"In tiny Brownsburg, Virginia.

Population 33 in town, a few thousand more nearby.

High on a hill overlooking miles of bright green fields unfurling to distant mountains."

Chris Fox: So we're in the Shenandoah Valley, in between the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Allegheny Mountains, and it's one of the prettiest places in the world.

Robin: And as we look out on all the beauty, you know there's a story behind this beauty.

A lot of people didn't think was here, which is a story of slavery.

Lucy: We know we live in a Confederate state.

It wouldn't be no Virginia if it wasn't for slaves picking cotton.

Julie: Look around.

Because in these small, unchanged villages like Brownsburg, history is right there.

Loren: Young families here are moving out of the area because they have to find work.

They need opportunities for their children.

Fred: There's only about 3 or 4 families that are originally from here.

And I think when they pass away, I'm one of them, I don't know what will happen.

Bill: The heart of this village for me is the people.

So when I hear you tell your stories, if all the people that grew up here weren't here with their individual stories, it would make this a very different place.

Marie: Back then, it was just so simple.

Oh, remember I came down and borrowed one of your prom dresses?

I remember you came down and borrowed my cat.

Well, yeah, I did, Yeah.

- Tried to teach it to swim in the toilet - In the toilet.

Yes!

It's home.

This is where we were born and raised.

My parents still live here, and they are requiring a little more care now that they're older.

It's like I never left.

I've always felt very welcome here.

Things have changed.

A little more traffic.

Well, yeah, there's a lot more traffic.

And a lot of people from up north have moved here and bought all the farmland.

And they are not farmers, but they have the land and they have the money and they build these big extravagant houses.

- When we were growing up, - We knew everybody - And everybody was sort of on the same menial scale.

- Yeah.

And we just lived very simply.

There aren't a lot of opportunities to make a good living.

No.

So all of your younger people have moved to bigger cities to get jobs?

Yeah.

Our daughter, who lives five minutes from us, she drives to Waynesboro to work.

- Uhuh.

- For a while she was driving to Harrisonburg to work.

- Yeah.

- So, if you don't want a long commute.

- Yeah.

- You can't live here because there's nothing.

- Yeah.

Nothing close.

You know, these young people, I love it.

These young people who are farming again, like the, you know, over here, Whipple's, they they milk goats.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, I love that.

They used to milk cows.

- Yeah.

- And that is so neat.

And the couple from Verdant Acres, That's really, really neat, but it's hard to make a living.

Brownsburg has gone through a lot of changes over the years.

And the core -- the good people.

And my grandfather and great grandfather and great-great grandfather had a farm just across the creek here.

And my father grew up on that farm, You know, they're doing .

.

.

Do you want us to continue?

You know, they're doing this documentary about Brownsburg and how we grew up here.

Of course, you were born here.

And it was nice.

And I made a lot of friends.

Where are we now as a community versus the future?

Brownsburg went from being a vibrant town with stores.

There were businesses.

They had a bank.

And that story has been told, will be told for the last many years... it's a community with no businesses; it is a boutique community, very quaint one that holds on to its history.

People are very proud of that.

But some of these same families go back six, seven, eight generations.

But I think it is important to remember that however Brownsburg moves forward, it is a result of whatever came before it.

We are in a really interesting place, as you say, being in Lexington, being here in Rockbridge County.

There is so much history here.

One of the things that I've really valued in the last year or so is seeing the community come around Asbury.

That's why today this church is still standing, because back then we had so many people pitching out to help us.

Yeah, but we seem to have more people willing to volunteer here than in other places I've lived.

I've never volunteered until I came here.

It's a way of life worth protecting, right?

And you get to enjoy it.

- So, if you contribute to it, you feel kind of an obligation to give.

- Totally.

But also we take for it.

So, things change.

I don't have a problem with it.

As long as they don't bring a, you know, Walmart in there or whatever, you know.

But we're not going to of course, but you're going to have change.

You've got to have change or things die.

But Jacob Halliburton's descendants have achieved in America against all the odds.

They're highly educated.

They grew up here.

And Betty Brown graduated summa cum laude from UVA.

