Virginia 250: Botetourt County in 1911

With Virginia and the nation celebrating 250 years of freedom from England in 2026, I thought it might be fun to occasionally bring up some local history.

Some years ago, a water leak in the Botetourt County Courthouse* led to a lucky find for genealogy researcher Loretta Caldwell.

While looking to see what papers may have received water damage, she came across almost a full year of the 1911 Buchanan News.

The paper was published from the early 1900s until 1973 in Buchanan. O. E. Obenshain is listed as editor on the 1911 copies. The Library of Virginia, which has microfilm of most of the issues, lists Obenshain as the publisher also.

Caldwell said the papers received minimal water damage. After drying them out, she placed them in a special cardboard holder.

The Botetourt County Library several years ago participated in a newspaper project and had several years of the Buchanan News and The Fincastle Herald placed on microfilm. That film is available for review in the Fincastle Library. However, the year 1911 is missing from those documents, so these fragile papers are not readily available on film.

The Fincastle Herald, which was established in 1866, was also in print at that time. Many old issues of the Herald are on microfilm, but others are lost to time.

Old newspapers can be a fascinating source for history of a community. The 1911 issues of the Buchanan News speak of a simpler time in many instances, but some of the events could have happened yesterday.

There are lists of who was invited where for dinner, school honor rolls and meetings. Virginia game laws said you could not kill a robin. A black bear was seen in Cloverdale. The entire state had only 4,514 prisoners behind bars.

A call went out for a new high school, with folks arguing in letters over the location (Buchanan or Lithia). 

A number of articles reflect the agriculture nature of the county. Eagle Rock apparently had a school of agriculture at that time. “Oregon Fruit Growers afraid of Virginia Growers,” touted one headline.

In September, a report called “The Automobile on the Farm” began, “One of the forces helping the “back to the land” movement and improvement of rural and economic conditions at this time is the automobile.”

In nearly every issue, there is a discussion of “good roads” and how to get them.

Other events of note:

• In January 1911, fire swept through the Town of Fincastle. It burned down an entire block, taking with it a drugstore, two groceries, a confectionary shop, a harness shop, a law office and the Town Hall. The fire started in the drugstore and the town had no fire department.

• In Buchanan that spring, Maude West, 19, was murdered by J. William Powell, 25, who then turned the gun on himself. “Little dreaming, or suspecting, the awful fate awaiting her, she innocently went to her doom!” the newspaper reported.

• In March, the federal government began its National Forest program. Botetourt County land was on the list. Much of northern Botetourt is still national forest today, part of the George Washington and Jefferson National Forests.

• Around the same time period, the Board of Supervisors set a tax levy at $1.10 per $100 value. According to the report, 41 cents out of each dollar went to the school system, while 45 cents out of each dollar went to a road fund. The remainder went toward other uses.

• And in October, Mary Johnston, by that time a famous author from Buchanan, spoke out in favor of women’s suffrage. She wanted the right to vote.

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Originally published in The Fincastle Herald in 2008.

*Currently demolished with a new courthouse under construction in 2026.

Virginia 250: The Stoplight That Stopped a Town

 

Sometime in the 1930s, or maybe even the late 1920s, the town of Fincastle had a stoplight.

 

That's not a sentence most people would expect to read. Fincastle, the quiet county seat of Botetourt County, tucked into the Valley and Ridge country of western Virginia, doesn't exactly conjure images of traffic control. But there it hung: a big black four-way stoplight, suspended on a diagonal wire between two poles at the intersection of Main and Roanoke Streets, overseeing what was then one of the busier crossroads in that part of the state.

 

I reported this story in 2005, when the Fincastle Volunteer Fire Department donated the old stoplight to the local museum. The department had kept it since 1970, when firefighters pulled it from the basement of the Botetourt County Courthouse during the fire that destroyed that building. It had followed them to their new firehouse in the mid-1980s, sat on display for a while, then ended up in a closet. Former fire chief Jimmy Firebaugh told me at the time that as far as he knew, it no longer worked and some of the parts were missing.

 

But the light itself wasn't the story. The story was what people remembered about it.

___________________________________________

 

Virginia Cronise, who was 83 in 2005, believed the light hung at the intersection from about 1935 to the early 1940s — no more than ten years, she thought. But Virginia Smith of Buchanan, who was 80 at the time, remembered it from even earlier. Her family moved to the corner of Roanoke and Murray Streets in 1927, when she was just three years old, and she grew up watching that light.

 

"When I got old enough they taught me to walk out to the drugstore corner and watch the stoplight and cross over to what was then Smith's store," she told me.

 

When she was about eight, she received a puzzle map of the United States. That summer, she sat and watched the vehicles coming through the light and wrote down the out-of-state license tags in a tablet, then checked her map to see which car had come the farthest distance.

 

Patty Ellis, about thirteen years younger than Cronise, started school in 1941 and had no memory of the light at all. "I think I would have remembered walking up and down the street and seeing it," she said.

 

So the window was probably somewhere between the late 1920s and the early 1940s. No one knows exactly when the Fincastle Town Council voted to take it down. The old town records were in storage and not readily available when I reported the piece.

 

___________________________________________

 

The light oversaw a genuinely busy corner. US 220 ran down Roanoke Street in those days, meaning all the traffic between Roanoke and Clifton Forge passed through Fincastle. A Greyhound bus stopped right there on its way to Covington, causing a regular little knot of congestion when it pulled in for passengers. Whittlers sat on a bench nearby and watched the traffic go by, and, according to town character Bobby Waid, they also whittled on one of the light poles so persistently that it had to be wrapped in cable to keep them from working it down to nothing.

 

Waid had the best story. He remembered his grandfather deciding one day that he'd watched people drive long enough to know how to do it himself, and he set out from the family farm. He made it all the way into town without a problem, until he hit the stoplight.

