people of Virginia elected him Governor. His political rise continued to Senator from the “Old Dominion” from 1911 until 1933. The self-proclaimed “Liberal Democrat” and antagonist of Harry Byrd led the fights for public roads, support for education and the reason he had a post office named for him in Patrick County, rural free postal delivery. Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Swanson Secretary of the Navy in 1933. He remained at his post until his death on July 7, 1939, at the President’s retreat in the mountains of Madison County.
While Swanson might not care for the conservative voting record in recent elections, the history of Claudville and the area around the post office has many interesting stories. A convict camp started in 1939 worked and completed three years later the construction and paving of Highway 103 on the site of the Claudville Café.
The first post office operated by Ruth Dobyns in the Dobyns community opened in 1893. Louella Williams served as postmaster from 1914 until 1923 when Kate Vipperman assumed the position at Vipperman’s Mill. In 1930, Mattie Brim Anderson operated the post office in her husband’s store in the Red Bank community. A building constructed at the intersection of 103 (Claudville Highway) and 773 (Ararat Highway) in the 1940s served as post office. Samuel Heath served for a short time in 1963 as postmaster. On July 20, 1969, the day Neil Armstrong first walked on the moon, Congressman Dan Daniel dedicated the present post office.
Personally, the town holds many memories. The man who employed my mother and delivered me, Dr. Arthur Tullidge, operated an office next door to the post office. The Red Bank School operated until 1984 was a place I spent many hours usually with a basketball. The Red Bank Ruritan Club was the first club in the county to support the J. E. B. Stuart Birthplace. My thanks to Ethel Cox and her daughters, Debbie, Tina and especially Sandy, for enduring the torture of baby-sitting me. I recall many Coca-Colas while watching Godzilla movies or Perry Mason episodes.
As a small boy, I frequented the post office near Red Bank School, where my father was principal. I did not know there had been a post office in the community since 1893 or for whom it received its name. This month, Mildred Hill, who welcomed me as a young boy to the post office, is retiring after forty years as postmaster and almost one hundred years after the post office received its name, but before she goes I would like her to explain what happened to the “e” in Claudville.
Critz
Kibler Valley
Lone Cedar
Woolwine
Copyright 2006 Tom Perry.
No material to be used without permission.
Contact Information: P. O. Box 50 Ararat VA 24053