Stan, who integrated football, graduated with honors.

And David Greene is an engineering professor.

And was a descendant from slaves from here.

So, there is that hope in America, and I hope that it isn't erased.

John: But I will.

Mary: I can say that.

I don't mind.

- What are we talking about?

- Our story.

How we got here.

I know your story.

But you can tell me again.

You can say you remember.

I remember when .

.

.

- Do you remember when?

- I remember when I lost my mind.

<5 - That's a great idea.

Does that make me crazy?

<5 We can just start with that.

Do you remember what convinced you to marry me?

Was it worth the work?

Maybe worth a lifetime of misery.

I hope this is in the blooper reel.

Announcer: His first feature win in the East Side Speedway.

Booper: I was born here in Brownsburg.

I farm and I lived here until I was a teenager.

And we have a farm a mile and a half away.

Booper Bare, your first feature win at East Side Speedway, and you become the first repeat winner of the 2011 Steel Block Bandits season.

- Congratulations.

- Thank you.

You know, we had a rough night last night .

.

.

Our families had stock cars for almost 60 years, and my son drives them today.

Booper's dad was the most famous racer in Rockbridge County.

And when it was Booper's time came to race, he was the most famous racer in Rockbridge County.

And Tyler probably is now.

We lived almost across the road.

Booper lived right here, and I lived right here.

And I'm a bit older, unfortunately, than Booper, but I babysat Booper and his younger brother a couple of times.

When we were growing up.

Almost everybody farmed.

My dad was a farm machinery dealer in Fairfield.

Now those farms have been divided up into subdivisions.

Some of them are just just sitting there.

And you do farming, but there's not a whole lot of other people around here do farming.

Modern machinery has made it to where less manpower and you do more work.

We farm on 6 or 7 parcels of land, including our place.

And when I was a kid growing up, all of those were farmed individually.

As times have changed, people have come in and renovated some of these buildings.

I can't say it's all been for the better.

It's all been for the worst.

It would be very hard for a young person to just to come in and start farming.

The land is so expensive.

The equipment is so expensive anymore.

Everything is just.

It's bigger, it's more advanced, and you can do more with today's modern equipment than you could do with the stuff that my dad sold.

And unless you inherit land or a farm, unless your family is extremely wealthy, it would be almost impossible for a young man to come in and start a farm.

When the current farmers die off, who's going to take over and unless it's their children?

My son's farming with me.

My son-in-law works on the farm, doing the same thing we do.

But my grandchildren are too little to say yet whether they will farm.

I'm sure there will be an opportunity there for them to farm.

Like, for instance, the farm that we rent behind us was 240 acres that I remember back.

It sold for $60,000.

The next time it sold for 120, the next time it sold for 240, the next time 480.

It doubled in price in my lifetime every time it sold.

I'll soon be 59 years old, and I have witnessed that firsthand.

And thinking we ought to buy that, or we would like to buy that .

.

.

and land just keeps, I can't say it doubles every time, but it's gone up so much that the average farmer, there's not enough profit in what we do.

If you can't rent land, it's hard to purchase land.

I don't think the prospects for growth are here.

I mean, we're kind of a remote area, very rural.

I can't see anybody bringing a big box store here because it's just not enough people here to to support something like that.

I think most of the people that live here would like for it to stay like this.

We've had probably 5 or 6 families or couples that have moved here in the last two years, and I would hope that 20 years from now, Brownsburg looks just like this.

We spent a lot of time farming on other people's farms, and we were ready to branch out on our own.

And so we hired a realtor and he said, I have a diamond in the rough for you, but it's really rough.

Do you want to see it?

And we pulled up to this monstrosity of a house that had been vacant for about seven years.

<5 Down in the valley where the roots lay low.

<5 In the river bends while the water flows.

<5 You were laying down with your toes exposed <5 on the rock you found with the mornings on go.

- What made you decide that this was it?

- The view.

Knowing that we would work outside 70% of our lives.

- And it felt like a safe place to raise our kids.

- Yeah.

What convinced you?

- To make you happy.

- Uhuh.

