Return to story

What do we have to lose in a Katrina-like flood? Just our history

October 17, 2005 1:06 am

THE ARTICLE in the Oct. 2 View- points by John Hennessy, the chief historian of Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park ["Disaster's timeless rhythm: Fredericksburg's 1862 ordeal has echoes now, in 2005"], aptly compared the devastation caused by the Battle of Fredericksburg in 1862 and Hurricane Katrina's destruction. It contains a significant lesson we would be wise to heed. Both were acts of circumstance--nature (Katrina) for New Orleans, its fateful location on the road to Richmond for Fredericksburg.

We owe a debt of gratitude to the National Park Service for documenting our catastrophic moment in the sun. It is a drawing card for Civil War buffs and our tourism industry. But like New Orleans, Fredericksburg has much more history that should be remembered and commemorated.

The Wallace Library, now the home of the city School Board offices, was the forerunner of our Central Rappahannock Regional Library and was the vision of C. Wistar Wallace. When it opened its doors in 1910, its holdings contained the nucleus of our local history collection. This was passed on to CRRL when the regional system was inaugurated in 1969. Through the years, the Virginiana collection has since grown enormously by acquisitions and by the new technologies for data collection, including microfilmed records, genealogy resources, and, very definitely, the Internet. We have, on microfilm, our local newspapers dating back to 1786; also the minutes of the Spotsylvania Court (1722), St. George's Parish Vestry (1726), and our City Council dating from the first meeting after its incorporation in 1782.

Today, we have a collection of area records and documents very likely unmatched anywhere else in America. Further, we have added remarkable indexes and the 20th-century contributions of A.W. Embrey and Robert Hodge and the archivist Barry McGhee.

When I moved to Fredericksburg in 1976, as a curious reader without academic credentials, I soon realized that wherever I turned, some interesting glimpse of early history was at my fingertips. Reading the Colonial court records, the minutes of the vestry (the Crown's other administrative arm), and tracing the earliest land transactions on a modern map, I was able to present the highlights of our half-century of Colonial life ("Forgotten Companions"). This was not a profound work of scholarship, merely an ambitious summary for which my miscellaneous work career had fortuitously prepared me.

Now, almost three decades later, I see serious scholarship emerging at the University of Mary Washington's Department of Historic Preservation, especially through Dr. Gary Stanton's Web site; at George Washington's Fredericksburg Foundation (Kenmore and the Washingtons' farm); through the remarkable Web site of the Central Rappahannock Regional Library (historypoint.org), which is evolving; and even through a small organization, the Council of Colonial Historians, now forming to encourage original research and offer well-organized archives.

Although we are late getting a handle on our remarkable tools and I feel sometimes that we are all laboring in separate beehives, I think the progress is encouraging.

It is coming none too soon. We are about to double our museum space on Princess Anne Street. A town of 20,000 people with two museum buildings and almost no written history or published scholarship. I fear we are trusting our ignorance. We need to do a much better job of mastering our past, or else we cannot present it with conviction and purpose.

The one resource that is the foundation of both our past and future scholarship is the Virginiana Room. For several years now, it has been housed in a basement room at the library headquarters.

While it has been treasured by local users, staff, students, genealogists, writers, and researchers from near and far, and while it is bulging at the seams with old and new publications, somehow it has never been accorded the accommodation and prominence it deserves as the centerpiece of local scholarship.

The Virginiana Room reminds me of my grandmother's attic. It was such a great place to visit when I was young because it was full of old magazines and "stuff." But now it is time to realize that our Virginiana Room holds an irreplaceable collection of histories, biographies (many out of print), diaries, every important index to the reference volumes on its shelves, all the issues of the major quarterlies and regional publications, and an ever growing collection of Civil War and Revolutionary War records.

Suddenly, the relevance of John Hennessy's analogy dawned on me. Hurricane Katrina was in New Orleans. But our Virginiana Collection is also in the flood plain.

When Hurricane Isabel struck two years ago, the entire collection had to be moved hastily upstairs. With hurricanes increasing in frequency, is that a chance we really want to take? Even if its future home is pending on longer-range plans, a safer temporary location seems warranted.

The nonfiction room near the reference desk would be my choice of a location. It would require only a space exchange, and it would improve the staff's ability to service the collection, while making our documented history as visible and impressive as the exhibits in our new museums. Perhaps as important, it would give many of us peace of mind while this irreplaceable foundation for all of our scholarship awaits a suitable setting.

PAULA FELDER is a Fredericksburg historian.