Dorothy IrvingRosenberger's

Howardsville

( This interview was done on May 2, 2007, at Westminster-Canterbury of the Rappahannock, where Mrs. Rosenberger and her husband Bernard have lived for several years. Alan and Nancy Bruns are the interviewers and Nancy Bruns is the transcriber.)

Dorothy Irving Rosenberger, 90, is the last of the Howardsville Irvings– the only grandchild of Canal Boat Captain Joseph Kinkaid and Ida Clark Turner Irving.

Before the American Revolution, the first Charles Irving established a trading post at Howardsville, representing a firm in Scotland,. The Scott family that established Scott’s Ferry, now Scottsville, intermarried with the Irvings, and the Turners, an old Buckingham family did also.

Dot was taken home from a Lynchburg hospital to "Social Hall," in Howardsville, where she lived until she had finished the one-teacher grade school up the hill from her home. Her father, Joe, the eldest of the Irvings’ four children, then moved to Charlottesville and became editor of The Daily Progress. He was later editor of a paper in Lynchburg, his wife’s home town.

The interview begins:

Mrs. Rosenberger: "At ‘Locust Hill,’ [home then of the Hancock family but once home of the original Charles Irving, who married Mildred, daughter of early settler Matthew Jordan] they would have New Year’s Eve parties, and Mama said it was very exciting. (Locust Hill shown here in photograph from collection of K. Edward Lay.)

They would have handwritten invitations and everything. She would have a little roast pig. Of course they had somebody in the kitchen to roast a pig. We just don’t have that anymore."

Interviewer: Did they dance?

Mrs. Rosenberger: "Oh yes. They danced and there is a tale about Uncle Jack. Did you know Uncle Jack? (John Irving, youngest son of Joseph K. and Ida Irving). John Gibbs went to VPI, and he went to an Irving party in his military attire [cadet uniform] and the Irvings were just sort of (gestures to indicate that the Irvings were very particular about things) and Uncle Jack – when they were doing the Virginia Reel – said to my grandmother, ‘Miss Sally (Alexander), turn General Grant.’"

"I know too many tales about Howardsville, and those little stores. Grandpa had one, Mr. Gibbs had one... (interviewer adds "and Edgar Cobbs." [Later, in 1928, Charles Anderson Baber opened one across the road from the Irving’s]) "

Interviewer: Did they have a lot of parties in Howardsville?

Mrs. Rosenberger: "Oh yes they did, and they had them on occasion and Mama said the river would freeze and people would go up and down on the river in their buggies [on the ice] to each other’s homes. Most of the older families’ homes were near the river, as it had once been the prime means of transportation in that part of Virginia."

Interviewer: These are seasonal parties?

Mrs. Rosenberger: "Yes, Christmas, New Year’s that sort of thing. I think mostly back then family came in the summertime and in the winter the neighboring families would have parties to entertain themselves."

Mrs. Rosenberger: "And I know that Cousin Nanny Bolling married a Yankee – a dreadful thing. It was just terrible [in the Irvings’ view] and she used to come down every year and stay with Mema (Ida Irving) and Mema had a special voice for Yankees. And it took her about a week to get her voice adjusted to Cousin Nanny, who she considered a traitor to the ‘Cause.’

"Cousin Nanny wasn’t very smart because she said one day, ‘Ida, I brought my old clothes ‘cause I knew I was coming to the country.’ Well out came that special voice."

Interviewer: Did the Yankee husband come with her (Cousin Nanny)

Mrs. Rosenberger: ". . . Mema probably wouldn’t have let him in the door."

Besides country vs. city sensitivity, for many rural Virginia families the Great Depression of the 1930s was in ways like a continuation of the post-Civil War Reconstruction era, during which many of them were practically penniless.

"We kept up with Lucy Chambers after Harry [Bruns] bought ‘Selma’ (the old Irving home on the Buckingham bluff of the James River). We were going over at Christmas time and I took my son and I said I am going to take you by this wonderful place, and it looks like a castle, Dungannon. And Dungannon is not a great big castle. You know as a child I thought it was a castle.

"And Joe said to me, ‘why do you get your bloomers in a twist over this place?’ "

The red sandstone summer home built by Dr. and Mrs. Henry Dickson Bruns [Alan’s grandparents] has a round tower and a square tower and a round building behind it that once supported a large water cistern, and a row of windows following the rise in the stairway.

