The meeting approaches! Mark your calendars for Sunday, June 27 at 3 PM to visit the Hexagon House. Mailed invitations are at the Post Office for the award recipients and PHW members, but for our other followers, here is a heads up on the event:
The meeting will be held outside at the back porch of the Hexagon House. We will not be rescheduling for inclement weather.
Please bring your own seating if possible. You may also wish to bring parasols or hats if the day is sunny, as the back yard is fairly exposed at this time of day.
You do not need to RSVP in advance, as we do not have a capacity limit this year. However, we strongly encourage anyone not fully vaccinated to continue social distancing and mask-wearing.
We will be able to process member renewals or new signups at the event. You may wish to bring a check just in case we have difficulty with the credit card payments with the machine at a distance from the WiFi.
Copies of Winchester: Limestone, Sycamores & Architecture will be available for pick up at the membership renewal table.
While we will not have snacks after the meeting as in years past, we will have an assortment of cold beverages to keep you hydrated during the meeting.
The cicada boom seems to be dying down at the Hexagon House, but be prepared for some insect party crashers.
If you have not had a chance to tour the Hexagon House, we will be available to take guided tours through the downstairs following the meeting. We strongly encourage mask wearing inside the building during tours.
Oh no! The giant apple in front of Kimberly’s has been peeled! We hope to see the familiar shiny red skin back on this landmark with its stem reattached soon.
First, we did a bit of cleaning up of our MailChimp mailing list during the lead-up to the Annual Meeting. A few new member emails have been added (hello and welcome!) and a section of bounced and unsubscribed emails have been archived. If you know someone who is not receiving the weekly emails and wants to stay informed, remind them to sign up in the opt-in form. If you unsubscribe from our mailing list, we cannot add you back in manually at the office, as it needs your confirmation you want to receive emails again. This is done in compliance with anti-spam laws through MailChimp. Thank you for understanding!
Second, next week will be a busy one for the office as we prepare the snail-mail Annual Meeting invitations in advance of the June 27 meeting, as well as some out of the office meetings. Please remember to call or email ahead of a site visit to the Hexagon House, as we may not be in the office.
We hope to help you find out what you member renewal status is with this Annual Meeting mailing, as we know last year we lost all sense of time. Look for your member renewal date (to the month of your renewal) in the membership form block in the Annual Meeting invitation and check its accuracy. Don’t receive a mailed invitation? That means you have fallen off our recent membership list. We hope you will chose to renew and catch up with old friends and familiar faces at the Annual Meeting, which will be our first real event since Holiday House Tour 2019(!).
Third, if you would like to join PHW or renew your membership, remember we are offering copies of our reprinted Winchester: Limestone, Sycamores & Architecture book (a $25 value) as a thank you for your continued support. Copies can be picked up at the Annual Meeting or by arrangement through the PHW office. The reprinted edition was lovingly remade from the original to be as faithful as possible to Walter Kidney’s text and James R. Morrison’s photographs. The revisions and updates were limited to correcting errors and expanding on some omissions from the first publication (like a much-needed index). The book is a perfect introduction to Winchester’s architecture and broad history of development patterns. It may especially appeal if you are new to town, or want to share your appreciation of Winchester with someone less versed in architectural history.
Fourth, we were thrilled to be able to visit the Clowser House in Shawneeland last weekend to see all the progress made at the site. If you were not able to attend, you can catch photos of the event at our Flickr album. The Foundation is doing an amazing job documenting the history of their site and the family connected to the homestead, and PHW is proud to have helped them begin the journey five years ago to preserve their ancestral home for generations to come.
Blaine Dunn and Ruth Perrine, two of the people who stepped up to help save the home from demolition, at the Clowser Memorial Service.
It’s been a while, but Friday Photos brings new content! Visit the Fort Loudoun Day 2021 album on Flickr for images taken last weekend at the event. There are 70 photos in total.
You still have about a week to get award nominations for the 57th Annual Meeting in to PHW. Anyone may nominate a project in Winchester or Frederick County. Find the form here and nominate people and projects worthy of recognition!