 

"Daddy said, 'You have to stop, the light's red,'" Waid told me. "And the old man started pulling back on the steering wheel and started hollering, 'Whoa! Whoa!'"

 

Waid wasn't sure whether his grandfather ran the light.

 

___________________________________________

 

Why did the light come down? That's where the memories diverge.

 

Waid believed it was the war. Like the rest of the nation, Fincastle participated in total blackouts to keep enemy aircraft from spotting the lights of the town. Twelve bulbs on a four-way stoplight would have been hard to explain away in that context.

 

Local historian Dottie Kessler had a different theory. She believed the light came down after US 220 was rerouted. Once all of the through-traffic stopped going through town, the need for a stoplight simply evaporated. She had a photograph dated 1940 showing the light still in place, which at least narrowed the timeline a little.

 

Virginia Smith knew what happened to it after it came down: it went into storage at the old Western Hotel, because her aunt and uncle ran the hotel at the time. From there it made its way to the Courthouse, where it sat in the basement until the building burned.

 

Corky Bolton, a Fincastle native, put it simply: "Most people couldn't believe there was a stoplight in Fincastle, but it was there all the years I was growing up."

 

___________________________________________

Does the intersection need one now? Bobby Waid had thoughts on that, too.

 

"I don't see a lot of broken glass up there," he said. "It's so congested people are real careful, because everybody's parking all over the place."

 

Some things about small Virginia towns don't change much, even across 250 years.

 

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Adapted from a piece originally published in The Fincastle Herald, 2005. Quotes and ages reflect interviews conducted at that time.

Virginia 250: The Botetourt Resolutions in 1860

 

With Virginia and the nation celebrating 250 years of freedom from England in 2026, I thought it might be fun to occasionally bring up some local history. At one time, Botetourt County stretched all the way to the Mississippi and into Wisconsin, which means my county's history is also the history of much of the nation.

Snow fell lightly that December 10, 1860, afternoon as Judge John James Allen steadied himself for a meeting of Botetourt citizens. The country had been in turmoil since the election of Abraham Lincoln. He was about to try to convince his neighbors that the fledging nation could no longer exist in her present condition.

He was going to urge his beloved state to secede from the Union.

Allen, then President of the Supreme Court of Virginia, wrote the Botetourt Resolutions, a document that outlines states rights issues and urges the Virginia legislature to move to secure equality within the Union or to immediately withdraw.

The lengthy document, recorded in the Southern Historical Society Papers, lays out in detail the feelings of the people about the issues of the day. “They deem it unnecessary and out of place to avow sentiments of loyalty to the constitution and devotion to the union of these States,” Allen argues.

He presented his Resolutions to his fellow citizens in an undocumented general meeting of the people. He was a strong supporter of the southern cause. In A Seed-Bed of the Republic, Robert Douthat Stoner calls the Botetourt Resolutions “a brilliant commentary on Virginia’s position in the impending Civil War.”

The Resolutions left a “profound impression on the public mind as a condensed and powerful statement of the doctrine of Secession,” Stoner writes.

It was a state sovereignty issue, heightened by the desires of northern abolitionists, which led Allen to bring the document to Botetourt citizens. A year earlier, abolitionist John Brown seized a store of arms in Harpers Ferry and incited enslaved persons to rebellion in October 1859. Allen alludes to the incident in his Resolutions.

Virginians were alarmed at the federal invasion of the state, as federal soldiers, not Virginians, seized Brown and his small army. Four civilians were slain. Northern abolitionists applauded Brown. Newspapers in Virginia began to write openly of dissolution of the Union.

Home guards sprang up as volunteers stepped forward to defend the state. In Botetourt, the “Blue Ridge Rifles” formed on December 27, 1859, near Mill Creek Church. Fifty-five young men stood ready to serve.

Then in November 1860, Abraham Lincoln won the election. Allen does not mention Lincoln by name in his Resolutions but quotes him as saying “that there is an “irrepressible conflict” between free and slave labor, and that there must be universal freedom or universal slavery.”

In 1858 Lincoln had given a speech that said the government could not endure “permanently half slave and half free . . . It will become all one thing or all the other.” Although Lincoln was born in Kentucky, southerners feared the new president would move to abolish slavery, even though it was thought that Congress had no right to do so.

Allen calls Lincoln’s sentiments a declaration of “warfare between the two sections of our country without cessation or intermission until the weaker is reduced to subjection.” Allen abhors the election of the man “by a sectional majority” and charges that the election is a direct assault upon the institutions of the South.

Ultimately, after invoking slavery and the issue of state sovereignty, the document urges the state to find harmony with other states or to secede from the Union.

After stating his case, Allen stood before his fellow citizens. The statesmen of Botetourt agreed with Allen’s sentiments and when the vote was taken, only two dissenters volunteered their objections. The document was forwarded to the Virginia legislature.

Arguments about slavery and states rights had taken place for forty years but heated up in the 1850s. The issue exploded on December 20, 1860, when South Carolina seceded from the Union, 10 days after Botetourt citizens approved its Resolutions urging secession.

Virginia declared its separation from the Union on April 17, 1861. The War Between the States, with the first shots fired five days earlier at Fort Sumter, had come to the Old Dominion in earnest.

Allen was born in Woodstock, Shenandoah County, on September 25, 1797. He attended Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA, in 1811 and 1812 and attended Washington College, now Washington and Lee University, in 1814 and 1815.

After reading law with his father, James Allen, Allen was admitted to the bar in 1819 and began his practice at Campbell Courthouse. Eventually he moved to Clarksburg, now in West Virginia, to practice law. He served in the Virginia senate from 1828-1830, and was commonwealth attorney for Harrison, Lewis, and Preston Counties in 1834.

He served in the 23^rd Congress from 1833-1835. He was elected as an Anti-Jacksonian, also known as a Whig. He served with such famous members as John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, David Crockett, Millard Fillmore, John Randolph, John Tyler, and Daniel Webster.