Mrs. Rosenberger: "I remember when I was a child and Miss Katie (Kate Logan Bruns) would have these enormous bridge parties (at Dungannon). Well they seemed huge to me. She would have everyone bring their children and she would put the children to work. So we picked up chinks [chinquapins?] and then we picked up apples for Miss Katie and then she gave each one of us a little round bright red Chinese box.

Did you know Miss Katie?"

Interviewer Nancy Bruns: "No, I did not."

Mrs. Rosenberger: "She was a piece of work. There are a lot of Miss Katie stories. My father used to tell one. You know, you waved the train down when you wanted it to stop so you could get on. And the conductor knew everybody. And this particular day, they looked and here comes Miss Katie on her horse in her flowing riding habit. And waving, waving, waving.

"So he says, ‘Hurry up Miss Katie ‘cause we’re running late.’ And she says, ‘ Oh, I‘m not going today. I’m going tomorrow. I just wanted to let you know I’m going tomorrow.’ Well that was Miss Katie.

"And she used to say that the doctor just loves butter beans and I want you to get me butter beans. It seems that Dr. Bruns didn’t like butter beans but she did."

Interviewer Alan explains that as a child Dr. Bruns and his sister had refugeed to Greenville, S.C., and that there had been little to eat but "Confederate peas" and carrots and the like, and that Dr. Bruns would never eat those things after that.

He was very short and had no appetite. He had had yellow fever.

Alan said they were both very short, but that as a child he had always thought of her as much taller, because she was such a dominant personality.

Interviewer: "How many years did you live in Howardsville as an adult?

Mrs. Rosenberger: "I was 12 when we left Howardsville.

Interviewer: I thought you lived at Social Hall –but you were a child then.

Mrs. Rosenberger: "There was Social Hall and the school was right up here and the Fenwicks lived right on down the road a little bit from there."

"Social Hall" was built in the 1890s by the same Brown who wrote "The Cabells and Their Kin." He was the son-in-law of Dr. Hartsook, who built "Monticola," and had married a Cabell descendant. "Social Hall" was the home of the Sam Peters family during the 1930's and it is now the home of  Mr. and Mrs. Robert Ripley who have restored it.]

Interviewer: You walked to the village and you walked up the hill to the school?

Mrs.Rosenberger: "Do you remember Miss Gregory? She was considered a very strange person and we were all scared of Miss Gregory and when you walked to Howardsville, you just made a big loop to avoid walking by Miss Gregory’s house.

Interviewer: "What did she do?"

Mrs. Rosenberger: "She didn’t do anything. She was just old and, like me, scrawny and people were scared of her. We just thought she would do something real bad. She never did. She used to holler at you if you got on her property— something like that."

Interviewer: "What house did she live in?"

Mrs. Rosenberger: "You remember where the Hurts lived [across Rt 602 from the brick church and Masonic Hall]? It was downstream from there."

Interviewer: "You never lived in Howardsville as an adult?"

Mrs. Rosenberger: "I lived in Howardsville until I was 12 and then, at that point, I would have gone to Scottsville on the bus to go to school. Well, at that point, it turned out that Granddaddy didn’t need my father any more. You know, it was an old southern thing that the oldest son came home to help out. But Granddaddy didn’t need him any more. So my father went on to Charlottesville [to work for The Daily Progress] and we moved there."

Interviewer: "Did you go to the one room school, the Howardsville school?"

Mrs. Rosenberger: "Yes. Mrs. Louise Cobbs, Jimmy Cobbs’ wife, was the teacher and I thought she was so pretty. I don’t know if she was or not, but I thought she was."

Interviewer: "She taught me (Alan) in the first grade." That would have been about 10 years later, in the mid-1930's.

Mrs. Rosenberger: "And you know a one room-school gives you a wonderful education. Because you learn everything all the way up [The continuity of having the same teacher, and the opportunity to hear her teaching the grades above yours].

"I would say there weren’t more than 12 students all the time altogether.

There weren’t that many people in Howardsville that would go to school, and of course there were our black brethren, and they didn’t go to school. "

Interviewer: "They didn’t go to school at all?" [By the time Alan and Nancy went to school there was a complete school system for blacks, but black communities had often built their own school to achieve that. The community would then provide a teacher.]

Mrs. Rosenberger: "No. They didn’t. My mother she was a Wingfield and all of her life she had lived in Lynchburg, and I thought she was very brave to come and live in the country.

