By Tom Perry
The older I get, the more friends I have in cemeteries. Mount Airy’s Oakdale Cemetery is such a place. Allyson Snyder once accused me of thinking a hot date was taking her mother to a cemetery. One hundred years ago, people would take picnics and visit their relatives in cemeteries. One friend whose mortal remains lie in Oakdale is Ruth Minick.
Ruth once said about The Hollow, present day Ararat, Virginia, that, “It has been a little world all in itself; sometimes violent, sometimes peaceful.” A joke many of us involved in local history made was that you were not a historian if you had not crawled under Ruth’s bed to retrieve a box of research materials in her apartment on Franklin Street. An educator in Mount Airy for decades, first as a teacher and then as Principal at North Main Street Elementary School, Ruth left an incredible legacy.
Ruth wrote an article every week about local history in the Mount Airy News from the 1970s until her death. Often, her articles were about Laurel Hill Farm, especially William Letcher and the American Revolution at J. E. B. Stuart’s Birthplace. She was a strong supporter of our efforts to save Laurel Hill. She was a founding member of the Surry County Historical Society and worked tirelessly to save the Edwards Franklin House.
Ruth M. Minick was born on November 8, 1907, to John David Wesley Minick (1859–1938) and Ida Blanche Lynn Creveling Minick (1870–1948). She had one brother, John Creveling Minick (1906–1985). Ruth passed on October 28, 2001, at the age of 93.
In an adjoining plot in section 15 at Oakdale Cemetery are George Elbert and his wife, Icy Bowman Brown, who owned Laurel Hill Farm for most of the twentieth century. They dreamed that the site would become a preserved historical landmark. If not for their and their families’ willingness to save the place, I have no doubt a mega mansion would be sitting on the hill today.
Joe Bill and Edith Brown, the administrators of “Shug” and Icy’s estate, gave the J. E. B. Stuart Birthplace Preservation Trust, Inc., the 501 (c) (3) nonprofit that owns Laurel Hill Farm, an option and enough time to raise the money. Joe Bill agreed to give me the option to save the birthplace, one summer afternoon in 1990, leaning against the side of his pickup truck, drinking a cold Busch beer. Joe Bill always said to me, “It was what Uncle Shug and Aunt Icy wanted.” Joe Bill was Shug’s nephew. Joe died on January 14, 1998, living long enough to see the birthplace saved and preserved.
People tried to buy the property, but Joe and Edith kept their word. They went to high school with my father, Erie Meredith Perry, who was an educator in Patrick County, Virginia, for nearly thirty years. When my father passed away, Edith handwrote me a letter about my father, which is a treasured document for me. Edith Mills Brown “danced her way into Heaven on Wednesday, December 22, 2021.” Interestingly, Joe and Edith were both students of Ruth Minick. I know this because Joe told me stories about her disciplining him while in school.
Because of these people, today we have a 75-acre historical park where you can learn about the many histories of Laurel Hill Farm, including Native Americans, the American Revolution, and Antebellum Farm Life, including the lives of enslaved people. It is the birthplace of Major General James Ewell Brown “Jeb” Stuart.
We do not glorify the Confederacy or slavery. We glorify history. The site is on the Virginia Landmarks Register and the National Register of Historic Places. It is open dawn to dusk every day, with walking trails down to the Ararat River and over a dozen interpretive signs. It is a place you can hike, walk your dog, and teach your children about history and nature, less than ten miles from Oakdale Cemetery.
I have reached that age where I spend a lot of time at funerals. When I attended those events, I often thought about how we should remember those we have lost and give them credit for what they did for us, and, in this case, for what these people did to help preserve our history.
There is a beautiful holly tree in Oakdale Cemetery’s section 15. In the shade of that holly tree, George Elbert and Icy Bowman Brown rest today with their two sons. In the plot next to them is Ruth Minick and her parents. If you visit there one quiet evening, you might feel the wind rustling through that holly tree, and if you listen carefully, there might be a lot of history being whispered on the wind.