Looking ahead at our next week, the PHW office may be closed Friday, May 28, depending on how the second round of vaccination goes. We will also be celebrating Memorial Day on May 31. Stay safe and healthy, and we will catch up with any questions we may miss while we are recuperating over the long holiday weekend.
Also, PHW is drawing to the end of its fiscal year. If your membership dues are up for renewal, please try to get your checks in before the end of the month to help our bottom line. Also, if you’ve been enjoying our online content or looking forward to the upcoming Annual Meeting on June 27, remember only PHW members in good standing may vote at the meeting. Membership forms are available online and will be available on-site during the meeting; new or renewing members may pick up a free copy of “Winchester: Limestone, Sycamores & Architecture” with their membership dues.
Do you own a log house in Winchester? Do you think your building may contain logs repurposed from Fort Loudoun? Would you be open to volunteers taking some images and possibly wood samples to better explore this possibility? Please get in touch with your contact details to the PHW office at phwinc.org@gmail.com or 540-667-3577 and we can fill you in on this idea for an accounting of logs from the Fort.
Save the date for June 12 for “Experience American Military History in Action” from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. hosted by the American Military Heritage Museum. The event is free, rain-or-shine and will feature re-enactors and living history displays. Meet World War II veterans from 10:30 a.m. until noon, check out a large collection of World War II equipment and military vehicles as well as historic museum displays. The museum is located at 811 Fairfax Pike in Stephens City.
Join us on June 27, 3 PM at the Hexagon House for this free membership event!
Preservation of Historic Winchester’s 57th Annual Meeting: Meet your friends or make new acquaintances in the local preservation community on Sunday, June 27, 3 PM at the backyard of the Hexagon House, 530 Amherst Street. The gathering will elect PHW’s board of directors for 2021-2022, touch on the past year’s challenges and accomplishments, and conclude with the presentation of preservation awards. Please bring your own chairs; liquid refreshments will be offered. The organization will be following any restrictions in place at the time of the meeting to comply with state mandates to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
Only PHW members in good standing may vote at the meeting. Membership forms will be available on-site; new or renewing members may pick up a free copy of “Winchester: Limestone, Sycamores & Architecture” with their membership dues.
Don’t forget to turn in your award nominations by May 28 to help recognize people and projects at this event!
Requests Requested! Is there a photo in our Flickr collection you would like to see captioned for more information? Drop us a note and we’ll add the photo to the queue to highlight in a future social media post.
We have received one of our first donations of historic materials and images following our call last newsletter. While we did not put all the material online, we are delighted with the digital materials shared by Howard Lewis on Hawthorne at 610 Amherst Street. The items that are not publicly available on our Flickr have been added to our hard copy and digital collections on the historic district for future researchers. If you also have material to contribute, drop us a note at phwinc.org@gmail.com to see if it fits our collection scope.
In-Kind Donation Wish List: PHW is looking for basic materials to help keep the office in shape and running, such as paper, mailing labels, and file folders, and likely in the future things like ink cartridges and toner. If this kind of item donation calls to you and you have an Amazon account, please refer to our Amazon Charity List for ideas. If you have opened or slightly used items on this list (like a half-used pack of mailing labels or legal size paper you no longer need), we are also happy to take them in-person at our office. Arrange a drop off time by emailing phwinc.org@gmail.com or calling 540-667-3577.
Research Request: Are you interested in helping Winchester clarify and confirm its African-American community’s history? We are continuing to work on questions posed to us by Mark Gunderman in his deep dive into the history of John Mann UMC. This week, we are hoping to gather additional information on George Smith, mentioned in William Greenway Russell’s recollections as “a colored man of the town” who left money to the congregation to build the brick church about twenty years before the recollection was written (thus around 1856). His contribution to the church was undoubtedly great, but his name has disappeared from public memory. If someone wants to take up the research mantle and run with what we (think we) know about George Smith, please get in touch with the PHW office.
If you are missing Kidzfest this year, don’t fret! Two history-themed activities the whole family can enjoy are taking place this weekend. Fort Loudoun will host a living history event from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday May 15 at 419 N. Loudoun St. Visitors will learn about the history of the French & Indian War era at the site of Col. George Washington’s headquarters for the Virginia Regiment. Meet living history interpreters and tour the site. Admission is free. Information available at 419-971-3493 or www.FIWF.org.