His ties with Botetourt lay with his family. His father purchased land in Botetourt in 1814. The land was known as “Beaverdam” and is located on State Rt. 636 a few miles south of Buchanan. Judge Allen took over his father’s estate in 1837.

After serving in Congress, he was named judge of the 17^th Circuit Court from 1836-1840, a position previously held by his father. He then served as judge of the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals from 1840-1865. He was the presiding justice from 1852-1865.

Judge Allen retired to Beaverdam and died there in 1871. He is buried in a cemetery on the property, known as Beaverdam Cemetery or Lauderdale Cemetery.

Allen married Mary E. Payne (1805-1891), who was a sister of General Thomas (Stonewall) J. Jackson’s wife, a niece of Dolly Madison. Judge Allen was instrumental in Jackson’s promotion from Major to Colonel. He served as the executor of General Jackson’s will.

Several of Allen’s descendants remain in Botetourt.

*** 

The Botetourt Resolutions – excerpted

The Resolutions begin with a recitation of Virginia’s accomplishments before, during, and after the Revolutionary War.

“Throughout the whole progress of the republic she [Virginia] has never infringed on the rights of any State, or asked or received an exclusive benefit.

“On the contrary, she has been the first to vindicate the equality of all the States, the smallest as well as the greatest.”

“But claiming no exclusive benefit for her efforts and sacrifices in the common cause, she had a right to look for feelings of fraternity and kindness for her citizens from the citizens of other States, and equality of rights for her citizens with all others; that those for whom she had done so much would abstain from actual aggressions upon her soil, or if they could not be prevented, would show themselves ready and prompt in punishing the aggressors; and that the common government, to the promotion of which she contributed so largely for the purpose of “establishing justice and insuring domestic tranquility,” would not, whilst the forms of the constitutions were observed, be so perverted in spirit as to inflict wrong and injustice and produce universal insecurity.”

“These responsible expectations have been grievously disappointed.”

“Owing to a spirit of pharisaical fanaticism prevailing in the North in reference to the institution of slavery, incited by foreign emissaries and fostered by corrupt political demagogues in search of power and place, a feeling has been aroused between the people of the two sections, of what was once a common country, which of itself would almost preclude the administration of a united government in harmony.”

“For the kindly feelings of a kindred people we find substituted distrust, suspicion and mutual aversion. For a common pride in the name of American, we find one section even in foreign lands pursuing the other with revilings and reproach. For the religion of a Divine Redeemer of all, we find a religion of hate against a part; and in all the private relations of life, instead of fraternal regard, a “consuming hate,” which has but seldom characterized warring nations.”

“This feeling has prompted a hostile incursion upon our own soil, and an apotheosis of the murderers, who were justly condemned and executed.”

Allen goes on to say the northern areas of the nation were spreading “incendiary publications” in an effort to “incite to midnight murder and every imaginable atrocity against an unoffending community.” …

“It is shown in their openly avowed determination to circumscribe the institution of slavery within the territory of the States now recognizing it, the inevitable effect of which would be to fill the present slaveholding States with an ever increasing negro population, resulting in the banishment of our own non-slaveholding population in the first instance and the eventual surrender of our country, to a barbarous race, or, what seems to be desired, an amalgamation with the African.”

“And it has at last culminated in the election, by a sectional majority of the free States alone, to the first office in the republic, of the author of the sentiment that there is an “irrepressible conflict” between free and slave labor, and that there must be universal freedom or universal slavery; a sentiment which inculcates, as a necessity of our situation, warfare between the two sections of our country without cessation or intermission until the weaker is reduced to subjection.”

The document continues to say Virginians would not censure others for “resorting to their ultimate and sovereign right to dissolve the compact which they had formed and to provide new guards for their future security.”

Allen then explains how the states separately and together “dissolved their connection with the British Empire.” He emphasizes the sovereignty of the separate states and the right of each separate sovereign state to care for itself. “The foundation, therefore, on which it was established, was federal, and the State, in the exercise of the same sovereign authority by which she ratified for herself, may for herself abrogate and annul.”

He writes that the states had an obligation to uphold the constitution while a part of the union, “but when a State does secede, the constitution and the laws of the United States cease to operate therein. No power is conferred on Congress to enforce them.”

He calls the use of power by the federal government “a dangerous attack on the rights of the States,” comparing it to the British government and colonies. He writes that the people have the right to take back the powers granted under the constitution and calls the election of Abraham Lincoln “a standing menace to the South – a direct assault upon her institutions – an incentive to robbery and insurrection,” because he has the power to appoint postmasters and other officers in the southern states.

He then echoed the words of the forefathers by reciting what freeholders of Botetourt said in February 1775 to the Virginia Continental Congress:  ““That we desire no change in our government whilst left to the free enjoyment of our equal privileges secured by the constitution; but that should a wicked and tyrannical sectional majority, under the sanction of the forms of the constitution, persist in acts of injustice and violence towards us, they only must be answerable for the consequences. That liberty is so strongly impressed upon our hearts that we cannot think of parting with it but with our lives; that our duty to God, our country, ourselves and our posterity forbid it; we stand, therefore, prepared for every contingency.””

The document resolves that a convention should be called immediately so the people can decide if Virginia should remain in the Union. The state should remain in the Union only if its “equality, tranquility and rights” are guaranteed; otherwise, the State should “adopt in concert with the other Southern States, or alone, such measures as may seem most expedient to protect the rights and insure the safety of the people of Virginia.”

The document can be viewed in its entirety in the Southern Historical Society Papers, volume 1, in the Virginia Room of the Roanoke City Library, Main Branch.  There are minor differences in various copies of the documents; the above quotes are copied from the source cited.

A version of The Botetourt Resolutions can be found online here. 

