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Recent Blog Posts:

• Cleaning 250 year-old hewn white oak logs at Byrnside’s Fort
  July 19, 2020
  This is the best way I've found so far to clean the interior side of the original (extremely hard) white oak hand hewn logs. This is the Northwest second floor corner. Since this was eventually turned into a formal entry way, long before the plaster was installed over the logs, they were given various coats of whitewash white paint, in order to make the walls look like they were plaster, rather than logs. Such was the trend, since there was nothing glamorous about having a log plantation house. …
• Old Songs in an Old Log Fort
  July 19, 2020
  "The Girl I left Behind", also known as "The Girl I Left Behind Me", is an English folk song dating back to Elizabethan era. It is said to have been played when soldiers left for war or a naval vessel set sail. According to other sources the song originated in 1758 when English Admirals Hawke and Rodney were observing the French fleet. The first printed text of the song appeared in Dublin in 1791. A popular tune with several variations, "The Girl I Left Behind Me", may have been imported into America around 1650 as 'Brighton Camp', of which a copy dating from around 1796 resides in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. …
• Thomas Jefferson’s “Great Claw” from the Greenbrier Valley
  June 23, 2020
  While Thomas Jefferson became Vice President of the United States in 1797, he also became President of the American Philosophical Society - a position once held by Benjamin Franklin, who founded the society in 1743. When Jefferson arrived in DC to assume these positions, he had with him some massive bones which came out of a cave in the Greenbrier Valley. …
• Saving the Bell from Old Sweet Chalybeate Springs
  June 22, 2020
  This weekend we went and picked up the old dinner bell from the old Sweet Chalybeate Springs resort, or as it was also called, Red Sweet Springs. We also picked up a load of antique handmade bricks from the remnants of the old Crow's Tavern, in Crows, Virginia - which was just down the road from Sweet Chalybeate. …
• Recent Fur Trade Finds
  June 18, 2020
  Some recent finds we acquired from the coastline of Michigan in the areas surrounding Fort Michilimackinac and L’ Arbre Croche. These are all …