“Tannery Owner Adam Hickman built this Carpenter Gothic House as a wedding present for his daughter. The house has three steeply pitched front gables of varying sizes have bargeboards dripping with wooden icicles. Along with a large leaded bay window and a wraparound porch with sawn balustrades and custom columns, the house sports enough ornate …
Category Archives: Business/Commerce
What Did People Do in Old Abingdon; a closer look
Lewis Thomson Cosby’s entry about The Washington House and the venerable Tavern next door is succinct: “…known far and near as ‘The Washington House’, kept by John C. Cummings, Esq…. [t]his ‘Tavern,’ as they were then called, was liberally patronized by the public. “Next is a small frame house still standing used as a shop …
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The Human Face of White Top
For a century, from 1833 through 1933, White Top attracted an array of unique visitors, beginning with the reclusive Wilburn Waters and culminating in the appearance of the anything but reclusive First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt. In between there were Naturalists like Asa Gray and Anna Murray Vail, entrepreneurs like Luther Hassinger and Douglas Robinson, picnickers …
How the Lumber Boom and the Chestnut Blight Changed the Face of Whitetop
As Doug Ogle pointed out in his study of–or perhaps a paean to–Whitetop, The Great Meadow Mountain, mountains present different aspects to different people. Mountains provide solace to some; to others they can be menacing. They can present challenges and opportunities. We can approach them with awe and wonder or with avarice. We can learn from them …
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What did people do in Old Abingdon?
“Abingdon, the county seat, is 304 miles SW. of Richmond… The town stands on an elevation; it is substantially built, with many brick buildings; the principle street is macamadized, and the town is surrounded by a fertile, flourishing, and thickly settled agricultural country. It contains several large mercantile stores, 2 newspaper printing offices, 1 Presbyterian, …
The Coming of the Railroad
As mentioned at the outset (see: “Intro”), in his “One Hundred Years of the History of Abingdon” L.P. Summers began by stating, “here begins the history of the West.” Much like in the West, Southwest Virginia as a whole, and Abingdon in particular, benefited greatly from the arrival of the railroad. An entire book could …
The Wilderness Trail, The Great Wagon Road, and the Slavery Trail of Tears
Whether Daniel Boone or Thomas Walker actually “discovered” the site that was described as “Wolf Hills” in 1760, in less than a decade a settlement in that remote corner of Southwest Virgina grew in to the community named Abingdon. Boone is also with the development of a portion of The Wilderness Road which made it …
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