Historic Smithfield Plantation

Blacksburg, Virginia

On the eve of the American Revolution, the Virginia backcountry was a place of colliding cultures, clashing ideals, and physical danger. Wolves howled at night; panthers roamed the forest. Europeans and native Shawnee and Cherokee vied for the same fertile farmlands, often erupting into murderous violence.

It was here, at the eastern continental divide - the literal edge of European/American civilization - that leader of westward expansion and Revolutionary War patriot William Preston established Smithfield Plantation. In a land of log cabins and physical hardship, Smithfield provided a haven of aristocratic elegance and became the social and political center of the county.

Historic Smithfield is on the National Register of Historic Places, the Virginia Landmarks Register, and is a Preservation Virginia property.

To visits the plantation's web site: Click Here.

The Montgomery Museum

The Montgomery Museum and Lewis Miller Regional Art Center houses and displays historical artifacts relating to Montgomery County and its environs. The museum maintains a library of historical and genealogical texts for use by researchers. In addition to its permanent exhibits on Montgomery County and Lewis Miller, the museum hosts a series of changing art and history exhibits which focus on aspects of life in Montgomery County.

Works of local artists are hosted in the second floor art gallery. The exhibits are changed on a bimonthly basis. The museum's collectibles includes works or prints by well known artists with local ties, such as Lewis Miller and Walter Biggs.

Montgomery Museum perspectiveThe building housing the museum was originally built circa 1852 as the Manse for the Christiansburg Presbyterian Church. The Rev. Nicholas Chevalier was one of the first occupants of the home. The construction of the original portion is an interesting combination of American and Flemish bond brick. According to oral tradition, the bricks were made on the property and fired in an earthen kiln. Support beams and joists are of hewn oak. The rafters are of logs planed on one side and secured by dowel pins.

To visit the museum's web site: Click Here.

Floyd County History and Genealogy

According to tradition, present day Floyd County was among the first areas explored when Virginia Colonists began to push into the mountains of Virginia. In the mid-to-late 1600's, expeditions began to map the area that was then principally a hunting-grounds by Indians, including the Canawhay tribe. The first white settlements in the area occurred in the mid-18th century. By the 1790's, English, German, French, Scottish and Irish immigrants settled in what is now Floyd County. One of the first industries, Spangler’s Mill, was also established in this time period. Watermills such as this one continue to symbolize the resourcefulness of residents and the importance of natural resources and living in touch with the land.

In 1831, Floyd County was established and was named for Governor John Floyd. Governor Floyd was a native the Montgomery County, the parent County of Floyd.

To visit the Floyd County USGenWeb site: Click Here.

To visit the Floyd County Historical Society site: Click Here.

United States Board on Geographic Names

The U.S. Board on Geographic Names is a Federal body created in 1890 and established in its present form by Public Law in 1947 to maintain uniform geographic name usage throughout the Federal Government. The Board comprises representatives of Federal agencies concerned with geographic information, population, ecology, and management of public lands. Sharing its responsibilities with the Secretary of the Interior, the Board promulgates official geographic feature names with locative attributes as well as principles, policies, and procedures governing the use of domestic names, foreign names, Antarctic names, and undersea feature names.

The original program of names standardization addressed the complex issues of domestic geographic feature names during the surge of exploration, mining, and settlement of western territories after the American Civil War. Inconsistencies and contradictions among many names, spellings, and applications became a serious problem to surveyors, map makers, and scientists who required uniform, non-conflicting geographic nomenclature. President Benjamin Harrison signed an Executive Order establishing the Board and giving it authority to resolve unsettled geographic names questions. Decisions of the Board were accepted as binding by all departments and agencies of the Federal Government.

The Board gradually expanded its interests to include foreign names and other areas of interest to the United States, a process that accelerated during World War II. In 1947, the Board was recreated by Congress in Public Law 80-242.

To search the Board's database of domestic names: Click Here.

Data returned by searches include the latitude, longitude and elevation of matching geographic features as well as alternate names and spellings.

The Board's homepage includes search facilities for foreign and antarctic names.

To visit it: Click Here.

Defining the Melungeons

A Research Article
By MHS President Jack Goins

The Melungeons were a very dark skin group of settlers who settled in the mountains of East Tennessee and the extreme Southwestern area of Virginia beginning 1790's. Originally they were Portuguese adventurers, who came to the long shore parts of Virginia, they became friends with the Indians and intermixed with them, and subsequently with the pioneer settlers. Some of them took the names of the first settlers. The main body of this group migrated from the Pamunkey River area of Virginia to the Flat River area of NC 1730's-1740's. Then around 1767 they migrated from the Flat River to the back woods New River area’s of Virginia and North Carolina before migrating to the Clinch River areas of Southwestern Virginia and East Tennessee.

To continue reading: Click Here.

Global Genetic History of Homo sapiens

Current Biology, Volume 20, Issue 4
Special Review Issue

The journey started around 60 to 70 thousand years ago in Africa, where modern humans evolved more than 150 thousand years ago, and where human diversity is still the highest among all continents in terms of genetic variation and languages. From there, humans settled Europe and South Asia and reached Oceania. The Americas (apart from the remote Oceanian islands) were settled last.

The course and the extent of these first migrations remains evident in the genetic makeup of humans living today, but later migrations and the cultural practices that people carried with them—farming in particular—have also left their legacy. That legacy looks remarkably similar wherever farming spread, in Europe, Africa, and East Asia. Natural selection also left its mark: A review by Jonathan Pritchard of the University of Chicago examines evidence for the genetic basis of human adaptations and the extent to which differences among human populations in characteristics such as lactose tolerance have been selected for over evolutionary time.

Each of the reviews is packed with fascinating insights. For instance, a review by Mark Stoneking and Frederick Delfin at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology tells of an early migration of modern humans from Africa along a southern route to East Asia. Europe is perhaps the best-studied continent in terms of archaeogenetics, writes Martin Richards of the University of Leeds and his colleagues, and includes what Richards refers to as five major episodes, including the repopulation of Northern Europe after the Late Glacial Maximum. In the case of the Americas, DNA evidence has confirmed the Asian origin of indigenous Americans and more precise estimates of when Native Americans emerged. Dennis O'Rourke and Jennifer Raff of the University of Utah note, however, that many questions about the date of the initial colonization of the Americas remain.

To read this special issue online in its entirety at no cost: Click Here.

Note: A PDF reader is not required to read the articles; however, the articles contain numerous illustrations and all the articles may be downloaded in PDF format for maximum image quality.

Early Portuguese Settlements.

Phase in Ethnology
Mr. James Mooney Investigates
Early Portuguese Settlements.

Washington Post -- 1902

Mr. James Mooney, who has just returned from Indian Territory, where he has been making a study of the Kiowa tribe for the Bureau of Ethnology, has also during his career as an anthropologist done considerable work in the way of investigating the Portuguese settlements along the Atlantic coast of the United States, a subject about which less is known than most any other phase of the modern ethnology of America. All along the southern coast there are scattered here and there bands of curious people, whose appearance, color, and hair seem to indicate a cross or mixture of the Indian, the white, and the negro. Such, for example, are the Pamunkeys of Virginia, the Croatan Indians of the Carolinas, the Malungeons of Tennessee, and numerous other peoples who in the days of slavery were regarded as free negroes and were frequently hunted down and enslaved. Since the war they have tried hard by act of legislature and other wise to establish their Indian ancestry.

To continue reading: Click Here.