The Cedar Creek Battlefield Foundation Museum and Visitor Center will host a living history day from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, May 15 and 16, at 8437 Valley Pike, Middletown. Costumed historians will host photography workshops, cooking demonstration, muster in new recruits and practice drill, have Civil War medicine displays, play period games and tell stories and the cavalry will have their horses to talk about the roles of horses during the war.
Happy Preservation Month! We hope you’ll take a moment to show your love for our local history and architecture with a few of these ideas and activities:
Visit the National Trust for Historic Preservation for a new set of daily informative activities you can do to celebrate this year’s theme “Tell the Full American Story.” There is reading material, videos, images, interactive maps, and petitions and letters of support you can join and share.
Click to view the full letter. The donation form is at the bottom.
The French and Indian War Foundation is looking for your help! The organization has launched a fundraising campaign to help them retire the debt on the Baker-Hardy House, and every donation will be matched by the Wilkins Family Trust. The Baker-Hardy House serves as the organization’s resource center, and the hope is once the mortgage is paid off, other long-term goals for interpretation can take place. See the letter and donation form image for more information and how to contribute to the campaign.
The four City-owned museums (Abram’s Delight, Hollingsworth Mill, George Washington’s Office, and Stonewall Jackson’s Headquarters) reopen for the 2021 season on May 10th. Each museum is open Monday through Saturday from 10 am-4 pm and on Sundays from 12-4 pm. Stop in and see some familiar faces, learn about our local history, and the view the current exhibit at the Hollingsworth Mill: “Quaker Families of Winchester & Frederick County.”
Do you recognize this building? It may have been in York, PA. Share anything you know to help us flesh out our image captions!
We have been captioning images on our Flickr page, and we recently had an unidentified building in the midst of demolition come up on our randomizing program for captioning. Our suspicion is the building may be in York, PA, based on the demolition sign on the building. The slide’s imprinted date on the cardboard is November 1979, and it appears we had a series of three images of this building from different angles to use during informative slide presentations. We suspect the image may have been shared with us by our preservation consultants from Pittsburgh who assisted PHW in the 1970s. If you are familiar with the York area and can provide any further information or possible context on this series of images, please drop us a note!
Help us recognize local preservation projects and preservation leaders by nominating a person or project for a 2021 PHW Preservation Award. We are tentatively hoping to host awards in June, and as such, the award nomination form has been updated. Projects completed between June 2019 to May 2021 are eligible for this combined round of recognition. Awards are open to BOTH Winchester City and Frederick County. People or projects may be nominated by anyone (including the potential award recipient or family member) AND you may nominate an unlimited number of projects. Applications DO NOT need to be complete, but should at least have enough identifying information that the project can be further discussed by the award committee. Return applications or suggestions to PHW, 530 Amherst St., Winchester, VA 22601 or by email at phwinc.org@gmail.com. Applications should be sent by May 28, 2021 for consideration for a 2020 or 2021 award.
Dogwood and redbud blossom in the back yard of the Hexagon House.
Our spring newsletter is here! Printed copies should be arriving in your mailbox soon (just in time for National Preservation Month), but you can read it on our website now (PDF).
You can get a head start on celebrating National Preservation Month, coming in May, with some of these ideas:
PHW Preservation Award nominations: As you know, last year PHW did not present preservation awards at our truncated Annual Meeting. We are tentatively hoping to host awards this year in June, and as such, the award nomination form has been updated. Projects completed between June 2019 to May 2021 are eligible for this combined round of recognition. Awards are open to BOTH Winchester City and Frederick County. People or projects may be nominated by anyone (including the potential award recipient or family member) AND you may nominate an unlimited number of projects. Applications DO NOT need to be complete, but should at least have enough identifying information that the project can be further discussed by the award committee. Return applications or suggestions to PHW, 530 Amherst St., Winchester, VA 22601 or by email at phwinc.org@gmail.com. Applications should be sent by May 28, 2021 for consideration for a 2020 or 2021 award.
