Thursday Thirteen

Here are 13 more things I saw at the History Museum of Western Virginia while we were exploring its Botetourt County 250th anniversary (+1) exhibit on Saturday. Unfortunately, many of my photos of the description tags for these items did not turn out, either because I was shaky or the light level was too low. It was a bit dark in the museum.

This was an 1800s clock, donated by the Holts, I think. Very old.

This picture of Grove Hill is an antiquity in and of itself. Grove Hill burned down in 1909, but it had a long history here in Botetourt. It was built upon a 3,300 acre plantation owned by General James Breckinridge. It was a 26-room mansion. Thomas Jefferson allegedly was a frequent visitor, which seems likely given Breckinridge's interests in politics. After the house was destroyed, the remaining bricks were removed to New York, where they were used to build a home called Mallow.

Botetourt County was also the site of the first plantation for Colonel William Preston, a Revolutionary War hero. These are remnants of pieces found on the Preston property, which is now home to a county industrial park.

This clock dates back to 1832 as well. Sometime in the early 1900s, an artist repainted the front to show the Fincastle Presbyterian Church during restoration of the piece (that's written below but it's not entirely legible).

We call these pieces "pie safes" but the museum had them labeled as food storage furniture. I'm sure they held more than pies.

This is a painting of the Town of Buchanan. I did not get the information that went along with it.

The above two sketches were done by the same artist, and again I didn't get the tag with the information. They are lovely pieces, though. What he calls "New Amsterdam" we call simply "Amsterdam," and it consists of an empty church and maybe 10 houses. At one time, though, it was a thriving little community.

These are Native American artifacts taken from Botetourt County. The county is full of such artifacts; my husband used to find arrowheads on the farm when he was a lad and they plowed the fields. Now that we use no till drilling to plant seed, we don't uncover such treasures. They remain buried.

Old instruments.

Antique dolls and a dollhouse.

More musical instruments. I would have considered these to be dulcimers, banjos, and a violin, but the information tag, which didn't turn out well enough to read, called them something else. I wish I had paid more attention at the time.

Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here if you want to read other Thursday Thirteens and/or play along. I've been playing for a while and this is my 713th time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday. Or so sayth the Blogger counter, anyway.