"But of course what she did do, was that the people who worked for us, and of course you had a gardener and a wash woman, they didn’t have anything, so you had people to do things. You paid them something like fifty cents a year. It was awful. "But anyway she took those people and she taught them how to cook, how to make beds, how to be the best the upstairs maid and the best downstairs maid and then they could go to Philadelphia and get jobs and send money home to help out the rest of the family.

Interviewer: "Could they read and write?"

Mrs. Rosenberger: "Yes I think so and I don’t know exactly how that worked. Mema taught Lucy to read. And Lucy got a newspaper every day. But there again it was that same old way. Lucy bought her own paper and when it came she was told to put it under the cushion in the sitting room. After dinner Lucy would come and knock on the door and say, ‘Miss Ida I am done.’ and Mema would tell her ‘Lucy you may get your paper.’

" Now this paper she had paid her own money for. At the time I thought that was all right. It didn’t occur to me that it wasn’t all right. Now I think back on it with horror. "

Interviewer Alan: "You remember Harry Bryant? His two sons Clifford and Kenneth were my friends. We grew up together. Then Kenneth went to work for the railroad and I did too. I just followed Kenneth.

Mrs. Rosenberger: "He [Harry Bryant] was just a wonderful person. He put up with Granddaddy and he put up with Mema and that took great character. [He was tenant farmer for the Irvings.] His wife [had] taught school and she taught him to read, I think. I am not sure.

"When Lucy’s child had some surgery and Sally was in nursing school, we went and stayed with Lucy while Katie was being operated on, and at lunch time we said we’re going down to the cafeteria and have lunch and Lucy said, ‘I am not hungry’. It makes my hair stand on end now. [Lucy apparently was so used to the old ways of racial segregation that she wouldn’t have been comfortable eating with whites.]

"We went to the cafeteria and had lunch and we brought her back her lunch and she wouldn’t eat it. She could have gone to the nurses’ dining room."

"They are remarkable – that whole family, and there are buckets of them.

When Lucy died Sally and I went to the funeral. She [Lucy] was wonderful to Peter Bruns [Alan’s first cousin Harry’s son, who farmed Selma before Harry retired there]. This funeral was magnificent and the minister had on black velvet tails and the family came and there were country mice and city mice. And they sang old beautiful a cappella hymns that would just tear you apart

"Then, after we did that we took Lucy to the country and Lucy was buried in someone’s front yard, somewhere about Axtell, and Peter and Sally put earth on Lucy and then Peter fell to the ground. How about that. She [Lucy] was like a mother to Peter."

[Later insert by Alan: "Kenneth Bryant once told me, ‘Alan, I loved Lucy like my own momma.’ "]

Mrs. Rosenberger: "Lucy lived in a little house on the place and Mema used to deliver the babies. Lucy had multiple babies and Mema would go down there and take care of Lucy but she wouldn’t let her have her newspaper.

"Lucy was living a long time after Mema died and in the general arrangement Mema had left Aunt Courtney Selma. So Aunt Courtney used to come every weekend and she would do things that she had always wanted to do but had never done being afraid of Mema. And she would come back the next weekend and Lucy would have put them back.

"Aunt Courtney said to her, ‘Lucy why did you move that?’ and Lucy said, ‘Miss Ida (Mema) don’t like it there.’"

Interviewer: "That could be frustrating for Miss Courtney."

Mrs. Rosenberger: "Except she was the only girl and Mema didn’t like girls so she already knew that before she started. Both Granddaddy and Mema were solidly opposed to her becoming a nurse. They didn’t think nursing was a proper occupation."

"She went to Richmond and she trained at Sheltering Arms."

Interviewer: "Was that under the influence of Dr. [Margaret} Nolting?"

Mrs. Rosenberger: "Yes they were very good friends and they did wonderful things in the community. They came and spent three months every summer.

"They lived up in the cabin [on Mt. Alto, high on a bluff overlooking a horseshoe curve in the Rockfish River] and then their office was down -– do you remember where the library used to be?" That was a small building on stilts next to the Irving Store in "downtown" Howardsville. It was knocked down by the 1969 flood and swept away in 1972.

"They delivered a bazillion children. Aunt Courtney used to say, nobody in the area ever got sick except in the summer."

Interviewer: That’s pretty good. Do you remember Pauline Peters? She lived across the road from Jo Rose over on the Buckingham side.

"She [Pauline Peters Word] said that someone in her family got sick and that – I can’t remember whether it was Dr. Nolting or Miss Courtney – but whoever it was came and stayed in the house for several days."