This article originally appeared in The Fincastle Herald under my byline in 2004.

Virginia 250: How Botetourt County Was Formed

With Virginia and the nation celebrating 250 years of freedom from England in 2026, I thought it might be fun to occasionally bring up some local history. At one time, Botetourt County stretched all the way to the Mississippi and into Wisconsin, which means my county's history is also the history of much of the nation.

Stolen from Wikipedia

Botetourt County began as one of the largest political units ever created in colonial Virginia. Its jurisdiction was so vast it once stretched to the Mississippi River and into parts of Wisconsin. Its story is one of continual subdivision as settlement expanded westward and new counties and even new states emerged.

How Botetourt County Was Formed (1769–1770)

Botetourt County was created by an act of the Virginia House of Burgesses in 1769, taking effect in 1770, and carved out of the enormous and unwieldy Augusta County. It was named for Norborne Berkeley, Lord Botetourt, the popular royal governor of Virginia. 

The enabling act described Augusta County as too large to administer effectively and divided it along a line beginning at the Blue Ridge and running northwest toward the James River tributaries. Everything south of that line became the new County of Botetourt. 

How Large Botetourt Originally Was

Early Botetourt County was immense. According to both county and tourism historical summaries, when first established it extended from the southern end of the Shenandoah Valley all the way to the Mississippi River and covered all or parts of seven present-day states

Wikipedia corroborates this, noting that Botetourt originally included the southern portion of present-day West Virginia and all of Kentucky. 

This vastness was intentional: the county was meant to serve settlers pushing westward along the Great Road and into the Ohio and Mississippi River watersheds.

How Botetourt Was Reduced Over Time

As population grew and settlement expanded, Botetourt was repeatedly subdivided. The process began almost immediately.

1772: Creation of Fincastle County. Botetourt was reduced to the area east of the New and Kanawha Rivers when Fincastle County was created. 

1792: Kentucky Becomes a State. Most of Fincastle County eventually became Kentucky, admitted to the Union in 1792. Since Fincastle had been carved from Botetourt, this means Botetourt’s original territory contributed directly to the formation of an entire state. 

Other Counties Formed from Botetourt

Over the next decades, additional counties were created from Botetourt’s remaining territory:

Rockbridge County (1778)

Bath County (1791)

Alleghany County (1822)

Roanoke County (1833)

Craig County (1851)

By 1851, Botetourt County had been reduced to its present-day boundaries.

Botetourt County Today

Modern Botetourt County covers 546 square miles, a fraction of its original size. 

Its county seat, Fincastle, was incorporated in 1772 and remains a center of historical preservation and archival records. 

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Sources & References

Genealogy Trails: Botetourt County Virginia Formation (full text of the 1769 act) 

Wikipedia: Botetourt County, Virginia (overview of formation and subdivisions) 

Botetourt County Government: History (extent to the Mississippi River) 

Visit Virginia’s Blue Ridge: History of Botetourt County (seven-state extent) 

Virginia 250: Blacksmiths, Builders of the Nation

With Virginia and the nation celebrating 250 years of freedom from England in 2026, I thought it might be fun to occasionally bring up some local history. At one time, Botetourt County stretched all the way to the Mississippi and into Wisconsin, which means my county's history is also the history of much of the nation.

A version of the following article appeared in 2004 in The Fincastle Herald under my byline.

Blacksmiths were very important and necessary folk during the colonization of America. They were needed to make iron tools, like plowshares, so the hard work of planting and building structures could be completed. 

Farriers were smiths who specialized in shoeing horses. But smiths not only shod horses, they created springs and wheel parts for carriages, made nails, pots, pans, and other utensils. 

The work was done with a hammer and anvil, using iron heated in a fire kept hot by hand-operated bellows. Without blacksmiths to work iron, the settlers could not have moved west as quickly as they did.

Today, mass production methods have all but eliminated most work done by blacksmiths.

In Fincastle, the county seat of Botetourt County, VA, one blacksmith shop still stands. The smell of molten metal and the hiss of fire in water do not echo on the town’s Main Street anymore, but visitors can see the efforts of blacksmiths of old in the Ludwig Wysong Blacksmith Shop museum at Wysong Park.

Imprints from horse hooves are visible in the sidewalk outside of the restored building. Inside, tools of the trade line the walls and two portable forges show how the smithy could haul his trade from place to place if need be.

The museum was dedicated in 1978, a gift to Historic Fincastle, Inc. (HFI) from two brothers: Rufus and Dr. H. D. Wysong. During the 1970s, while researching family history, they became interested in the old shop. It was the last remaining smithy in town, and they purchased it and restored it as a tribute to Fiedt Wysong, their ancestor.

The Wysong brothers partnered with HFI to reconstruct the sagging building. Wysongs from all over the United States donated money, and HFI provided additional funding to help acquire the lot, which is now called the Ludwig Wysong Memorial Park, in honor of Fiedt Wysong’s father. 

The family originally hailed from France and Wales. The Wysongs have traced their roots to 1558, where an early family member named Vincent fled from France to the Rhineland area of Germany to escape religious persecution. There, it is reported, the German pronunciation of the name “Vincent” corrupted it to “Weissanz,” which eventually became Wysong.

Fiedt Wysong (1755-1837) was an early Fincastle settler who owned many properties in town. The museum may not have been his shop – there were several in the area and no one knows which was his.  

But the current building was a working smithy until 1932.

Fincastle Historian Dottie Kessler says Fiedt Wysong operated a blacksmith shop in 1791.

His father, Ludwig Wysong moved to Wales from the Rhineland. He entered the English king’s service and landed in America in 1715. He located to York County, PA and married at age 60. He had 11 children, 7 boys, and 5 of those sons fought on the side of the patriots in the American Revolution, including Fiedt and his brother Valentine, who also lived in Fincastle. In April 1824, the Wysongs lived on the corner of Main Street and Water Street.

