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Bowling Green has survived despite downtown destruction and wartime Date published: 6/6/2009
BY JIM MASON
FOR THE FREE LANCE-STAR "SO WHY is Bowling Green historic?" "Because it's old," volunteer hostess Mary Frances Coleman said, sharing a laugh with the tourist. There's a ring of truth to her quip, however, and "A Guide to Historic Bowling Green, Virginia" is a great place to start to learn why Bowling Green is indeed historic. Written by Carolyn A. Roth, a retired college professor living in the town's historic district, the booklet was published by the Caroline Historical Society, and copies are for sale at the Bowling Green Visitor Center at 109 Courthouse Lane. Remember Jamestown was settled in 1607, but even by the late 1600s the English had settled in only a few areas in Virginia beyond the Williamsburg-Jamestown area, Roth reminds us. In what would become Caroline County, American Indians were hostile to English settlers and authorities made land grants to only a few, mostly to "military men who possessed skills required to cope with the Indians, tame the wilderness, and establish plantations," according to Roth. "One of these men was Major Thomas George Hoomes, who was granted 3,000 acres by the British Crown in 1667. He established control over his land, naming it Bowling Green after his ancestral estate in England," she wrote. "Although little is known about Maj. Hoomes, his success in establishing a home and estate led eventually to the present town of Bowling Green." Maj. Hoomes' son, Col. John Waller Hoomes, built New Hope Tavern about a half-mile north of his family's manor house, still popularly known as Old Mansion, according to Marshall Wingfield in his book "A History of Caroline County, Virginia," published in 1924.
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