Wolf Hills-Blacks Fort-Abingdon

Abingdon
Part I: Wolf Hills- Blacks Fort- Abingdon

Abingdon was originally named Wolf Hills because a pack of wolves emerged from a cave and attacked Daniel Boone’s dogs here in 1760. In the 1770s, the name changed to Blacks Fort after Joseph Black built a fort nearby to protect settlers against Indian raids.

Blacks Fort’s name was later changed to Abingdon in honor of Martha Washington's British home, Abingdon Parrish.

It doesn’t matter what you call it- Abingdon is fantastic. They have a Historic District that stretches for 20 blocks, the annual Highlands Festival, the nearby Creeper Trail, one of the oldest theaters in America- the Barter Theater; the enchanting Sinking Springs Cemetery, and a Planning Department that resembles an archaeology lab.


Tune in for Abingdon, Part II: The Planning Department

Floored Again

The Restoration Department finished replacing the termite damaged, 3"x9" heart-pine, floor joists in the hyphen at Bacon's Castle, with new pressure-treated pine ones. In the following picture you can see the early heart-pine finish floor relaid over the new joists. The termite damage was exacerbated by chronic dampness in the front porch area. The department is trying to remedy this issue with a new gutter, some repointing at the area where the porch joins the house, and polyurethane caulk under the door threshold. If they are successful at eliminating the moisture, they will replace the plaster ceiling that was demolished at the beginning of this project. Wish us luck.

The Beast is Caged

The Restoration Department has finished installing the six-foot tall picket fence around the new HVAC unit in the back yard of The John Marshall House. The crew used several techniques and tools to build the fence efficiently. When the fence rails were set, they were hung at a very precise height from grade. The pickets were all cut in the shop with a chop saw, so they were exactly the same length. The crew could then set the picket bottoms flush with the bottom rail, and the picket tops would come out dead even. The frame was set on site and painted in a day. The 174 pickets were primed and painted off-site with an airless sprayer, in a day and a half. The crew used a cordless nailer, loaded with two-inch stainless steel nails, to attach the pickets, also in a day and a half. Slightly over 1000 nails were used on the pickets.

Historic Staunton Foundation Workshops

Historic Staunton Foundation

Staunton's Historic Districts Presentation

Economic advantages to living in historic districts
& how to get one started in your neighborhood

Friday, May 6 · 12:00pm - 1:30pm
R.R. Smith Center for History And Art

Staunton's historic districts have contributed greatly to its revitalization over the quarter century since they were enacted. Given this success, are there others areas of the city that are also deserving of such a designation? How does a historic district get started? What are the advantages?

Please join Tim Reamer, former Economic Development Director of Buena Vista (now with Cottonwood Commercial Real Estate), along with Benny Werner, Senior Vice President with Community Bank in Staunton as they discuss the process of creating the new Buena Vista Downtown Historic District. We'll discuss what motivated their effort as well as the steps involved to take it from a vision to reality. The presentation is free and open to the public.

This talk is part of HSF's ongoing Preservations Brown Bag series. These informal discussions meet the first Friday of each month to discuss pertinent preservation and development topics within Staunton. Bring your brown bag lunch (or not) and join in for some lively discussion.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Historic Staunton Foundation

Retaining Walls Workshop

Saturday, May 14 · 1:00pm - 3:00pm
Stuart Hall Campus

Stone, brick and concrete retaining walls are a significant historic landscape features throughout Staunton. Over the past few years several of Staunton’s historic walls have failed while some have retained their “lean”. There is a clear need for promoting the preservation, maintenance and repair of these historic walls.

Carter Green (historical architect, Frazier Associates)
James Schnitzhofer (structural engineer, Schnitzhofer & Associates, LLC)
James Flory (stone mason/artisan, Renaissance Stone Masonry)
and Bib Frazier (quarry owner, Frazier Quarry)

will review and discuss Retaining Walls: re-pointing, rehabilitating, tie-ins with neighboring wall and constructing new walls.

This is a workshop you won’t want to miss!

It's Drying Time Again in Virginia

What you see before you is almost $1000 worth of pressure-treated yellow-pine, racked and drying in the peanut barn at Bacon's Castle. This material will be the twenty foot by fourteen foot stockade fence at the John Marshall House. The stockade will hide the new HVAC equipment in the back yard. This was necessitated by the City of Richmond transferring ownership of the Marshall House to Preservation Virginia. Up until now, the city had provided steam or chill water for the houses' air handler to use. Now, Preservation Virginia must provide it. Ah, the complexities of home ownership.

Mr. Drummond's Springfield

Gloucester County is home to many historical sites including the 18th century mansion Rosewell, and the Powhatan village of Werowocomoco. But I was recently there to visit another historically important site — Springfield— and to meet Springfield’s owner, Phil Drummond who works diligently to keep his family’s history alive.

Springfield, located in the Ark community, is not an easy house to identify due to later alterations, but it appears to be an early-mid 18th century hall and parlor type house with large side-end brick chimneys. An early cemetery sits just outside with several 18th century graves and above-ground tombs. One of which was a young man of 27 who had apparently been murdered.

The most interesting feature about Springfield, however, is not the house— but its owner. Mr. Drummond was full of remarkable stories about his life and about Springfield, such as the legend that Nathaniel Bacon may be buried on the property or the Native American ossuary that was disturbed while his neighbors were digging a well.

But what I found most appealing about Mr. Drummond was how content he is with his mixed ethnicities. Old photographs of Mr. Drummond’s relatives line every wall in the house— including ones of Confederate soldiers. Other ancestors include independent free blacks and Revolutionary War Colonels.

As I was driving home and the experience continued to sink in, I thought about how classically Virginian the entire experience was and how I wanted to go back and hear more stories.

It's Deja-Vous, All Over Again

The Restoration Department was working at Bacon's Castle to replace some fire doors and repair moisture damage in the hyphen, when they discovered extensive termite damage to the floor joists on the first-floor. Since they just finished replacing floor joists at Monumental Church in Richmond for the same reason, they are all tooled up and ready to go. The damage occurred after the 1983 Bacon's Castle renovations were complete, but there are no current signs of active termites. This is another wake-up call to owners of historic structures, not to trust pest-control contracts as a guarantee against infestations. In this instance, the damage was between the plaster ceiling and the floor, so it was completely invisible to even thorough inspections. When the department consulted a trusted pest control agent, he recommended that a barrier treatment be applied every five years around the structure and under concrete pads within the structure. He further recommends whenever any work is done to historic structures, that pest control be called in to opportunistically apply chemical at that time. Old structures are somewhat unique, because of all the voids that exist within them, making them perfect termite habitat. In this circumstance, because the joists have been so badly damaged, because of the chronic moisture problem associated with the front porch, and because the joists will once again be enclosed by floor from above and plaster from below, the department will use modern pressure-treated lumber to replace the period, heart pine joists.