<5I'm glad that I found you.

We're a regenerative farm, providing livestock and vegetables.

Yeah, I was in health care architecture, started drafting, worked my way up to a project manager for this health care firm.

So we were designing and building hospitals all over Northern Virginia.

Did that for 12 years before I realized that our food system was broken and that I wanted to do something different.

So we started at farmer's markets.

We thought we were going to have some backup income when we started here, but we were managing a farm.

We were doing some contract work, managing someone else's cows, raising some chickens, raising some egg layers, and we thought we were going to have that back up income.

And then that just disappeared after we closed on this property.

Yeah, so we hit the ground running.

So it was just like, "what are we going to do?"

How are we going to make money?"

And we're like, "I guess we're going to farm."

And so the first thing we did was to do farmers' markets to get to meet people in the community.

So we did 3 or 4 markets, just the two of us - with a baby strapped to my back, pregnant.

- We would bring the kids with us.

We take the kids and we just started to plug in and getting connected.

And our vegetables were horrible.

The first year they were terrible, but people stuck with us and then we could afford to bring in compost and more compost and really tend the land.

And now customers that have been with us since the beginning are like, "do you remember how terrible your produce was and how great it is now?"

Which is good.

You know, people are sticking with us.

Farming for me was that way to bridge that gap of like, if what we eat makes us well or makes us unwell, how can we produce the best, cleanest, most nourishing food?

And when you really look at it, they're saying that we have maybe less than 60 years of topsoil left.

Living in a farming community, growing the way that we do.

We're the oddballs.

So, not only are we growing things, great grandparents would have grown them.

You know, all of our neighbors are a much larger scale.

And our prices, because we're growing it this way.

You know, we have a lot of.

"Oh, honey, bless your heart.

You want to charge that for a tomato?

I'll buy one."

And they love us.

And they're sweet and they're kind, and they hope we make it.

If you have an idea in your mind that milk costs this price or gasoline cost this price, and then we're offering something that's that is still an egg, but it's not at all the same thing.

It is a hard transition unless your health demands that you pay those costs, if that makes sense.

When a member or a customer comes and sees this and sees where their food is grown and how hard we work.

It's almost like they're a lifer; they're invested.

They want to be a part of this.

They want to see the land get better.

They want to see the animals.

They're invested.

So it's so much better than a market, the farm we're building.

Everybody's invested in us doing well.

It's a home now.

True.

But at least we'll know where they are.

Reporter: The cemetery at Asbury Church in Brownsburg dates back to the late 1800s, and it memorializes veterans, freed slaves and other members of the Brownsburg community.

Some who don't even have a headstone.

In the 114 ... estimated, all these little yellow dots.

Rivanna Archeological Services from Charlottesville performed ground penetrating radar.

It found 193 likely graves at Asbury.

That's 130 more than the church knew were there.

Who knows whether we might be able to identify a lot of those graves?

The archeologists will give a final report in a few months.

Combining the radar and the research at Washington and Lee, Asbury hopes to mark the graves commemorating everyone buried at Asbury.

Gwen, how are you?

I'm okay.

And you?

- Good to see.

- Long time no see.

- It is.

Good seeing you too.

- Have a seat.

Asbury.

Back in those days, with them straight steps and all the old people and the lawn parties, they would be out there with naked light bulbs and cars everywhere.

People came from Greenville and Staunton and all up and down Route 11.

In '57, when they integrated our schools, well, it was no big thing because we all played ball together, and whatever.

Aunt Evelyn, she worked for several of the white families, and she would take me to the houses, with her, and do her work and whatever.

And I'd sit there and read a book.

As far as living amongst the whites in the area, - there was there was no disturbance.

- I agree.

When I became a pastor, it's like I'm the daughter to everybody.

So, how was it with you?

Well, we were the same.

I came back when I was six months old and we lived with my grandparents, and I didn't see any difference until I got older.

Going to Lexington, that's where we used to go, and shop a lot.

The bathrooms was colored and the sinks were colored, and I still didn't know what that meant.

But my mom and my dad, my grandparents, they never had racial conversations about somebody being bad.

