Southwest Virginia Museum

For my Historical site requirement, I immediately began to think about how badly I wanted to go to my home in Southwest Virginia.  Wise, Virginia is probably one of the least known counties of Virginia; however, it is near to my heart having been born and raised in the mountains.  It is a little over four times the elevation of Lynchburg and rich in coal resources.  I decided that I wanted to visit the Southwest Virginia museum in Big Stone Gap (a small town in Wise County). The Southwest Virginia Museum is located in a mansion built by Rufus Ayers, a lawyer and attorney general in Virginia.  A good majority of the artifacts in the museum were collected by Janie Slemp and her brother C. Bascom Slemp who was a US Congressmen and also a private secretary to former President Calvin Coolidge.

                The first room that I entered in the museum was full of various books from the 1800’s and earlier.  My dad and I especially enjoyed picking out pharmaceutical books and old Bibles.  One Bible in particular had a leather cover and it was engraved with pictures and beautiful engravings.  It was definitely one of my favorite aspects of the museum.

The most exciting part of this museum was learning about the first settlers of Southwest Virginia.  A sign in the museum said, “The first whites settled permanently in this area along the upper Powell Valley in the 1780s….for many years [Southwest Virginia] just a way station on the road, was first settled around 1790.” Other signs in the museum spoke about how many of the families that did settle their lived far from neighbors and were therefore more susceptible to Indian Attacks.  I then found a sign that immediately caught my attention. It had a list of the last names of the first settlers of Southwest Virginia. As I looked through the list, I found many familiar names.  Adams, Campbell, Hibbits, Kilgore, Salyers, Sutherland, and Vance were just a few of the names that are still very common in Southwest Virginia.  What was most exciting to me was that “Deel” was also on the list. My ancestors were a few of the first settlers of Southwest Virginia! Deel, Blevins, and Collier were on the list— three names that are well known in my family.                

 I went to the museum expecting to learn about where I live, but I learned so much more— I learned more about my heritage.  This experience was very enlightening and fulfilling to me. I look forward to learning more about my home and my culture in the future!