HFI members helped the Wysong family clear the lot on the corner of Main Street and US 220, and local attorney Ralph C. Wiegandt and other citizens donated authentic blacksmith tools for exhibit. 

Today, one room of the museum contains benches and furniture, and is called the Wysong Meeting Room. The Wysong family holds reunions in Fincastle occasionally, bringing many hundred visitors to town. The building stands as a museum to the public and a memorial to the Wysong family. The building is open to the public during the Fincastle Festival and by appointment.

Almost 300 people attended the 1978 dedication and reunion, with Wysong representatives from 24 states present. The Wysongs turned the property over to HFI at that time. Mayor Harry Kessler, who was also an HFI member, accepted the deed to the property.

HFI later constructed a new Wysong Blacksmith Shop directly behind the older building. The blacksmith shop, complete with a working forge, cost HFI $30,000 and took two years to construct.

Members hoped to lure a blacksmith to town. However, that did not work out and the building became a source of rental revenue for the non-profit organization until this year, when HFI turned it into its offices.

Information courtesy of Fincastle Historian Dottie Kessler (now deceased) and Historic Fincastle, Inc.

Virginia 250: Amsterdam in Botetourt

With Virginia and the nation celebrating 250 years of freedom from England in 2026, I thought it might be fun to occasionally bring up some local history. At one time, Botetourt County stretched all the way to the Mississippi and into Wisconsin, which means my county's history is also the history of much of the nation.

A version of the following article appeared in 2004 in The Fincastle Herald under my byline. I thought it fit with the history theme as well as the lost communities I've noted in recent months in this series.

When it comes to local history, there is no stopping Daleville’s Gene Crotty when he starts talking about Botetourt.  He is currently researching his fifth book, a history of the Amsterdam area.

The 75-year-old writer doesn’t just sit and read books to do his research.  His current project is on the area he calls home.  He has walked miles and miles over the terrain between Daleville and Amsterdam.  During his journeys he has picked up over 10,000 artifacts that go as far back as 10,000 B.C. 

“I have something from about every century that man has come here in the Amsterdam area,” Crotty said.

Because he paid attention to his surroundings, Crotty is credited with two major archeological finds in the Daleville area. Arrowheads and rock tools from the sites fill his basement and other parts of the house.  He roams the area looking for foundations and historic clues.  He has found the lost ruins of churches and other long-forgotten buildings simply by exploring the Amsterdam and Daleville areas on foot.

All of this information has built up inside Crotty, and now he is ready to take it out and put it into a book.

“He wants to know and learn as much as he can about everything,” his wife Judy explained.  After 40 years of marriage, she has learned to let him “do his own thing” and in his retirement that thing is research, writing, and collecting rocks to fill up her laundry room.

The 75-year-old writer still gets out and roams around the grounds of Daleville. Sometimes that takes the form of the local welcoming committee when he goes to greet new Daleville residents.

"We call him the "mayor" of North Daleville,” Judy said. “He loves people.”

His books reflect his love of people, too. They are not epistles about buildings, but instead are stories about the folks who lived in an area. His forthcoming book on Amsterdam will be the same way, and he believes he has pinpointed the first two white men in the area.  Those men traveled as far as the New River. 

“It’s difficult to get real facts about who was the first English settler,” Crotty said.  At one time this area was part of Orange County, so deed references in the 1730’s and earlier are hard to get to. They are also incomplete, he said.

He has a knack for reading aerial maps and figuring out travel routes and migrations, things important to the settlers of Botetourt County in the years before the nation became sovereign.

He claims the Amsterdam area, now “dried up and blown away,” was a major landmark of prehistoric man as well as for the later settlers who moved up the valley of Virginia heading west. In Amsterdam, Crotty said, they had to make a decision about their direction.

“There are only three routes through the Blue Ridge Mountains, and one of them tends to send people right through the Amsterdam area,” he said. “Amsterdam is the area where folks took divergent trails west or south around Tinker Mountain. It was an important interchange in the westward movement.”

He also has found indications of prehistoric man’s trampling in the area and evidence of buffalo, even though some archeologists claim the animal did not roam here. 

"Tinker Creek was called Buffalo Creek originally,” Crotty said.  He has read diaries dating back to 1651 that mention buffaloes in the Amsterdam area and around Big Lick.

The area also was not entirely wooded in Amsterdam.  There were big meadows “with grass up to your chest,” according to diary entries, Crotty said. “Amsterdam has disappeared but at one time it was a real hub of life.”

The retired tax professor has no time to talk about the IRS or anything else when there is history to be uncovered and converted into books.

He wrote his most recent book, The Visits of Lewis & Clark to Fincastle, Virginia at the request of George Kegley, a member of the board of The History Museum and Historical Society of Western Virginia.  The book appeared in time to celebrate the two hundredth anniversary of the adventures of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark and their exploration of the American west.

“William Clark could have met Judith in 1801,” he said.  Judith Hancock was the lady from Fincastle whom Clark eventually married.  “She must’ve made quite an impression,” Crotty said, because she was still a child then.

Crotty’s intense research sometimes refutes the local lore of the area, and that’s okay with everyone who knows him. “Gene’s a stickler for getting it right,” Kegley said. “He’s a good researcher.  He knows where to look.”

Crotty’s Lewis and Clark book doesn’t add a lot of new information, Kegley said, but it does put the information “together so that it has meaning and context.  Gene sets the stage in history and relates it to everything else that is going on at that time.”

His legendary research skills have made Crotty renowned for hunting down the obscure facts that elude others. His home library would make a history librarian drool over the many old books, maps, diaries, and other papers that he searches.

Crotty’s other books are all on Thomas Jefferson and printed by the University of Virginia. Those books are offered as premiums to donors, according to Kegley.

“He's fairly highly regarded at the university for his work,” Kegley said.

