Fort Worth, Texas, is known as the place "Where the West Begins". Not so fast.... There have been many places in the United States where the West has begun. Perhaps you think of St. Joseph, Missouri, the jumping off point for covered wagon travel. Or, it could be the western end point of the Erie Canal. This week we visited a place which is where the West truly began: Fincastle, Virginia, founded in 1770. If you arrived in the American Colonies in the 18th century at Philadelphia, the largest city in Colonial America, you quickly determined the free land of Pennsylvania was already claimed. A significant number of immigrants, first the Scotch-Irish and then German immigrants moved down the Great Valley Road on their way to the Shenandoah Valley and points west. Many stopped at Fincastle, the County Seat of Botetourt County, Virginia, to resupply to continue travel into the unknown western wilderness of Kentucky, Ohio, Iowa and Illinois.
Botetourt County included all the land shown, but all new potential settlers saw was uninhabited wilderness where they could claim as much land as they could take back from the gigantic forest which covered it. Of course, there were multiple tribes of Native Americans living in this supposedly uninhabited area including the Creek, Cherokee, and the Shawnee to name a few. The clash of the European and the Native American cultures began in earnest as more Whites arrived in the British Colony. Prominent Virginians, including George Washington, Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson, arrived in Fincastle or sent their agents, to 'claim' large tracts of land.
Fincastle was built in the 1770, and incorporated in 1772. It was a town of merchants and lawyers. As the county seat, it boasted of a magnificent courthouse which would later be rebuilt in the Jeffersonian style. If you could afford it, you could supply yourself to move deeper into Botetourt County. The county was named for one of the few Colonial Governors who actually arrived in the New World to govern. It was much more common to hire a 'Lieutenant Governor' who would actually make the arduous sea voyage and govern the colony.
Today, the entire town of Fincastle, Virginia is an architectural wonder of buildings constructed in the 18th and 19th centuries on the spot where they still remain. I spent quite awhile studying a map of the enormous county to get a feel for what Colonial Virginia at the edge of the wilderness looked like to the immigrants. (Dotted lines are 'roads'- mainly trails through the massive forests.)
Modern Fincastle is a small town about 16 miles from Roanoke. Since we arrived in Roanoke, it's been raining. The day we visited Fincastle, like idiots we walked around locating the historic buildings in the drizzling rain. (The brochure pretty much melted by the end of the day!) We began our visit at the Fincastle Historical Society Museum. This is a small museum housed in a 19th century home. The museum collection is of ordinary objects mostly donated by local residents. My favorite object was dug up by a local resident as she was gardening. Boy, was she surprised to find this slate sun dial dating from the 1790's.
I also liked the traveling kitchen from the 18th century. Those are pewter plates, an iron mortar and pestle, an axe head, cooking utensils, and a lantern. It would be carried on the back of either a handcart or a wagon as an immigrant (sometimes accompanied by family) moved into the wilderness.
Fincastle was devastated not just by one fire, but two, one in 1820 and the other in 1870. The courthouse as well as most of the 18th century houses on central Main St. were destroyed. The museum has two of the items left from the original 1770 courthouse: a large bell and the original witness chair.
(Sorry about the poor picture, but it was behind glass & it picked up the glare in the room.) I could have done without the 'model' in the witness chair in an inappropriate dress. It would never have been red, and unlikely to have been trimmed in lace. Also, the testimony of women in any kind of trial would have been severely limited in the 18th century.
Nevertheless, having a 24' x20' courthouse with accompanying sheds to each side in 1770 would have been an impressive structure. All of the early structures in Fincastle would have been made of hand hewn logs, covered by clapboards - a luxury. Fire was a constant hazard. Most of the centrally located buildings, including the courthouse, were consumed by the two fires (1820 and 1870). Fortunately, the country records were kept inside an iron safe inside the courthouse and the safe along with the records survived the fires. Fincastle was such a lucrative location, with unlimited building supplies (logs), the structures were re-built, and the town continued to prosper.
While I found the colonial artifacts the most interesting, the museum also displayed additional artifacts from later periods. The furniture was also beautiful. Here's a restored 18th century spinet which was found in terrible shape in an old barn. The craftsmen at Williamsburg restored it. The price was the right to show it at Williamsburg for a number of years. Then, it was returned to Fincastle.
The biggest attraction at Fincastle are the buildings. There are numerous buildings from the 18th and 19th centuries. The 18th century houses were built out of hand hewn logs, then if able to be afforded covered by clapboard. We found one house (on the National Historic Register) which has been restored to the exterior logs. This is the Crowder house, circa 1791.
Another building constructed in 1872 and restored to the original logs was a 'destination hotel' for coastal visitors escaping the summer heat and more importantly the mosquitoes which caused Yellow Fever. The monthly rate in the 1880's was $25 a month. That's Drake in the blue rain jacket.
As we were walking around, Drake reading the melting brochure, and me taking pictures, one of the owners of an 18th century house came outside and invited us into a portion of his house. I was especially interested in the stonework around the fireplace, outer wall, and the hand hewn logs running along the ceiling. All the stones are hand placed. There is no mortar between the stones.
Due to the lousy weather, we stopped in at the Pie Shoppe and had wonderful homemade pies. True to the Southern tradition, we had just sat down when we were quizzed by two separate employees (and I quizzed them right back) about where we were from, why were we in Fincastle, etc. Discovering how truly wet we were, and full of pie and coffee, we called it a day after seeing only about one-fourth of the homes/buildings. However, as usual, I took plenty of pictures. Look at them individually, one after the other, to see the captions.