They treated everybody equally.

My ancestors, my family, most of all of them are buried here.

You know, my grandfather, my aunts and uncles.

My mom's over there in the corner with her sister.

Gwen: A lot of people that we had lives with - and we learned from, are gone.

- Yeah.

And that is probably the saddest part of it all.

These stones here, it's like a part of this town that no matter who comes in it, the uniqueness of Brownsburg, with its quiet, rolling hills and cattle in the fields.

And I remember they used to be big bulls over here, and my son said, "my Aunt Betty, she owns those cows."

No she don't.

Although we get in far and few because there's no work and their children got to move away.

But we'll always return back to good old Brownsburg like everybody returns back to the Mississippi.

Bill: Good morning, Fred.

Good to see you.

So, things are going well up at the church?

Fred: Oh, that's good, that's good.

So how long has your family been here?

Oh, I think I'm at least a third generation.

So since I've only been here three years, as you know.

Tell me about the village.

Like your grandfather had a store here, I believe.

Yeah, he had store right up here.

Which changed quite a bit.

Some of the houses are right rundown and but it's been spruced up a lot over the years.

It's not the same village.

- So, was life pretty much contained in the village at that time?

- Yes So church was here.

All the shops were here.

- The bank was here?

Wow.

- Yes, Bank .

.

.

Phone company.

The worst thing that happened to Brownsburg.

We had a we had a grocery store at the other end, Whitesell's Grocery.

And when he closed, that was just the town almost died.

- Well, I mean, there was no place to go congregate.

- Wow.

No commerce here.

No place to meet with people or anything.

And and it struggled for a little while, and then all of a sudden, you know, people started buying up the houses and fixing them up and moving back in here.

What I learned in the B&B is we're off the beaten path so people don't travel through here much.

Right?

But once we get them here, they want to come back and they want to know more about the history, and they want to know more about the old buildings that are here and the church, and everything.

And it's such a giving community.

People enter this post office and they leave vegetables for their neighbors.

So, you pick up mail and you might get a tomato and a piece of squash, or you might leave something if you have extra bounty.

And a lot of communication for the older generation happens right in this building with Bob, our postman.

And we're not perfect, but it's a pretty interesting pocket of life here.

When the zoning issues come up.

They're quite sensitive, right?

And I think rightfully so.

People have different ideas about what Brownsburg has been and where it should go.

And I think a lot of people kind of agree that they want to keep it the same.

I don't like change.

I don't think we need it anymore.

But I know, everybody has an opinion about things.

What I love when I got here is the stories that you would tell about being five years old and sitting on the front steps, - hundreds of hours of experiences.

- Yeah.

At the heart of this village for me is the people.

Hey, good morning, how you doing?

- I'm all right.

Oh, I didn't see that.

- Good.

Come on in.

No.

You're good.

No no no, no.

You're good.

If all the people that grew up here weren't here with their individual stories, it would make this a very different place, in my opinion.

That history through other people, and even from prior generations, is what really makes the heartbeat of the village here.

But we're all getting old.

Yeah, I'm trying not to.

Lucy: I'm a pastor, and I take care of the sheep, both inside the church and outside.

Loren: We're all small churches here, but we can make a really big impact.

It's the caring spirit for the neighbor.

You know, church is not the building.

It's the people and the community that you form in this space.

And we can only grow in our faith by interacting with other people.

Black churches, we talk back to the preacher.

White churches, we're very quiet, so I have to make my own joyful noise.

I am the first installed female pastor here at New Providence, and New Providence is 277 years old.

As a female minister, when I first started out, people would say, you're too young to be a preacher, or they would call me little preacher.

And fortunately, coming into this community, the other Presbyterian ministers at the churches closest to us here are female.

We've formed a great bond to be able to work together.

So, to have other women pastors in the community has been really a gift for me.

Lord, we come before you today with praise and thanksgiving, offering you the worship of our hearts and our lives, and emerging ourselves to the prompting, leading in Your Holy Spirit.

When I was doing an internship in college at a small church in Buchanan, and I preached for the first time, and I wore black pants and I were a pink sweater.