Mrs. Rosenberger: "There was an old desk at Selma and Mema called it Joseph’s desk. Well I was the only child in the whole connection, so when Mema died I got the bed. So when we moved I gave it to Joe (her son) because his name is Joseph Irving Rosenberger--it’s an interesting combination, but I felt I should use Irving somewhere.

"Well, Joe took the desk home and took it to a man who does restoration and he found stuffed in the back a newspaper clipping about Granddaddy when he was captain of the packet boat going up the Kanawha Canal."

Interviewer: "That’s wonderful. Do you have a copy of that clipping?"

Mrs. Rosenberger: "I am going to insist on Joe making a copy and I’ll send you one.

"Joe said that they worked all day and then at night they rested the mules and the captain slept. Joe has Granddaddy’s little bed and his captain’s clock which was saved -– the clock is brass."

Mrs. Rosenberger: "It carried supplies. And then that blanket chest over there, Douglas Freeman’s mother sent that to Mema full of apples. (Douglas Southall Freeman, author of well respected Civil War books, and Joseph Irving had worked together at a Richmond newspaper).

"I take the Richmond newspaper but I think it is a pretty abominable paper. I take it for two reasons – to make sure of the day of the week and to read Mark Trail."

There ensued a discussion of the coverage of the VPI shootings.

Interviewer: "In the old days what happened to people who were mentally ill. Did they just stay home or what happened?"

Mrs. Rosenberger: "You sort of put them away. I remember we used to go out to Dunleith [The Turner home at Glenmore, where her grandmother Ida grew up]. ‘Gransie’‘ [Ida’s mother, Courtney Wythe Eldridge] was blind and they put her in this dark room. Now why would you put a blind person in a dark room? I was terrified as a child of going over there and going in this dark room and there would be this little person sitting over there.

Mrs. Rosenberger: "So Aunt Courtney used to say when we went to see Gransie, ‘Be careful now about the ancestral mudholes. These have been here ever since Ida was."

(Mrs. Rosenberger explained that Miss Courtney had been named for Gransie.)

"Gransie was Courtney Eldridge and now Courtney turns up a lot as a first name. You didn’t name people names like Gardenia and those sorts of names. "

Interviewer: "It’s sort of the Virginia way to use a last name as a first name. It’s a nice name.

Mrs. Rosenberger: "Yes, if Bill had been a girl we were going to call him Courtney. We used to joke and say we would call him after the two grandmothers, Ida and Maude, but we really thought he would be a girl and we would call him Courtney."

Interviewer: What did you name him then?

Mrs. Rosenberger: "William, after Beanie’s father. No middle name. He has a farm in Cumberland County and he works in Petersburg. He is a duck hunter. He has trained this dog to hunt ducks.

"And then he has my dog, which is just a dog, dog. Sam is really an old street dog. I love Sam very dearly but of course you couldn’t bring him here, so Bill has Sam. Sam has taught the well-trained duck dog very bad habits. He does not like Iams dog food but he likes cornbread and pot likker and apparently down there somebody does have cornbread and pot likker. So Sam showed Bill’s dog and now Bill’s dog likes cornbread and pot likker. Makes Bill very unhappy."

Interviewer: "You were talking about batter bread before. Who made the batter bread?"

Mrs. Rosenberger: "Everybody (in the Howardsville area) made batter bread but Cousin Sally Brady’s cook’s name was Moira. Do you remember her?

Well cousin Sally Brady’s cook made the best batter bread."

Interviewer: "Was someone in your mother’s family connected to Warren.?"

Mrs. Rosenberger: "My grandmother, Sally Alexander, was born in Warren. My mother’s mother. My grandmother was Sarah Lewis Alexander. Kirk Alexander and Samuel Wingfield both went to VMI. Kirk Alexander is my mother’s uncle and Samuel Wingfield is my grandfather.

"Mrs. Rosenberger: "Do you know Moses Ezekial? Well he went to VMI and he fought in the New Market battle and he did the statue of Virginia mourning her dead – the cadets killed at the Battle of New market." Mrs. Rosenberger describes New Market Day in which the loss of the cadets is commemorated.

(There follows a discussion of where the Irving brothers and the older three of the Bruns brothers went to school. The Irvings went to Hampden-Sydney and the Brunses to UVA. John Irving then went to UVA law school and Charles to MCV. Logan and Henry Bruns then went to law school at Tulane – Louisiana has some laws unique in America, based on France’s Napoleanic Code.)

