New historical highway markers approved

RICHMOND, Va. (WDBJ) – The eight new historical markers are meant to educate the public about a person, place or event of regional, state or national importance.

The Virginia Board of Historic Resources approved the markers earlier this month. After approval, it can take upwards of three months or more before a new marker is ready to be installed.

The new markers approved include:

• Ingles Ferry in Radford, sponsored by Virginia Lewis & Clark Legacy Trail, Inc.
  • The proposed location is Wilderness Drive near West Main Street.
  • Ingles Ferry on the New River was established 1762 by William Ingles and was a crossing for people migrating west, including William Clark.
• Rosa L. Dixon Bowser (1855-1931) in Amelia County sponsored by the Department of Historic Resources (DHR).
  • The proposed location is at the intersection of Patrick Henry Highway and Grub Hill Church Road.
  • Rosa Bowser was an educator and social reformer who was enslaved at birth. She was educated in Richmond’s public schools, she taught school and supervised teachers and she helped form the first African American teachers’ association in Virginia. As a leader in women’s clubs and African American reform organizations. She sought improvements in health care, legal aid, support for young mothers and education for disadvantaged children. She also helped found the National Association of Colored Women which worked against lynching and segregation and for women’s suffrage.
• Belmead in Powhatan County sponsored by DHR.
  • The proposed location is at the intersection of Bell Road and Cartersville Road.
  • Belmead is the Gothic Revival-style home of planter Philip St. George Cocke and was built in 1845 with enslaved African Americans’ labor. In the 1890s it became two schools, one being the nation’s only military school for African American men and the other a high school for Black and Native American women.
• Potomac River Oyster Wars in the Town of Colonial Beach sponsored by Colonial Beach Greenspace, Inc.
  • The proposed location is at the intersection of Irving Avenue and Monroe Bay Avenue.
  • Disputes over harvesting oysters in the Potomac River fueled violence between local watermen and Maryland’s fisheries police for decades. After officers killed Virginian Berkeley Muse in April 1959, the fisheries police underwent extensive reforms. In 1962 Congress created the Potomac River Fisheries Commission ending the era of violence.
• Jame Horace Carter in King and Queen County sponsored by Middle Peninsula African-American Genealogical and Historical Society.
  • The proposed location is The Trail and Allens Circle.
  • James Horace Carter, a 45-year-old African American husband and father was lynched on October 12, 1923. Two weeks before his lynching, a white woman had admitted Carter was the father of one of her children. He was charged with rape and arrested. While being driven to the King and Queen County jail, a mob seized him from the car and killed him. The case was widely reported but no one was prosecuted for the murder.
• Trailblazers of a New Era in Richmond sponsored by Alpha Phi Alpha Alumni Brothers.
  • The proposed location is near the entrance to Evergreen Cemetery.
  • Commemorates the lives of Dr. Joseph Endom Jones and Rosa Kinckle Jones were educators in post-Emancipation Richmond. Joseph Jones was enslaved at birth and taught at Virginia Union University for 45 years. His wife taught music at Hartshorn Memorial College and led the Woman’s Union Beneficial Department, an insurance company. Their son Eugene Kinckle Jones led the National Urban League and in 1906, co-founded Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc.
• Great Exodus from Bondage in Fredericksburg sponsored by the City of Fredericksburg.
  • The proposed location is 900 Princess Anne Street.
  • The former Farmers’ Bank building was once the home and workplace of John Washington (1838-1918) who wrote a memoir of his life in slavery in the 1870s. He was among the first of more than 10,000 refugees enslaved in surrounding counties who escaped to Union lines and freedom over the next four months. These acts of self-emancipation accelerated a shift in federal policy that ultimately led to the 13th Amendment.
• West Ford (ca. 1784-1863) in Fairfax County sponsored by West Ford Legacy Foundation.
  • The proposed location is the Richmond Highway intersection with Fordson Road.
  • West Ford was born enslaved in the household of George Washington’s brother and was brought to live at Mount Vernon. He was taught to read, write and do arithmetic and became a carpenter. He was freed at 21 and for more than 50 years was a plantation manager at Mount Vernon. He inherited more than 100 acres from Bushrod Washington, he sold the land and bought property at the marker location which became a free African American community that continued to expand after the Civil War.

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