Rockbridge Vignettes

Rockbridge Vignettes Interesting and entertaining small stories about Rockbridge County's people, places and things. We post new items most evenings around dinnertime.

Sometimes, we give you a rerun bonus item earlier in the day too.

Reconstruction in Lexington was harsh, but freed African Americans found a little leeway to gain a rudimentary education...
06/19/2026

Reconstruction in Lexington was harsh, but freed African Americans found a little leeway to gain a rudimentary education, prohibited them before the war by law. The American Missionary Association, affiliated with the Congregational church, arrived here shortly after Appomattox and found an education-thirsty Black community. The AMA opened a school in December with one teacher; within a month two more teachers were needed to handle the crowd. That school lasted only a year, but was replaced by a Baptist-affiliated mission. The teachers, some Black and others white, met with local hostility. Yet “I know that we are gaining,” one of them wrote in 1866.

On Friday we commemorate Juneteenth, which was not so much an event as a revelation. After the Civil War, Lexington was ...
06/19/2026

On Friday we commemorate Juneteenth, which was not so much an event as a revelation. After the Civil War, Lexington was as segregated as anywhere in the South (and many places in the North). Even today, erasure is incomplete. Fortunately, Beverly Tucker of Historic Lexington Foundation captured the words of the people whose parents and grandparents lived trough the aftermath, and you can read some of their stories and listen to all of them on the HLF website. You’ll be struck by their generosity of spirit. https://www.historiclexington.org/black-heritage

In 1871, as Lexington emerged from wartime devastation, the Gazette, then the larger of the two local newspapers, increa...
06/18/2026

In 1871, as Lexington emerged from wartime devastation, the Gazette, then the larger of the two local newspapers, increased its page size; lowered its subscription rate; adopted a splashy new nameplate; and introduced a clearer typeface which, it boasted, would be appealing “to the eye even of persons advanced in years.”

The end of the Civil War was anticlimactic in Lexington and at least a veneer of normalcy quickly returned. The news of ...
06/17/2026

The end of the Civil War was anticlimactic in Lexington and at least a veneer of normalcy quickly returned. The news of Lee’s surrender was duly reported in the Gazette, right above an item about spider webs, and after the news that a glorious grain crop was expected later in the year. (“The fields at present are carpeted with the richest green, and give such promise of an abundant harvest, as must already gladden the hearts of our people.”)

The Grigsby name never seems to be far removed from the good things that have happened ever since John and Elizabeth set...
06/17/2026

The Grigsby name never seems to be far removed from the good things that have happened ever since John and Elizabeth settled here in 1780 at what would become Fruit Hill, does it? That was the first of the seven Hill houses of Rockbridge, all associated with Grisgbys one way or another. In addition to Fruit, think Fancy, Hickory, Clover (now Herring Hall), Liberty, Cherry (now Marlbrook) and Rose. The current generation, Carol and Ben, live in The Pines and have if anything ratcheted up the family’s traditional civic-mindedness, with tremendous generosity to the Community Foundation and other local non-profit organizations of every stripe.

The Glasgow Herald published only 59 issues during the boom before dying in 1891 (as soon did the boom). In each issue, ...
06/16/2026

The Glasgow Herald published only 59 issues during the boom before dying in 1891 (as soon did the boom). In each issue, after it had reported on the factories, local news sometimes was scarce, and to fill its four pages it resorted to extreme trivia, for instance, just from one issue (July 25, 1891): It would take a train 175 years to travel to the sun. If your shoes squeak, slather them with castor oil. Boiling your broom once a week will keep it new. To get a passport, send an application, an oath of allegiance and five dollars to the Secretary of State, Washington. D.C.

New Monmouth Presbyterian Church, near Kerr’s Creek, is 280 years old. Its present building dates to 1883, with lancet-a...
06/16/2026

New Monmouth Presbyterian Church, near Kerr’s Creek, is 280 years old. Its present building dates to 1883, with lancet-arched windows and a front entry that rises into a gable “leading eyes (and thoughts) heaveanward,” writes Dan Pezzoni in The Architecture of Historic Rockbridge — “the hoped-for effect of Gothic Revival church architecture.”

Well, Lexington’s town fathers 130 years ago certainly wavered between authoritarian and libertarian. When in 1895 a wom...
06/15/2026

Well, Lexington’s town fathers 130 years ago certainly wavered between authoritarian and libertarian. When in 1895 a woman caught smallpox, they summarily burned her house down. They made you put a warning bell or whistle on your bicycle. Your livestock could be loose on the streets only at night, and then only between May and October, period. But if you wanted to make a ruckus in your tavern, you just had to budget for a $20 fine, which effectively became a license fee. Same for running a b***y house, though that fee was $50.
The distinction seems to have involved personal versus commercial activity; the former was tightly controlled, while the latter was simply regulated as a profit center for the government.
(These facts, though not the interpretation, come from the implacably independent Rockbridge Advocate.)

The first bridge across the North (now Maury) River at East Lexington was built in 1810 by John Jordan, who’s more widel...
06/14/2026

The first bridge across the North (now Maury) River at East Lexington was built in 1810 by John Jordan, who’s more widely celebrated for the stately, white-columned brick mansions he built with Samuel Darst in town that are today’s landmarks. In 1864, Confederate forces deliberately burned Jordan’s bridge, to prevent (or delay) Union forces from getting into Lexington. In 1877 the bridge was rebuilt according to Jordan’s original specifications. (It’s shown here in two versions.) The “new” covered bridge was taken down in 1946 after Route 11 was enlarged nearby and the bridge deteriorated, becoming an unsafe playground for children and VMI cadets.

John Wood Pratt (1827-88), pastor of Lexington Presbyterian Church from 1868 to 1874, was a mesmerizing preacher who str...
06/13/2026

John Wood Pratt (1827-88), pastor of Lexington Presbyterian Church from 1868 to 1874, was a mesmerizing preacher who strengthened the local church after the Civil War. But a savant in history he was not. In 1873 he caused a sensation when he announced that everyone was wrong, St. Patrick had not been a Catholic, but rather a Presbyterian. The problem with Dr. Pratt’s thesis is that John Calvin didn’t establish Presbyterianism until Patrick had been dead for 1,100 years; even basic Protestantism didn’t exist when Patrick did. It may only be a coincidence that the year of this revelation was the same year St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church was founded in Lexington. Or perhaps not.

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