Source: 2004 interview with Gene Crotty by this writer.

Additional information: Gene Crotty passed away in 2017.

Carvins Cove: A Lost Community Beneath the Water

With Virginia and the nation celebrating 250 years of freedom from England in 2026, I thought it might be fun to occasionally bring up some local history. At one time, Botetourt County stretched all the way to the Mississippi and into Wisconsin, which means my county's history is also the history of much of the nation.

Carvins Cove is being talked about a lot these days because a Google data center is locating at The Botetourt Center at Greenfield. This is an industrial park the county created in the 1990s and its purpose has changed several times over the last 30 years.

The data center is supposed to use up to 8 million gallons of water a day when the entire thing is built out.

We recently visited the Cove. As you can see in the photos below, the lake is down considerably, as indicated by the dirt at what should be the water line at full pond. We've been in a drought situation for over a year now.

However, there is more to the story of Carvins Cove than water usage. Right now, it's a water reservoir with a conservation forest area that locals treat as both landmark and backdrop. 

But beneath that calm surface lies the memory of an entire community: farms, a school, a church, a resort hotel, even an amusement park. All of it now rests under the water that supplies much of the Roanoke Valley.

This is the story of how that happened.

Before the Water: A Frontier Settlement

Carvins Cove began as a small early‑19th‑century settlement built around a grist mill on Carvins Creek. Its namesake, William Carvin, was one of the first settlers in the Hollins area and held a 150‑acre land grant along the creek.

By the late 1800s and early 1900s, the Cove had grown into a modest but lively rural community. Before its destruction, it included:

• Rocky Branch School

• Cove Alum Baptist Church

• Cove Alum Springs resort hotel

• Tuck‑Away Park, a small amusement park

• At least 60 homes

It was a place where Botetourt and Roanoke families lived, farmed, worshipped, and gathered. It was a quiet valley.

The First Rumblings of Change (1920s)

The community’s fate shifted in the early 1920s when the Virginia Water Company announced plans to build a dam to impound water in the area. By 1926, the company publicly confirmed the dam would be constructed at the falls of Carvins Creek.

An 80‑foot abutment was completed by 1928, but the reservoir itself remained unrealized for nearly two decades. The valley continued its daily life, even as the shadow of the future lake grew longer.

The Final Years of the Community (1940–1946)

Everything changed when the City of Roanoke acquired the Roanoke Water Company in 1942. With municipal backing, the reservoir project accelerated:

• The city began purchasing and condemning land throughout the Cove.

• On February 14, 1944, the last structures were auctioned off.

• In total, Roanoke acquired over 12,000 acres for about $1 million.

• In 1945, German POWs were brought in to help clear timber.

By May 1946, the reservoir filled and overtopped the dam, sealing the valley’s fate. The official dedication followed in March 1947.

What Lies Beneath

During drought years, the waterline drops enough that stone foundations and remnants of the old community reappear, ghostlike, along the shoreline.

Even when the water is high, hikers and riders sometimes notice old chimneys, walls, or roadbeds tucked into the woods. They are quiet reminders of what used to be there.

Carvins Cove Today: Water, Wilderness, and Memory

Today, Carvins Cove is:

• The primary water source for roughly 130,000 customers in the Roanoke Valley.

• One of the largest municipal parks in the United States (ranked between 2nd and 9th depending on the source).

• A major recreation area offering hiking, mountain biking, horseback riding, paddling, and fishing.

It’s also fed in part by the Tinker Creek tunnel, opened in 1966, which diverts Botetourt water under Tinker Mountain into the reservoir.

Carvins Cove is no longer a village, but it is very much alive.

Why Carvins Cove Still Matters

Carvins Cove is a rare place where natural beauty, local history, and regional infrastructure intersect. For Botetourt County, it’s a reminder of:

• The early frontier families who shaped the region

• The sacrifices made for public water access

• The way landscapes hold memory, even when transformed

Standing on the shoreline today, it’s easy to forget that a community once lived beneath your feet. But the past is still there in the foundations that surface during drought, in the old photographs preserved by local families, and in the name “Carvin,” which still echoes across the valley.

Sources include the Western Virginia Water Authority; the City of Roanoke archives; the Roanoke Times historical coverage of the Carvins Cove project; the Botetourt County and Roanoke County historical societies; the Virginia Department of Historic Resources; and regional histories documenting the Cove Alum Springs resort, the early Carvin land grants, and the 1940s reservoir construction.

When the Reporters Are Gone: What We Missed About the Data Center

I’ve been watching the conversation about the proposed Google Data Center at the Botetourt Center at Greenfield, and I want to offer a perspective that comes from 40 years of covering local government in Botetourt County.

A lot of people are angry at the Board of Supervisors right now. I understand why. Nobody likes feeling blindsided. But the truth is more complicated, and it points to a deeper problem we don’t talk about enough.

1. The Board didn’t hide anything. The zoning change happened in November 2024. The county advertised a public hearing to amend the RAM zoning district to include data centers as a permitted use. That was the moment when this project became possible. It was public. It was legal. It was properly noticed.

I remember seeing the ad and thinking, “They’re preparing for a data center.” Anyone who understands zoning would have recognized it.

But most people don’t read legal ads, and most people don’t follow zoning language closely. Most people don't even read a newspaper anymore. That’s not a criticism. It’s just reality.

2. The public didn’t react because the public didn’t know what the change meant. And this is where the real issue comes in.

When I was still writing, I would have explained what a RAM district is, broken down what “permitted use” means, connected the dots between the amendment and the likely project, interviewed county staff about the RAM use change, and written the kind of article that helps people understand what’s coming before it arrives.

That’s what local journalism is supposed to do. That's what I used to do.

3. But we don’t have that kind of local journalism anymore. The paper today prints very little that could be called “news.” They avoid controversy. They don’t have the staff, the time, or the institutional memory to cover land use, budgets, or long‑range planning.

