RHS Museum Reopens With Three Exhibits
In the heart of this 250th anniversary year of American Independence, the Rockbridge Historical Society Museum re-opens in April with a trio of exhibits that speak to national ideals and local experiences of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”
Free and welcome to all ages, the museum will be open Fridays through Sundays, 1 to 4 p.m. It is located at 101 E. Washington St., across from the Visitor Center.
Pioneering Exhibits, And State Partnerships
On weekends throughout the month of April, RHS will host “UN/BOUND: Free Black Virginians, 1619-1865.” This is the third of four exhibitions curated by the Virginia Museum of History and Culture (VMHC), organized to travel to regional history museums and public and university libraries from 2025 through 2027.
A closing reception on Sunday, May 3, will be preceded that afternoon by a free program at Manly Memorial Baptist church that narrows the focus to Rockbridge County in the 18th and 19th centuries. A slideshow and remarks by retired Monticello historian Cinder Stanton, former RHS President Larry Spurgeon, and RHS Executive Director Eric Wilson will illuminate archival records and biographical profiles representing more than 1,000 free African Americans who’ve been newly identified as living in this area: from the earliest Euro-American settlements here in the 1730s, up through the Civil War, and after Emancipation.
In 2027, RHS will host the final show in this partnering series: “We the People: The World in Our Commonwealth.” More fully elaborated in VMHC’s Richmond galleries, this comprehensive, groundbreaking exhibit examines more than five centuries of immigration that have shaped the indigenous lands and lifeways of Virginia, before its colonial and more contemporary arrivals. Collectively, they pay tribute to the contributions of immigrants and new citizens fueling two-and-a-half centuries of “American Evolution,” with Virginians leading the way in both establishing revolutionary political structures, and sustaining and adapting diverse cultural traditions.
Affirming this partnership, the Rockbridge Historical Society was honored this month in Colonial Williamsburg at the Virginia Association of Museum’s conference as one the VMHC’s 23 inaugural “Virginia History Affiliates.” After that announcement, Director Eric Wilson emphasized, “This statewide initiative has been shaped by years of discussions, and sharpened by our own regional leadership as one of 10 consulting institutions invited to help develop and design VMHC’s latest permanent exhibition, ‘Our Commonwealth.’
“Amplifying its own influence as the oldest cultural organization in Virginia,” he continued, “the VMHC has strategically selected a diverse group of local and regional history museums in order to foster distinctive collaborations with its own staff and collections; to laterally partner with other peer institutions in joint programming and exhibits; and to provide access to dedicated grant and professional development opportunities.”
Anchored by 20 richly-illustrated and annotated interpretive panels – and amplified by artifacts from RHS own historic collections, its partners at Washington and Lee Special Collections archives, and original documentary and digital research – the pioneering exhibition is one of the first of its kind nationally. The narratives of “UN/BOUND” survey different pathways to freedom: whether by birth, manumission by enslavers, self-emancipation through flight, or military service in the United States Colored Troops. Some men and women even the earned purchase of their families’ freedom, or their own, while still having to manage a shifting legal and cultural landscape that restricted Black liberty through the first 150 years of royal and early American government.
ABOVE, displays and audio-recordings at the RHS Museum feature Virginia histories related to iconic sites like Monticello, located along the “TransAmerican 1976 Bikecentennial Route,” flanked by national histories of segregated travel, with Rockbridge and Lexington tourist homes and restaurants featured in “The Negro Motorist’s Green Book.” (Eric Wilson photo) ABOVE LEFT, hand-cast in the 19th century likely by one of the free Black or enslaved workers at the Buena Vista Iron Furnace, this artifact was recovered nearby after the industrial site’s destruction during the Union army’s raid in 1864. Newly returned for the RHS exhibit, after a five-year loan to the American Civil War Museum, an interactive 3-D digital reconstruction prepared by David Pfaff at W&L’s Integrative & Quantitative IQ Center can be explored via tinyurl.com/RHS-Iron-Hand.