Mrs. Rosenberger: "When Bill was in high school. He was a no-goodnik. He dared anyone to teach him anything. He was always very difficult. When came time for him to go to college – that was one good thing uncle Charles did. He gave money for Bill to go to Hampden-Sydney.

"When I heard Bill having his interview at Hampden-Sydney I heard the interviwer ask, ‘And what is your long range plan?’ And Bill said he was going to be a doctor. When I got home I said to Beanie, ‘Bill is going to be a doctor,’ and Beanie says, ‘He is probably going to take in wash.’ "Bill did go to Hampden-Sydney and did become a doctor, an ophthalmologist.

Interviewer: "What did your other son do?"

Mrs. Rosenberger: "Now he is a VMI boy and he is a financial planner. He is married to Elizabeth Brown and they have no children.

Interviewer: "And your daughters?"

Mrs. Rosenberger: "Yes, Sally is a nurse. She is very active in nursing recruitment. When she started out she was a hands-on nurse. But it turns out she had a [bachelor’s] degree in nursing so she can’t be a hands-on nurse anymore. She has tried to recruit more young people into nursing.

Mrs. Rosenberger: "Then, after you become a nurse you are either an LPN or you are writing papers about it or the plain RN. People resent you because you have a B.S. in nursing. Well most colleges don’t give the R.N. anymore you get a B.S. in nursing. Sally got hers at UVA. When Sally went to college, she went to Mary Washington and then they affiliated with UVA."

Sally Eissler is a nurse practitioner in home care and she also has a masters in pediatric nursing. She has a daughter, Sally, who is working on a master’s in architecture, studying old trimmings.

Interviewer: "And you have another daughter?"

Mrs. Rosenberger: "Mary. Mary has a knitting shop in Irvington and she is the artsy one. The shop is called the Bay Window. She married Cruget Ragland of Texas and they have a son William who went to VMI." He does investigative work for an office connected with Rep. Waxman. And a son Charles Alexander who went to Randolph-Macon.

Interviewer: "Go back to Howardsville for just a minute. You said there were lots of little stores."

Mrs. Rosenberger: "Two, Mr. Gibbs and Granddaddy’s, and then there was little kind of automobile place and before that they had horses there. (The automobile place was run by Jimmy Cobbs, whose wife taught at the Howardsville school. Her maiden name was Proffit.)

Mrs. Rosenberger: "She was a good teacher (referring to Mrs. Cobbs, the Howardsville school teacher). And you had to have the strength of ten."

Interviewer: "Because you had 12 different students in different grades?

Mrs. Rosenberger: "And you had to be strong, you had to fight the cloak room. You had wet gloves around the stove. You had all those things to go through. "

Interviewer: "Would she have had to start the fire in the stove in the morning?"

Mrs. Rosenberger: "I guess the teacher did."

"People had Airdales in those days and I had an Airdale named Steve. One day Mama turned up at the school and she said, ‘You have to come home right now. Steve won’t let Joanna back in the house.’ Joanna was the girl doing the wash.

"Well, Mama always fixed lunch and she cut the crust off the bread. Well Edith Hurt came to school and she had a fried egg on a cold biscuit so I used to swap sandwiches with her. That was interesting."

Interviewer Nancy: "What about the water. Was there a well at the school? "

Interviewer Alan: "A pump right outside of the door."

Interviewer Nancy: You took your own cup?

Interviewer Alan: "There was a dipper. But everyone was supposed to bring their own cup so as not to pass diseases on."

Interviewer: "Did people get sick much during school?"

Mrs. Rosenberger: "I don’t remember. I remember diphtheria – an epidemic of diphtheria and whooping cough. I think just the basic childhood diseases. Measles, chicken pox, mumps. But then you never heard of things like shingles. I remember particularly diphtheria. And head lice. And you got that from the cloakroom.

You used a fine tooth comb to get them out. "

The discussion switches to milk bottles and churns.

Mrs. Rosenberger: "Did you ever see anybody churn this way?" She demonstrates sideways movement, milk in a container in a frame. I used to go to Mema’s and churn and Louellen would be on the other end and I would think she wasn’t doing her part, and I would say, ‘If you don’t push harder I am going to tell Mema.’ Well, telling Mema was the magic word. You don’t tell Mema.

If you put hot water in the churn, it made the butter come quicker, but that made the butter puffy and you had to pound out the water. You had these cedar paddles.

You know somebody in the family has those paddles."

