Every Sunday, I post a story about my lifetime of research on the Stuart Family and the Laurel Hill Farm in Ararat, Virginia. Debbie Hall of The Enterprise kindly prints these stories. Thanks to her and Taylor Boyd for supporting my work and local history.
I have been pleasantly surprised by the reaction these stories get. People have come up to me and commented on the stories.
Multiple former teachers from my time at Blue Ridge Elementary and Patrick County High School have called me or commented in person about these stories. My intention is to educate people about this interest in history that my mother said started when I was about ten years old, when I annoyed her to no end asking about the Virginia Historical Highway Marker on George Elbert “Shug” and Icy Bowman Brown’s farm that was the site of the birthplace of James Ewell Brown “Jeb” Stuart.
I have taken these articles published in our local weekly newspaper and put them into a book each year titled Laurel Hill’s Many Histories. I give copies of these books to the J. E. B. Stuart Birthplace Preservation Trust, Inc., and they keep all the profits to support their preservation efforts on the seventy-five acres of the 1,500 that the Stuarts once owned in Patrick County.
Volume One came out last October and is dedicated to Ronnie Haynes, President of the Stuart Trust. Ronnie was there early in the efforts to save part of Laurel Hill. Volume Two will come out on October 3, 2026, at the Civil War Encampment and is dedicated to David Lusk, the Vice-President of the Stuart Trust, who recently passed away. Both books are available on Amazon in hardback, paperback, Kindle, and Audible formats.
These stories discuss many aspects of history relating to the Stuarts and Laurel Hill. When we started the effort to preserve Laurel Hill, I wanted it to be an outdoor classroom where people could learn about the people and events the property could tell. This began with the Indigenous Peoples discovered when the College of William and Mary completed archaeology in the early 1990s.
This work helped secure Laurel Hill’s inclusion on the Virginia and National Registers of Historic Places through the professional efforts of Dan Pezzoni of Landmark Preservation Associates of Lexington, Virginia.
Oral tradition abounded from “Shug” and Icy Brown about a slave cemetery on the property. Today, interpretive signs and field stones mark a slave cemetery. The Stuarts had nearly thirty people held in bondage, and Oral tradition abounded from “Shug” and Icy Brown about a slave cemetery on the property. Today, interpretive signs and field stones mark a slave cemetery.
The Stuarts had nearly thirty people held in bondage, and slavery stretched back to the American Revolution, when William and Elizabeth Perkins Letcher had nine enslaved people listed in the estate inventory after Letcher’s death at the hands of a pro-British Tory in August 1780.
It is through the Letchers that the Stuarts came to live at Laurel Hill. It is through the Letchers that the Stuarts came to live at Laurel Hill. Bethenia Letcher, the daughter of William and Elizabeth Letcher, married David Pannill and had two children.
One was Elizabeth Letcher Pannill, who married Archibald Stuart and moved to Patrick County in the mid-1820s. They lived there until 1859, when Mrs. Stuart sold the property to two men from Mount Airy, North Carolina, Robert Galloway and Dr. Joseph Hollingsworth.
These two books discuss all this history and more. I write about people who lived on or near Laurel Hill after the Stuarts, such as the Browns and Dellenbacks, and fixtures in our lives in western Patrick County, such as Dr. Eric Jarrell, who grew up on land that was once part of the Stuart land.
I write about men who followed the plume of J. E. B. Stuart, a reference to the hat General Stuart wore with an ostrich plume. I write about men who followed the plume of J. E. B. Stuart, a reference to the hat General Stuart wore with an ostrich plume. One was William W. Blackford, who wrote War Years With J. E. B. Stuart and helped shape the early days of what became Virginia Tech.
I also write about Stuart’s trips to colleges such as Emory and Henry, UVA, and West Point, and about the men who served under Stuart in the U.S. and C.S. Armies and later worked at Virginia Tech.
One thing I enjoy writing about is the Mount Airy and Eastern Railroad, “The Dinky,” which ran from Mount Airy, North Carolina, to Kibler Valley in Patrick County. This narrow gauge railroad ran from 1899 to 1916 for sure and perhaps as late as 1924. It ran by Laurel Hill, and there is a fairly new exhibit about the railroad, constructed from actual rails that once hauled virgin timber from the banks of the Dan River to the furniture mills. Again, making the site an outdoor classroom.
Many of these stories are about James Ewell Brown “Jeb” Stuart and his life in southwest Virginia, in the United States Army, and in the Army of Northern Virginia. Stuart seemed to me born to be involved in this historic time. When he was born, the Nullification Crisis of the 1830s was erupting. He graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, where he first met Robert E. Lee. After graduation, Stuart found himself in “Bleeding Kansas,” where he encountered people such as John Brown and was at Harpers Ferry when Brown tried to start a slave rebellion.
Laurel Hill’s Many Histories includes never-ending stories of people and events tied to the site. Volume Three is well underway, with release at the 2027 Civil War Encampment at Laurel Hill. This book will be dedicated to the late Shirley and Marvin Keene.
The site is open from dawn to dusk every day, and visitors can learn about our nation’s history from prehistoric times through today through the interpretive signs located on the property. Walking trails also let you enjoy nature if history isn’t your thing. Bring your children and grandchildren, expose them to this site, and let them learn about the past so that many people have worked to save this place and bring this history to life.
