The Kerrs Creek Raids: Life and Death on the Early Rockbridge Frontier

Event Description

The Rockbridge Historical Society will host a free public program titled “The Kerrs Creek Raids: Life & Death on the Rockbridge Frontier.” It will be held on Sunday, March 30, 2:00 PM in the historic sanctuary at New Monmouth Presbyterian Church (est. 1746, right near the very events and locations the program addresses).

A slideshow by former RHS President Larry Spurgeon will re-visit the deadly attacks of 1759 and 1763 in western Rockbridge County. His images and narrative provide new contexts for their relationship to shifting patterns of local colonial settlement, and the accelerating conflicts between European and indigenous empires, a decade and a half before Lexington and Rockbridge were officially organized in 1778.

RHS Executive Director Eric Wilson will forecast a series of related programs and exhibits at the Society’s Museum – this Fall, and in the next few years – that will further engage this pre-Revolutionary era. National attentions are increasingly turning to a range of commemorative activities related to the 250th Anniversaries of the American Revolution at large, alongside reconsiderations of local history. This county & new courthouse seat were jointly created to provide a more responsive and accessible legal & administrative center on the frontier, and an additional security measure during wartime, to advance those broader aims and secure this stretch of a rapidly growing Shenandoah Valley, and Virginia.

The program concludes with an overview of the new restoration project at the neighboring “McKee Cemetery,” where some of those involved in these events were buried, along with many descendants. Pauline McKee, director of the non-profit dedicated to those efforts, will also lead a tour of the site (now the grounds of Big Spring Farm, one mile away), describing recent explorations with Ground Penetrating Radar, and noting opportunities for community residents to become involved.

For more information see RHS’ Facebook and Instagram pages, or contact Director@RockbridgeHistory.org.

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