Interviewer: "Was Louellen Lucy’s daughter?"

Mrs. Rosenberger: "Yes, and she did very well, and she went to Richmond."

Interviewer [Alan]: "She worked for us for a while. Once when my mother asked her to clean a freshly killed chicken, and she came out and found Louellen braiding the insides. And my little brother Scott is five years younger than I am, and Louellen came over as sort of a nurse.

"But the worst was the day my mother told Louellen that during cold weather if you put your tongue on the iron pump handle it would stick, and the next thing you know she heard this terrible sound outside and Louellen was down there with her tongue stuck to the pump handle. It took hot water to free Louellen."

Mrs. Rosenberger: "Well, do you remember Annie? You must remember Annie.

Well Annie’s daughter Bea used to work for us. Well Bea got religion in the kitchen. It was all very exciting. Mama made the baptismal robe and she was taken to the river and dunked in and so forth.

"Then in about a week, Mama went into the wardrobe. You know there were no closets. And her jewelry was gone and she was in a state, and she called my father and he came on home.

"So he asked Bea if she took the jewelry? And she yes.

And he said, ‘Bea why did you take Miss Dorothy’s jewelry?’

"And she said, ‘Mister Joe, when you gets religion you can’t sin.’

So there you are. "

Interviewer: Did she give it back?

Mrs. Rosenberger: "Well you know she did. My father wasn’t going to have that."

There is a long discussion of moving, discarding things, health and how she came to be a resident of Westminster Canterbury. After 40 years in Waynesboro, where "Beanie" had settled, they moved to Dividing Creek, which runs into the Chesapeake Bay not far from Kilmarnock and Irvington, where Westminster-Canterbury of the Rappahannock is.

This included a reference to how Captain Irving met Ida. Mrs. Rosenberger says in the country everybody just sort of knew everybody. They were cousins, both descended from Pocahontas [her name within the family: Cousin Pokey] through the Eldridge family.

Interviewer: How did you meet your husband?

Mrs. Rosenberger: "In Lynchburg? When we lived in Howardsville we used to go to Lynchburg to see her [my mother’s] family, and one year Mama needed to be revived from Howardsville and we stayed a month. Well the public school wouldn’t take me, but the nuns would. Beanie and his brother horrified people. And the nuns had to call and say you’ll have to do something about Bernard and his brother. They are so bad."

"Well I hadn’t seen him in years, but when Daddy got ill, I came home and worked at the Virginia Baptist Hospital, and one New Year’s Eve I ran into Beanie, out at the Oakwood Club."

Mrs. Rosenberger: "It was nice... Well Beanie is a character and he says just what he thinks. He’s still with it enough. But he doesn’t know me lots of days [because of the Alzheimer’s]. One day he said to me, ‘You know you certainly do remind me of my wife.’ I said, ‘Thank you. I am glad I do.’"

Interviewer: How did [your mother] get on with Miss Ida?

Mrs. Rosenberger: "Vaguely. They were not what you would call a devoted couple. She endured a lot from Mema and she was very brave. I admire my mother very extravagantly because she endured a lot from Mema."

*****************

Mrs. Rosenberger said over lunch that the Irvings didn’t consider some families in the community to be quite "top drawer." Most of those families she did consider to be top drawer were Episcopalians, as were the Irvings. Dot’s mother was Roman Catholic, and so is she.

Born Dorothy Irving, Mrs. Rosenberger used the nickname "Dot" to avoid confusion with her mother, Dorothy Wingfield Irving. Mrs. Rosenberger’s father was Joseph Irving, the oldest of Capt. Irving’s three sons. He was editor of The Daily Progress, in Charlottesville, and of a Lynchburg newspaper.

Lots of Howardsvillians took the Lynchburg paper because it came on the early morning train. The evening train came from Richmond. There was also a train each way closer to midday. To get to Charlottesville, about 30 miles away, one had to drive [or in the old days, ride a horse, often on a road "paved" with logs.]

Dot explained that her cousin, Mary Regina Scott, who retired to Howardsville after inheriting the "Scott place," Monmouth, across the road from Miss Sally Brady’s, was disappointed to not be able to use her descent from the original settler Charles Irving, who came from Scotland just before the American Revolution, to be eligible to join the DAR. The Patriots didn’t think that Irving could "serve two masters" and confiscated his store to use as an arsenal. The site of that first store isn’t known, but the basement of what we call the Giles House was at one time a tobacco factory, a place for storage until shipment.

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