My nicest clothes that I had in college.

And a woman came up to me and said, "No one will ever take you seriously wearing pink."

And I almost wore pink today, just to say, you know, "come on now."

- Did you guys make me birthday cards?

- Yeah.

You're so sweet!

Thank you.

The church needs the young people, but I think our biggest challenge is to get our young married couples, teenagers back in the church.

Our oldest granddaughter has just graduated from college, and I told her, "we've sort of messed up -- my generation."

It used to be every generation got better and better and more open and accepting.

But we have really taken some big steps back.

And I said, I'm counting on you kids to turn this around and to make this a better place, a better nation, a better people.

And I have high hopes.

What is unique about Brownsburg is that we have had people moving into the area who are young, who do have young families, those families who are are making a way based on the history of this place.

They're really building on what is special about living in this area.

I do think that it's true that we are losing a lot of young people, particularly in rural areas.

It's a challenge and it's also a beautiful thing to see new faces and new families coming into Brownsburg.

So there's a lot of hope for me in the community to see that happening.

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

And may we go in peace to love and serve the Lord.

My hope is that we continue to build community that the people of this congregation, so many of whom have grown up in Brownsburg and their parents grew up here and their grandparents grew up here, that they continue to go out of these doors and invite people and go out of these doors and welcome people to show love and live out the gospel.

Amen.

We have acquired the house that was my ancestral home.

My ancestors came in 1735, settled over near Steeles Tavern.

We've got four log structures under construction right now.

I'm getting ready to start another one.

You know what these are?

Probably the rarest thing I have in the building.

They're shoes for an ox.

Director: So, Glenn, why do you like old things??

Well, I'm old myself, so.

Well, I was born and raised here.

Rockbridge County, right across the road, is my home.

There's beautiful places all over the country.

But I've always said I'd just soon be right here as anywhere else.

So, my home place across the road, the center of that big farmhouse, started out as a log structure.

So I kind of grew up with, you know, looking at logs and so forth.

So, it's turned out to be a good living for me over the years.

We didn't make any money, but we had a heck of a lot of fun.

So.

Some way or other, we just ended up working on just about every other house in Brownsburg.

The Huffman house, and then I built the cabin on the corner down there where Dawn and Tom are in.

The bank building, which is a spectacular building, made a wine cooler out of the vault.

I started this project in 1978.

There's eight log structures on this property that are actually all local buildings.

The second building is an unusual building that actually dates to about 1850 or so.

It's half corn crib, half wagon shed.

And then this building came from over near Rockbridge Baths.

They say it was originally a one-room store.

This building here, the gazebo was actually the remnants of Gravel Hill School.

That's where my grandfather went to school, and I just gathered up the timbers and made a little gazebo out.

The log cabin in the front yard came from one mile down the road.

Fella wouldn't sell it, but then after he passed away, the farm was subdivided and the guy called me and he said, "man, just come and get it."

And then he said, "if you don't want it, we're gonna to burn it."

So naturally, I went scarfed it up and it's our guest cottage.

Director: That building that looks like a hotel?

Yeah.

I ended up getting it for nothing.

Well, time taking it down, all that sort of stuff.

But it is.

It is what it as it originally was built.

I had some old, early, early, early flooring out of a cabin that we took down out at Collierstown years ago, and that's what's on the floor upstairs.

But the only thing that I really changed in this thing was that wall.

We flipped the logs inside out.

We don't rent this thing.

This is just strictly for friends and family and so forth.

Oh.

I worked on this thing about a year, I guess, because I've got to make a living.

I mean, I've got I've got to work also.

This building houses what's known as the Brownsburg Broom Machine.

I built this, this little cabin for Penny years ago, to do her brooms in.

I had a guy that came to me about 30 years ago.

He knew I collected all sorts of weird stuff and said he had a broom machine he wanted to give me, and I had no use for a broom machine.

But after Penny and I got together, she informed me that she was a broom maker at a museum up in Ohio.

I don't know, I don't look at it as an art form.

I looked at it as as saving buildings, there's so many buildings and stuff that have just been bulldozed up around here.