Renew your PHW membership dues, or join the organization: PHW is a membership-based organization, so financial support through your membership dues is critical to help us keep the lights on, especially since we have not been able to hold many events during the pandemic. Individual membership is $30, but if you can’t afford that amount, we would still appreciate any amount you may wish to donate. The link above has more information, membership forms, and a link to our PayPal donation button.
Shop for preservation and architecture goodies: You can find a pre-order form in the latest newsletter for several books and art prints. Items are also for sale on our Ecrater store, and can either be mailed or picked up at the office Monday-Friday.
Take a self-guided tour: Last year we compiled all the tours we were able to find and placed the collection on our Holiday House Tour page. See if there’s one you haven’t explored yet to enjoy our local history!
Share your stories or documents: Do you have research materials you have gathered about a historic place in Winchester or Frederick County? Did you find a stash of PHW materials and don’t know what to do with them? We are always working on our research collections. Contact the PHW office to arrange for a donation or copying of materials that will go into our files.
Spring cherry blossoms are out at the George Washington Office Museum on the corner of South Braddock and West Cork streets.
We have been working on a few items behind the scenes at PHW, and we could use some extra input on a few topics that are proving elusive or could be better tackled with multiple minds and research angles. If you can contribute anything, please drop us a note at phwinc.org@gmail.com!
The identity of John Mann: While his name is well-remembered because of his connection to the John Mann Church, details about the man himself are sketchy at best. He is believed to have resided in Winchester and served as the pastor for the black freedmen in the Methodist church from 1815-1861. The researcher who approached us has not been able to locate John Mann in census records or death registers, or in the records of the Market Street Church (the parent church for the John Mann congregation prior to Emancipation). Our own searches into newspapers and court records have only turned up the “new” information of a suit linking John Mann and Thomas Stump, but the actual court documents from Frederick County for many of these cases have not yet been added to the online chancery files. The newspapers and chancery cases indicate there may be a Leesburg/Loudoun County connection to John Mann as well. If you would like to further explore these chancery items, we have been looking for items of interest using the surname “Mann.” Be prepared to read cursive!
Historically or architecturally interesting buildings in Winchester: This week, we have been exploring the history and reasoning behind the handful of designated landmark buildings of Winchester. While we have received the answer to why (and the broad reasoning behind the inclusion of most buildings in said list), an adjacent question arose. Are there other historically or architecturally significant buildings or sites that lie outside of Winchester’s local and/or National Register Historic Districts? The question is specific to the City of Winchester (so no Frederick County sites) but the qualities that would make a place significant can be fairly subjective. If you have ideas of a site that could be worth landmark status outside the Historic District, drop us an email.
PHW Preservation Award nominations: As you know, last year PHW did not present preservation awards at our truncated Annual Meeting. We are tentatively hoping to host awards this year in June, and as such, the award nomination form has been updated. Projects completed between June 2019 to May 2021 are eligible for this combined round of recognition. Awards are open to BOTH Winchester City and Frederick County. People or projects may be nominated by anyone (including the potential award recipient or family member) AND you may nominate an unlimited number of projects. Applications DO NOT need to be complete, but should at least have enough identifying information that the project can be further discussed by the award committee. Return applications or suggestions to PHW, 530 Amherst St., Winchester, VA 22601 or by email at phwinc.org@gmail.com. Applications should be sent by May 28, 2021 for consideration for a 2020 or 2021 award. Thank you!
Last call! PHW’s 56th Annual Meeting is coming this Sunday, June 28th at 5 PM at the Hexagon House, 530 Amherst St. The Annual Business Meeting will consist of the Proposed Bylaws Amendment, President’s Annual Report, and Election of the 2020-2021 Board of Directors. A full copy of the bylaws is available on PHW’s website.
Only PHW members with current dues who attend the meeting in person may vote on the actionable items. If you plan to attend the meeting, RSVP your name and number of attendees to 540-667-3577, phwinc.org@gmail.com, or on the Facebook event page.
The meeting is capped at 50 guests. A volunteer will be counting guests and checking RSVPs as you arrive.
Social distancing due to COVID-19 will be in effect. Wear face coverings and do not attend if you have been exposed or feel ill. The meeting will be held outside and no refreshments will be offered. The building will remain closed and no restroom facilities will be available.
