You Can Vote for a Highland County Entry in Virginia’s Top 10 Endangered Artifacts Contest

January 13, 2021

The Highland County Historical Society has a submission in Virginia’s Top 10 Endangered Artifacts contest, sponsored by the Virginia Association of Museums.

The Highland County Museum in McDowell has the Weather Journal of Washington Stephenson.  This is a handwritten, daily journal of Washington Stephenson, who was the first elected sheriff in Highland County, Virginia.  It documents weather, local happenings, and visitors from 1838 to 1867. Notable inclusions also are documented – births and deaths before they were officially recorded in county records. Washington died in 1858, but his son continued the journal until 1867.  This handwritten journal offers a unique glimpse of rural life in the Allegheny Mountains before and after the Civil War.  Part of the preservation of this artifact will be research on the authors. This journal is very fragile, and with the proceeds from the contest, the Highland Historical Society will be able to preserve this piece of Highland History.   The journal was selected as a 2020 Honoree to be included in the contest following a competitive review process.

The artifact receiving the most votes will be awarded $1,000 towards conservation.

You can vote at www.vamuseums.org.    You can vote once each day through Wednesday, January 20.

Story By

Bonnie Ralston

Bonnie Ralston is the Assistant Station Coordinator at WVLS and a Highland County news reporter. She began volunteering at Allegheny Mountain Radio in the fall of 2005. In 2006 she became an AMR employee and worked in Bath County for eight years as the WCHG Station Coordinator and then as the news reporter there. She began working in radio while in college and has stayed connected to radio, in one way or another, for more than thirty years. She grew up in Staunton, Virginia, while spending a lot of time on her family’s farm in Deerfield, Virginia. She enjoys spending time outside, watching old TV shows and movies and tending to her chickens.
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