Things evolve and Brownsburg has evolved twice in my lifetime, and it's kind of going through a phase now of, you know, a lot of new people moving into Brownsburg.

So things change.

I'm still farming.

I want to farm more.

I'm gonna to retire for about two weeks, run out of money farming, and go back to work, probably.

But that's just the way things go.

We believe that this was part of the Valley Road at one point.

We call this the Brownsburg Turnpike, this road that passes through.

It was clearly a transportation hub and a commercial hub.

The fact that the railroad and changes in what was the Valley Pike, which we call Route 11 today, moved it east in some ways was a good thing because then Brownsburg didn't undergo the changes in early the 20th century, the transportation kind of became a time capsule, kind of stuck in time.

The traffic pales in comparison to what it would have been had the road stayed in this direction.

Who was here before the white European settlers arrived?

I think we have to go back 15,000 years or so.

When the first settlers came to the American shores, this was not an empty continent.

It was fully populated and had been populated for tens of thousands of years.

For instance, just up the road, you'll find an amazing burial mound on Hayes Creek.

Probably goes back 800 to 1000 years.

You can't really put a plow in your garden or shovel in the ground here without running into the stories of the Native Americans who were here.

1730s and 40s is when they started arriving here.

And I think I'm descended from some of them from just a few miles over here who were originally from Scotland, the Walkers, who were gunmakers, interestingly, and went to Ireland, like many of the Presbyterians, and then to Pennsylvania.

But most of them, as we both know from early researcher, the vast majority of early settlers were what people refer to as Scots or Scotch-Irish, now called Ulster-Scots, mostly Presbyterians.

This area we're in right now in Brownsburg was owned by the Wardlaw family, who were Scotch, and they owned a huge amount of land in this area, and that's roughly mid 1740s.

And early on, the Presbyterians emphasized education.

And just a few miles from where we are, one of the first churches in this entire area of Virginia was Timber Ridge.

And another church just up the road, which has long been associated with Brownsburg, New Providence, about a mile from here.

And a guy from Ireland named John Brown came over to America as a young immigrant, went to Princeton, because that's what you did in those days, if you wanted to be a Presbyterian minister.

It was called College of New Jersey at that time.

And he was sent by the Presbyterian denomination here.

He was the first minister assigned in this area, and he preached at two churches for more than 20 years.

He was at New Providence 40 years.

And the significance of that is he owned some of the original town lots of Brownsburg in the 1790s, and we can't prove it.

But it has long been assumed, Brownsburg is named for Reverend John Brown.

This is just a young guy from Ireland, probably had nothing, but he married into a very important family, the Prestons, and they stressed education.

Reverend John Brown had a bunch of kids.

Two of them became United States senators.

His grandson ran for vice president, and his granddaughter was Abraham Lincoln's wife's stepmother, Mary Todd Lincoln.

Her stepmother was Reverend John Brown's granddaughter from Staunton, Virginia.

One of the things that we often talk about is the legacy of these folks moving forward.

And that's just one example.

There are many others, but all of that's grounded in education and immediately and the schools they started creating and eventually Washington and Lee University.

Agriculture became an important part of doing that.

That brought in the need for laborers.

There weren't enough indentured servants to go around.

So Virginia brought in the first slaves into the New World in 1619.

So, from the very beginning, you see evidence of the African American culture alongside here, both free and slave.

The first known African American landholder west of the Blue Ridge Mountains is a man named Edward Tarr.

He was a free Black from Pennsylvania, took that same route up the Wagon Road and had a blacksmith forge near Timber Ridge, just a few miles from here.

There was a man who lived just south of town here, Captain Hugh Adams, War of 1812 Vet, who owned more than 20 enslaved people.

Now, this is a little bit later.

This is the 1850s.

He was single, when he died, he emancipated all 20.

It's the largest emancipation in Rockbridge history.

And almost all of them went to Liberia.

And this is where you get into the real human story.

It wasn't just his people.

It took three years to get them to Liberia.

So they were free.

And they're walking the streets of Brownsburg.

They had accounts at the stores right next door.