The weather is likely to be hot with a low chance of precipitation. You may wish to bring your own water. The back yard should be shady by 5 PM, but hats or parasols are also encouraged.
Please bring your own seating. The yard will be marked with lime to mark off the 6′ social distancing for your chairs.
A livestream of the meeting will be hosted on Facebook. Check our Live tab about 5 PM on Sunday to watch virtually. Virtual watchers will not be able to participate in the voting but are welcome to follow along.
We’ll see you in person or virtually on Facebook this Sunday!
This week, we uncovered a stash of 30 more Holiday House Tour photographs while cleaning old files. The exact year of the tour depicted was unknown until some careful background detail sleuthing revealed the home was on Seldon Drive. With that knowledge and the database in progress cataloging our past tours, we were able to determine the images came from the 1990 tour “A Neighborhood Christmas,” the only year (so far!) Seldon Drive was featured. Enjoy this look back at the past in our Flickr album!
One of the images from the 1990 Holiday House Tour held on Seldon Drive in Winchester.
As a friendly reminder, PHW’s 56th Annual Meeting is coming up on June 28th at 5 PM. The Annual Business Meeting will consist of the Proposed Bylaws Amendment, President’s Annual Report, and Election of the 2020-2021 Board of Directors. A full copy of the bylaws is available on PHW’s website.
Only PHW members with current dues who attend the meeting in person may vote on the actionable items. If you plan to attend the meeting, RSVP your name and number of attendees to 540-667-3577, phwinc.org@gmail.com, or on the Facebook event page. The meeting is capped at 50 guests.
The meeting will be held outside and no refreshments will be offered. Social distancing due to COVID-19 will be in effect. Wear face coverings and do not attend if you have been exposed or feel ill. Please bring your own seating. A livestream of the meeting will be hosted on Facebook. The meeting will not be rescheduled for inclement weather.
Last, we have a few curated reading links for you to enjoy this weekend along the theme of Juneteenth celebrations:
PHW’s 56th Annual Meeting will be held on June 28th. The meeting will be held at the Hexagon House, 530 Amherst Street, beginning at 5:00 P.M. The Annual Business Meeting will consist of the Proposed Bylaws Amendment, President’s Annual Report, and Election of the 2020-2021 Board of Directors.
A full copy of the bylaws is available on PHW’s website.
Only PHW members with current dues who attend the meeting in person may vote on the actionable items. If you plan to attend the meeting, RSVP your name and number of attendees to 540-667-3577, phwinc.org@gmail.com, or on the Facebook event page. The meeting is capped at 50 guests.
The meeting will be held outside and no refreshments will be offered. Social distancing due to COVID-19 will be in effect. Wear face coverings and do not attend if you have been exposed or feel ill. Please bring your own seating. A livestream of the meeting will be hosted on Facebook. The link will be made available approximately one week before the event. The meeting will not be rescheduled for inclement weather.
For further reading and researching this week, we have a selection of links:
It seems many people are taking the pandemic time to research their homes and towns. Atlas Obscura has been providing a steady stream of informative articles on how to get started, including How to Dig into the History of Your City, Town, or Neighborhood.
If you are looking for early Winchester Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps to help with your research, you can find them at the Library of Congress. You can also look at other maps PHW and other local researchers use to date local buildings at Historic Map Works.
Do you like transcribing old documents or going on deep history searches? East End and Evergreen Cemeteries in Richmond are accepting remote volunteers to help make their documents more accessible and preserve Richmond’s African American history. Follow the links to register for Biography Writer, Cemetery Research, or Record Transcription.
AmazonSmile customers can now support Preservation of Historic Winchester, Inc. in the Amazon shopping app on iOS and Android mobile phones! Simply follow these instructions to turn on AmazonSmile and start generating donations.
Open the Amazon Shopping app on your device
Go into the main menu of the Amazon Shopping app and tap into ‘Settings’
Tap ‘AmazonSmile’ and follow the on-screen instructions to complete the process
If you do not have the latest version of the Amazon Shopping app, update your app. Click here for instructions.