It’s not the media's fault entirely.  People stopped buying papers, stopped advertising, and the economics collapsed. I stopped working because I was ill, and the paper never replaced my position.

But the result is the same: the county lost its watchdog, its explainer, its translator, because no one stepped up to take on that role.

4. So now people feel blindsided. The Board did not hide anything, (though they could have been a bit more forthcoming). But the information ecosystem failed. Not just the local paper, but also the TV media, and the daily paper. The Botetourt Bee ceased publication in the summer of 2024, before this public hearing happened. And it ceased publication because some members of this county acted inappropriately.

But this data center is what happens when a community loses its reporters. Important decisions go unnoticed, legal ads become the only form of outreach, people don’t understand the process, outrage arrives months or years too late.

The data center isn’t just a land‑use story. It’s a story about what happens when local news disappears.

5. I live half a mile from the site. I raise cattle. I have my own concerns. I’m sensitive to low‑frequency noise, and I’m paying close attention to what this means for me, my land, and my herd. I’m not dismissing anyone’s worries.

But I also know how the process works, and I know this didn’t come out of nowhere.

6. If we want better outcomes in the future, we need better information, not more anger. Communities can’t make informed decisions if they don’t have access to informed reporting. That’s the real loss here, and it’s one we’re all feeling now.

Watch the news. Buy the local paper, the weekly and the daily. Support local journalism if you want to be informed.

Communities need their watchdogs.

Botetourt and the Civil War

With Virginia and the nation celebrating 250 years of freedom from England in 2026, I thought it might be fun to occasionally bring up some local history. At one time, Botetourt County stretched all the way to the Mississippi and into Wisconsin, which means my county's history is also the history of much of the nation.

Botetourt County of course has multiple connections to the American Civil War, or the War Between the States, as it is sometimes called. The war took place from 1861 to 1865.

Buchanan, one of our towns, was raided by Union General David Hunter, during what is known as "Hunter's Raid."

Photo courtesy of buchanan-va.gov

Hunter's Raid began on June 5, 1864, with the Battle of Piedmont. He proceeded to Staunton, a city about an hour and a half away today by Interstate 81, burning government buildings and supplies as he went. 

In Harry Fulwiler, Jr.’s book, Buchanan, Virginia: Gateway to the South, the author records the events.  Hunter’s report:

“June 13:  While awaiting news from Duffie, on the 13^th I sent Averell forward to Buchanan with orders to drive McCausland out of the way and, if possible, secure the bridge over the James River at that place.”

In an August 8 report on the June events: “On the morning of the 14^th I moved with my whole command toward Buchanan, and on arriving there found it occupied by Averell. He had driven McCausland sharply from the place, capturing some prisoners and a number of canal barges laden with stores, but had not succeeded in saving the bridge.  As there was a convenient and accessible ford at hand the advance of the army was not retarded by its loss. In view of this fact and of the damage incurred to private property the inhabitants of the village protested against the burning of the bridge, but McCausland, with his characteristic recklessness, persisted in the needless destruction, involving eleven private dwellings in the conflagration. The further progress of this needless devastation was stopped by the friendly efforts of our troops, who extinguished the flames.

On the 15^th I moved from Buchanan.”

Fulwiler also records the memories of Jane Boyd, who witnessed the Confederate burning of the bridge and the subsequent occupation by the Yankees: “General McCausland sent his men across the bridge, and then had the bridge filled with baled hay … and fired. The bridge was an old fashioned covered wooden bridge, and the flames spread rapidly. … The burning of the bridge set fire to the town, and as many, perhaps, as thirty buildings were destroyed. The scene was terrific, and many people were made homeless. General McCausland formed his line of battle just at the foot of Oak Hill, my old home, and the enemy’s line was on the opposite side of James River, near the foot of Purgatory Mountain.” The report goes on to talk about how General Averil’s men put out the fire, but looted as they did so, downing many decanters of fine old wines. Boyd says there were 30,000 men camped around Buchanan and surrounding areas. Mount Joy burned, the Jones’ foundry, a storehouse, and many other buildings.

Hunter took his men away from Buchanan via the Peaks of Otter, to Bedford. The raid ended at the Battle of Lynchburg on June 17-18, 1864, where Confederate General Jubal Early defeated the Union forces.

Following the Union defeat, Confederates forces pursued Union forces back through Bedford, then to Salem where they fought again at the Battle of Hanging Rock.

While that raid wasn't quite all of Botetourt's contributions to the Confederate side of that terrible war, it was certainly devastating to that part of the county.

Nearly forty years after the war ended, Botetourt residents memorialized their Confederate soldiers with a monument at the county courthouse in Fincastle.

The Confederate Monument is on the right-hand side of the photo. This courthouse has been
torn down and the monument has been relocated.

The Botetourt Monument Association put up the monument, which is in the shape of an obelisk. The family of Buchanan’s most famous author, Mary Johnston, was instrumental in placing the monument in Fincastle. Johnston also had a hand in the dedication of a monument in Vicksburg National Park in 1907 celebrating the Botetourt Artillery’s efforts in that famous Civil War battle.

According to news reports of the October 27, 1904 dedication in Fincastle, Major John Johnston and Eloise Johnson, Mary Johnston’s father and sister, attended the unveiling.  Eloise Johnston apparently was the chief sponsor of the monument; Judge William B. Simmons and John Johnston were “untiring” fundraisers for the project.

The newspaper called this “the greatest day in the history of the peaceful little city. Thousands of people gathered there to witness the unveiling of the beautiful monument erected in honor of the Confederate dead of Botetourt County.”

The writer reported that John Johnston and Attorney General William A. Anderson, both Botetourt County natives, made eloquent addresses.