THE TRAVELING exhibition “UN/BOUND: Free Black Virginians, 1619-1865” is currently on display at the Rockbridge Regional Library in Lexington through March 31, then Fridays through Sundays through April at the Rockbridge Historical Society Museum at 101 E. Washington St., Lexington. (Eric Wilson photo)
“Those systemic patterns and more uniquely negotiated opportunities are visually and verbally framed by a series of more individual profiles,” Wilson said. “Cumulatively, these memorable stories highlight individual experiences of distinctive, if often hidden, histories, that significantly color the evolving terms of ‘The American Experiment.’” As with its 2025 exhibits (canvasing the state’s roles in the Revolutionary War, and Virginia’s warfront and homefront experiences through the Vietnam War), RHS will continue a series of “pop-up” displays, partnering with the Rockbridge Regional Library System and local public schools. To extend access to even wider audiences, they’ve arranged to stage “UN/BOUND” for an opening three-week run at the Lexington library, during its regular hours through March 31. In May, RHS volunteers and local educators will cap its month-and-a-half here with visits to school classrooms, and digitally supported modules that jointly promote lifelong learning and interactive community engagement.
Rockbridge On The Move
Through more recent retrospective lenses, two other exhibits will complement the featured tenure of “UN/BOUND,” respectively extending through the summer, and updated and touring locally through the fall.
In sustaining RHS’ curatorial investments, public programming, educational outreach, and awarded grants, interpretive panels will chronicle “The Virginia Bikecentennial of 1976,” while the Remsburg Gallery continues to highlight “Rockbridge at Play: Toys, Games, and Histories.” Together, they draw from loans and oral histories shared by generations of local residents. They’ll also literally move through the community, jointly grounding instructional units and field trips crafted by RHS’ Education Committee.
RHS is also working with local cyclists to stage three commemorative bike rides later this year to celebrate the Bikecentennial’s 50th anniversary: including the annual children’s bike parade that covers one Main Street mile (Lexington’s downhill stretch of the 4,228-mile cross-country route); a “middle-of-the-road” 25-miler along the Maury and South River; and a county-length outing for the most experienced “hardcore,” navigating the area’s hills and hollows from Natural Bridge up to the Blue Ridge Parkway.
In early June, a group of cyclists will stop in Lexington as part of a multi-week ride from the southwestern foot of Virginia to its revolutionary climax in Yorktown. Some of these riders (as well as others who attended RHS’ related May program on National Ride-a-Bike Day) once crossed the continent on the TransAmerican bike trail that was created for the 1976 Bicentennial.
In Virginia, the historic route runs 555 miles from Kentucky’s border at Breaks Interstate Park, through the Appalachian Mountains and Shenandoah Valley. It crests the Blue Ridge Mountains after the nation’s steepest 3-mile climb (from Gertie’s Store in Vesuvius up to the Tye River Gap) before rolling down through the Piedmont, and the Fall Line to Tidewater and the Chesapeake Bay Ten thematically and chronologically organized panels in the RHS exhibit track VA Bike Route 76 across its geographic sweep and temporal reach, along with a 30-episode podcast produced by Virginia Tech faculty and undergraduate students, streamable at bike76-va.vt.domains. Richly detailed, their narratives trace both colonial and contemporary cycles of Virginia history, highlighting significant events, historic sites, and cultural histories, including those that have resonated across 50 miles of Rockbridge roads, riverbeds, and the natural and civic landscapes they frame.
A grant awarded in January by Virginia Tech and the Virginia Association of Museums will invite local students and community artists to decorate two thematically painted benches – to be installed along the historic trail – that will welcome both touring riders and everyday relaxation.
In collaborating with VAM, local schools, and Virginia Tech Dean Tom Ewing, director of the Bike76VA Project, Wilson explained that he authored the grant to “mobilize our next generation of citizens to use their creativity, craft, and energy to celebrate both local and patriotic histories. And in that spirit, we’ll invite them to feature the rich environmental and recreational resources that draw so many people to visit and live in this stretch of Virginia.”
Rockbridge Playdates, Now and Then
Through 2026, RHS will extend its popular 2025 exhibit spotlighting 19th-21st century playthings and games, arts and crafts, as well as children’s camps, the circus, and other popular forms of cultural entertainment.
This year, Wilson added, “We’re again inviting distinctive community loans to help grow and color our displays in new directions, representing varieties of childhood play. Thanks to our Rockbridge neighbors, we’re able to engagingly illustrate both the popular fads and more viral trends spanning different decades, alongside more distinctive personal histories. Meaningfully, many of the items we’ve chosen to feature have been locally hand-crafted, and passed down as inter-generational legacies.”
Temporary loans from local businesses, libraries, and game stores will further help to structure school field trips and special weekend and evening events for “gamers” of all ages. RHS Instagram and Facebook pages will also regularly feature those community-sourced contributions that advance RHS’ mission to preserve and promote local histories, with commentary by the donors themselves.
To discuss materials that area residents think might be good additions to the museum’s displays in this historic year, they are invited to write to Director@RockbridgeHistory. org.