And right around the corner was a couple of landowners who the spouses of some of these folks who were going to go to Liberia.

What do you do?

So they pulled their money together and bought the spouses so they could go to Liberia.

There were plenty of enslaved people.

Now the black population of this county is less than 5%.

At the end of the Civil War, there were 1000 black men who registered to vote in this county.

It's powerful.

You know, you can't look at the landscape around here without knowing that it is culturally shaped by the African Americans who are here.

Reporter: David Greene teaches engineering at the University of Virginia.

So would you like to see it?

But just a few generations before, his ancestor lived here - David: "Reminds me of my granddaddy's little chicken house," Reporter: - A slave.

But this is his first chance to come here to the old McChesney farm, where his great - great - great - great grandmother, Anne Red, was a slave.

You know, slavery wasn't all that long ago.

You know, this is still resonates in American society.

It still influences, you know, really who we are as a country.

And it's something that I think people really have to get into to understand, you know, where we have been to really get a good sense of if we're going to optimize where we're going to go in the future.

Dick Barnes and Paul Hahn founded this museum to preserve the local history and culture about 15 years ago.

And when I moved back ten years ago and I started out as just a volunteer, but as they aged out, I was left holding the director's keys.

When I took over as director.

Sort of.

We're all volunteers and it's all a joint effort.

We did "The Rise and Fall of the Country Store."

It was during the pandemic because there were five country stores in this village, so it made sense to do something.

Highlighting a historical aspect of the village.

We've had "The History of Barns"; we've had Civil War exhibit here.

We had the "Rise and Fall of the Country Store."

So now we have, Interwoven: Unearthed Stories of Slavery, just like the other exhibits that we've worked on.

As hard as anyone can work on anything.

And it's an exhibit about something that happened and it's truth.

And it's survival.

And that's been very rewarding.

This is the most rewarding thing I've ever been involved in.

And it wasn't me.

The beauty of being a volunteer who didn't study Museum Studies.

We didn't want it to be about slavery or racism.

Everyone knows about slavery and racism.

We wanted it to be about an aspect of Rockbridge history.

Tell the story in a way that gently broke the myths, that slavery wasn't bad, that there wasn't much slavery here.

There was 23.7% of Rockbridge County was enslaved in 1860.

And in this village too, and it's okay to say that.

And what this exhibit did, it took away that taboo.

Also, it was very important to tell this story in a very moving way, in a way that made it universal by talking about one single family's journey, because we can all relate to that.

It's about one family, Jacob Halliburton, who was enslaved, and his wife Abigail, and what happened to their two kids.

And this letter home to his beloved father.

You can't criticize it or say that it didn't happen.

There's the letter right there.

There's the documents right there that say what they went through.

You can read between the lines.

In America, you talk about slavery or it's some abstract thing.

According to some of the black families I talked to, it was shameful and awful and so scary and sad.

And they hate thinking about it only through the context of history can I distance myself and think of what my family went through and how hard it must have been.

In the 70s or 80s in a renovation or demolition of a house in the area, in a coffee can, in a wall.

There was this letter.

It's a letter from William from Liberia back to his father, Jacob, here in Brownsburg.

Bensonville, Liberia, April 1st, 1861.

My dear father, I embraced with pleasure this opportunity of letting you know my whereabouts and how getting along here.

We are all well and all still living.

I am as hearty as I ever was.

But Priscilla is sick.

She is dissatisfied with the place, and have been wanting to come back to America ever since she has been here.

The children all grows finally.

And how is my little son?

Is he alive and doing well?

Right also, how time is over there.

Times is very hard here.

Direct anything you send to Careysburg, Liberia.

Africa.

Your son, William Halliburton.

The injustice of the dismissal, the cancer culture of ignoring Black history.

That's cancel culture.

And so I love being part of something that, in a very small way, affects that positively, erases that idea - that it was all fine.

When a little boy and a little girl are for sale in Brownsburg, a little boy and girl are for sale.

And I'm speaking for all the volunteers, about 20 or 30.

It's our contribution to educate people about the true history of this area.

Bill: So, let's hit the challenging topic of politics, right?

