Projects

Members of the Historical Society, led by Sandy Stowe, continue to compile data from the cemeteries in Madison County. The project was begun by Earl H. Estes, Jr. in the early 1980’s. He later passed his collection on to Sandy, who had already begun her own documentation for the Society. Last year we were fortunate to obtain the help of Mary Wright to begin incorporating all of this data into our FileMaker Pro database program on the museum computer. In 2008, plans are to print a booklet of the old, inactive and fast disappearing graveyards in the county.

There will be two research notebooks kept at the museum which will be available to the public. One will be an index of all people buried in Madison County with dates and location and the other notebook will be an index of all cemeteries with location, short history and a list of those buried there. These notebooks will be updated periodically. All of the data will be on the computer at the Museum with CD’s of the data available for sale on request.

If you have information about a Madison County cemetery (even a single burial) that you suspect the Historical Society does not have information on, please contact the Society so that as complete a history of burials in the county can be kept for the historical record.

In 2005 the Virginia Genealogical Society awarded a grant of $3000 to the Society for the purpose of hiring personnel to give advice as to how best to organize, store, and retrieve artifacts in the Society’s collection. This advice was provided in a final report by Edward Gaynor and Ellen Welch of the University of Virginia Library System. As the result of a special appeal for funds in late 2005, society members and others donated more than $3000 toward implementation of the report’s recommendations, which included the purchase of appropriate hardware and software, as well as proper storage materials such as acid-free paper and storage boxes. The FileMakerPro computer program was chosen for creating a database of the Society’s archival materials. Josh Kitchens, archivist at the Germanna Foundation, helped with data input.

The Society’s archives are now stored in two places. The storage room off the research room at the Arcade houses those items not affected by changes in temperature and humidity. All other items are being boxed in acid-free boxes and placed on shelves in the lower level of the Kemper Residence. The purchase of these shelves was made possible by a matching grant of $250 from the Virginia Genealogical Society in October 2006. Jane Volchansky is primarily responsible for the Arcade.

The Slave Quarters Restoration Project

Outbuildings on historic house properties such as this important Slave Quarters building and the recently restored Law Office at the Kemper Residence usually survive only in old photographs and measured drawings. The Historical Society is anxious to restore these small buildings in order to include them in tours of the property and so provide a better picture of 19^th century life. Architectural evaluation and restoration estimates, done with grant support from the National Trust for Historic Preservation, placed restoration costs for the slave quarters at $50,000.

The Slave Quarters (pictured to the left courtesy of Tucker Hill) is a log cabin sheathed in frame siding. Most of the logs have such extensive termite damage that the building will need to be dismantled and carefully reassembled with the original materials combined with new ones. In addition, the Slave Quarters’ chimney will be reconstructed.

In response to an appeal for grant support the Society received an award from the Gwathmey Memorial Trust. The amount was inadequate to fund restoration of the Slave Quarters. However, supplemented by some volunteer labor and by donation of 19^th century bricks, it was adequate to properly restore the Law Office which is now open for tours. To begin the current restoration project the Historical Society, along with the Blue Ridge Foothills Conservancy, held a fund raiser in September 2007, followed by mail solicitation. This has produced a restoration fund of a little over $6,000. As with the successful Law Office restoration, the Society will again apply for grant funds, but the success of the project will depend on strong community support from its members and friends. Donations, designated for use in the Slave Quarters Restoration Fund, may be made to the Madison County Historical Society.