In December 1932, the Commonwealth of Virginia placed a Historical Highway Marker at the farm of George Elbert “Sug (pronounced Shug)” and Icy Bowman Brown along Highway 773, now 1091 Ararat Highway in Ararat, Patrick County, Virginia, to commemorate the birthplace of James Ewell Brown “Jeb” Stuart.
The Virginia Historical Highway Marker was written by Pulitzer Prize winning biographer of Robert E. Lee and George Washington and historian of the Army of Northern Virginia, Douglas Southall Freeman. “A short distance west is the site of the home of Archibald Stuart Jr., a statesman of a century ago There was born, February 6, 1883, his son, James Ewell Brown Stuart, who became Major General commanding the cavalry of the Army of Northern Virginia and whose fame is a part of the history of that army. Stuart closed his career by falling in the defense of Richmond, May 11, 1864.”
My mother told me when I was about nine or ten years old that I became obsessed with the Virginia Historical Highway Marker. She encouraged my interest in history. She left me with Icy and Sug Brown, hoping to quench the thirst I had for the history in my neighborhood. Well…
That day and many days afterwards, I would spend time with Sug and Icy, soaking up all they could tell me about the farm and the history it contained. Icy kept scrapbooks full of information about this history. One interesting tidbit she documented in her scrapbooks was the fact that the Stuart family moved Archibald Stuart in 1952, who died in 1855, to Elizabeth Cemetery in Saltville, Virginia, to lie beside his wife, Elizabeth Letcher Pannill Stuart. I have never seen any documentation anywhere else about the move.
Spending time with Sug Brown was a different animal entirely. He lived on the Laurel Hill Farm his entire life and remembered many things about the site. He walked me around and told me where he remembered things that were located on the farm, such as the location of Archibald Stuart’s grave. After the College of William and Mary completed its archaeology in the 1990s, Brown was proven right almost 100% of the time. I was fortunate to have access to the Browns and learn from them, as they lived on the farm where J. E. B. Stuart was born and grew up.
In 1988, I went public with my idea to preserve part of the Laurel Hill Farm with an article in the Winston-Salem Journal. Two years later, with members of the local Civil War Round Table, we formed the 501 (c) (3) non-profit corporation called the J. E. B. Stuart Birthplace Preservation Trust, Inc. In 1991, we raised the money to purchase 60 acres of the farm. Today, seventy-five acres are preserved on both sides of the Ararat River, including the grave of William Letcher, J. E. B. Stuart’s great-grandfather, who lost his life to Tories, pro-British sympathizers, during the American Revolution.
In 2001, I wrote the new text for the Virginia Historical Highway Marker that replaced the 1932 marker that stirred my interest in history. I tried to get the original sign but was ignored by the Virginia Department of Historic Resources. I thought the marker was destroyed, but it landed in a warehouse in Roanoke, Virginia.
The regional office of the VDHR cleared out its warehouse several years ago. One of the staff of VDHR contacted Gerald Via of Roanoke and asked him if he had any interest in the marker. He told them he did not, but he knew someone who did. My friend, Gerald Via, called me up and asked me to bring my truck to his brother’s garage in Floyd County, Virginia, where he gave me the sign. I placed it on display in the Martinsville Henry County Courthouse Museum in Martinsville, thanks to my friend, Debbie Hall. A few years ago, I donated it to the J. E. B. Stuart Birthplace, and it sits today along the old roadbed near the Dinky Railroad exhibit and the pavilion of interpretive signs written by Robert J. Trout and about Stuart in the War Between The States.
We will kick off Patrick County’s celebration of America’s 250th birthday next year on June 29, 2026, at Letcher’s grave. Laurel Hill, where J. E. B. Stuart was born on February 6, 1833, and is open from dawn to dusk every day. It is interpreted with multiple signs about the history of the site, which is on the Virginia and National Registers of Historic Places. Now, it has two Virginia Historical Highway Markers.
Photos: Elizabeth Brown at the Virginia Historical Highway Marker in the 1940s. Tom Perry with the original 1932 marker. 2001 marker written by Tom Perry. 1988 Winston-Salem Journal article about preserving Stuart’s Birthplace. Interpretive sign about 1932 marker.
