South River Villages Explored In Epilogue

Four villages that thrived along the South River in 19thcentury Rockbridge County — Marlbrook to the north and Midvale, Cornwall and Riverside going south — are explored by the local historian Reed Belden in the latest “Rockbridge Epilogue,” now available online at no charge.

The communities, collectively known as South River, began to be settled as soon as Benjamin Borden started promoting the huge tract of almost 100,000 acres which he received from King George in 1739. South River grew and prospered, but then slowly began contracting until the 20th century floods abruptly hastened the area’s decline. Belden traces the economy of the area and the industries and farm families and companies that dominated each of the villages.

The author is a former leader of both local historical organizations, the Rockbridge Historical Society and Historic Lexington Foundation. He received HLF’s Founders Award last year for contributions across three decades, which most recently included marshalling support to have a state highway marker placed to denote the Timber Grove settlement in north Rockbridge, which no longer exists but from which Timber Ridge and other communities to the south grew.

Belden is also the author of a new “Rockbridge Anecdote,” a tour of 1891 Buena Vista, similarly focusing on businesses and industries that dominated the brand-new, small city in the short-lived period of prosperity and growth that marked the economic boom of the late 19th century. “Anecdotes” are the informal, briefer cousins of the more scholarly “Epilogues.”

Belden’s South River “Epilogue” article, “Stolen History: South River from Marlbrook to Old Buena Vista,” is available at www.HistoricRockbride.org. His Buena Vista “Anecdote” can be found at www.RockbridgeAnecdotes.org.