Eloise Johnston and “a staff of twelve young ladies, representing the twelve volunteer companies that went into the Confederate army from Botetourt county,” unveiled the monument, “a model of beauty and excellence.”

While the monument at the county courthouse is not unique, the inscriptions are a little different in that they recognize the services of women in helping the soldiers during the war.

One side of the monument reads, “To the women of Botetourt in remembrance of their constant encouragement, steadfast devotion, tender in ministrations and unfailing providence and care, during the war and in the dark reconstruction years.”

The statue commemorates, “the deeds and services of the twelve volunteer companies … that went to the war from Botetourt County.” It is “in memory of our brave and loyal officers and enlisted men who were killed in battle and who died from wounds and disease, during the war, and of our faithful comrades who have died since the war.”

The twelve volunteer companies from Botetourt County participating in the Civil War and listed on the monument are:

The Fincastle Rifles, Co. D. 11 Rec't. VA. Infantry.

The Botetourt Dracoons, Co. C. 2 Rec't. VA Cavalry.

The Mountain Rifles, Co. H. 28 Rec't. VA Infantry.

Anderson's Battery - The Botetourt Artillery.

The Roaring-Run Company, Co. K. II, Rec't. VA. Infantry.

The Botetourt Guards, Co. I. 57 Rec't. VA Infantry.

The Osceola Guards, Co. K 60 Rec't. VA. Infantry.

The Blue Ridge Rifles, Co. A. 28 Rec't. VA Infantry.

The Botetourt Springs Company, Co. E 28 Rec't. VA Infantry.

The Breckenridge Infantry, Co. K. 28 Rec't. VA. Infantry.

The Botetourt Heavy Artillery, Co. C. 20, Bat'N. VA. H'vy. Art'y.

The Botetourt Senior Reserves, Co. -- 4, Rec't. VA. Reserves.

The Botetourt Junior Reserves, Co. E.2, Bat'N. VA Reserves.

The monument has been moved from its original location at the front of the Botetourt County Courthouse in Fincastle and is now in a monument park the county is constructing as part of the new courthouse building project.

There is a similar obelisk monument in the Town of Buchanan.

 

Colonel William Preston and the Greenfield Legacy

With Virginia and the nation celebrating 250 years of freedom from England in 2026, I thought it might be fun to occasionally bring up some local history. At one time, Botetourt County stretched all the way to the Mississippi and into Wisconsin, which means my county's history is also the history of much of the nation.

The Botetourt Center at Greenfield, now an industrial park in Botetourt County, VA, was once part of a 20,000-acre spread owned by Revolutionary War hero Colonel William Preston.

Preston came to Virginia from Ireland in 1729, when he was nine years old. As a young man, he was active in the formation of Botetourt County. He was named First Surveyor, coroner, Escheator, and Member of the House of Burgesses. He also served as Colonel of the Militia when Botetourt County was formed from Augusta County in 1769.

He purchased Greenfield in 1759 and lived there until 1774, when he moved to Smithfield in present-day Montgomery County. In 1775, he was one of the signers of the Fincastle Resolutions, one of the earliest local documents to express support for American independence.

When Preston died in 1783, he was thought to be the wealthiest man in the state.

Six of Preston’s 12 children were born at Greenfield, and his legacy has left a large footprint on the nation. Preston descendants founded six universities and influenced two others — including Columbia College in South Carolina, now the University of South Carolina, and the University of Chicago.

Additionally, Preston’s descendants served in the Virginia House of Delegates and in the U.S. Congress. His son, James Patton Preston, served as governor of Virginia from 1816 to 1819.

When the county purchased Greenfield, the supervisors authorized an extensive review of the historic assets on the property. The remaining structures are pre-Civil War and include a slave dwelling and kitchen.

The kitchen measures 16 by 18 feet and faces the southwest wall of the original mansion, which no longer stands. The slave dwelling is a log saddlebag double slave house located west of the house site.

The house foundation is the remains of a structure built in the antebellum era. Historic photographs indicate the structure was a two-story brick dwelling before it burned. There is also an outbuilding dating back to approximately 1834.

One cemetery contains a number of Preston family graves. Another has been partitioned off with white fencing and is thought to be the burial ground for the Black servants of the Prestons.

Up until about 2007, the historic structures were untouched and unprotected, with old logs exposed to weather, until the county stepped in to secure the buildings.

The Botetourt Center at Greenfield is a 922-acre site the county purchased for $4.5 million in 1995. The land was divided into an industrial area, a parks and recreation area, and a school area. The county built Greenfield Elementary School and the Greenfield Education and Training Center in 2000, then completed a couple of ball fields and a $3 million sports complex at the Recreation Center at Greenfield.

Even though the county has not yet created the Greenfield historic area, the remaining structures are often visited by people who come to walk the fields or the Cherry Blossom Trail.

A memorial to Colonel Preston can be found on the grounds of the Botetourt County Administration Building. It features benches and a history of the man and the property.

Courtesy of The Fincastle Herald

From Wikipedia:

William Preston
Member of the Virginia House of Burgesses from Botetourt County
In office 1769–1771 Serving with John Bowyer
Preceded by	position created
Succeeded by	Andrew Lewis
Member of the Virginia House of Burgesses from Augusta County
In office 1766–1769 Serving with John Wilson
Preceded by	Israel Christian
Succeeded by	Gabriel Jones
Personal details
Born	December 25, 1729 Limavady, Ireland
Died	June 28, 1783 (aged 53) Price's Fork, Montgomery County, Virginia
Resting place	Smithfield Plantation
Nationality	American
Spouse	Susanna Smith
Occupation	surveyor, officer, planter, politician
Signature
Military service
Allegiance	United Colonies
Branch/service	Virginia militia
Years of service	1765–1781
Rank	Colonel
Battles/wars	Draper's Meadow massacre Sandy Creek Expedition Lord Dunmore's War American Revolutionary War Battle of Guilford Courthouse