It's tough out there, .

.

.

around the country.

Around the world, there's a lot going on.

Sometimes family can't talk to family, neighbor can't talk to neighbor.

How do you guys deal with it?

Do you feel open to discuss it here?

Do you avoid it?

How do you manage that?

Good morning, Don.. How are you doing?

Good to see you, Don.

How are you?

Good to see you.

Yeah, I just don't talk about it.

- Okay.

- I have my own opinions.

And if you don't know people.

You don't know what what they are.

And some people are, you know, if they find out you're one particular party, then they won't even speak to you.

There's people here that will have completely different views, but we can have a conversation and learn from each other about the other side.

Other people, we might not have that conversation with it.

All other people I can talk to about, you know, how do you pull the head off a lawnmower and fix a piston?

So, I just try not to get too involved.

I've never missed voting since I was 18, but I've never missed a time in my life.

And there's the whole thing about, you know, if you want to get really philosophical, there's a whole there's darkness in the world and there's light in the world.

And which one are you going to contribute to?

Like you said, the world's chaotic out there.

It's a way of life worth protecting, right?

I do think we're just a microcosm of the rest of the country.

I think probably every town, county, village is like that.

What I observed here is people respect that others have different views.

The country is in a weird place with that conversation being behind closed doors too often.

Well, you know, everybody's got an opinion on everything, and it'd be a dull place if everybody thought the same all the time.

And that's one of the beautiful things about this country, is all those different opinions kids start to think, you know, in countries where there is not that opportunity to have those independent thoughts, the creativity is less and innovation is less.

You got sons in the area.

So what's your hope long term for them here?

Good health, is one thing, and hope they're successful in what they're doing.

And I have four grandchildren in the area and I pray for them because I think they're going to face a lot of different things that I had to face.

In 20 years from now, we look at the world a little bit differently, and we recognize that maybe events happened in a way that the Greatest Generation is still in front of us, right?

And that we were hopefully wrong a little bit to say it.

Maybe it's just the way we look at the world, at our point in life and hopefully that changes, right?

What are you guys doing the rest of the day?

I hope not anything.

- You guys have a great day.

- Okay.

Nice to see you, Bill.

- Don, a pleasure.

Enjoy your motorcycle ride.

For me, being a black woman, a black minister, I have preached in several white churches and I spent 13 years in black churches.

And I have to say that people that know me, they are proud of what came out of Brownsburg.

I'm proud of my blackness.

I'm proud to be an African American woman in this town or anywhere I go.

God placed me here to do what God want me to do.

Right out of high school, I went to nursing school, and I worked with a lot of people in Lexington because that was the hospital I worked at.

Some people were a little resistant to having a black female taking care of them.

And which one lady was from Brownsburg.

And I was really shocked because I know she was just a good friend to my grandmother and my grandfather, and I just stood there and I just couldn't believe it that that happened.

But eventually things got better.

I met a lot of people.

I took care of a lot of different nationalities, and I never had a problem because we were all trying to work to do the same thing, to heal this person.

But I have one incident in two of the churches that I was in.

When Mr.Floyd got killed in the way he did, and I wanted to tell them how being a black woman in white churches, how I felt.

And one of the older gentleman got up and walked out.

He didn't want to hear it.

They called a meeting and they wanted the (district superior) to get rid of me, and I told them, I resign.

And I thought you would like to know how we as African Americans feel.

What's going on in the world today, sending people out of the country and all the fighting, and stuff.

Coming from a preacher, my Bible says: love one another, as I've loved you.

But all of us came from somewhere else.

Slaves came from different parts of Africa.

We built this country.

Our blood is in this land, and all of us are part of this United States, because we got opportunities to do things that we couldn't do in other places.

That's our history.

Our children need to know our history.

They need to know their history so we can understand one another.

But when you try to hide it, my color is not going to be erased.

I'm still going to be a black woman.

I would hope that the people here will listen to what we have to say, to know what our importance is of being here, and what we would like to see come from them is love, respect.

One day, maybe we all come together.

When people learn that something has happened to you and they've experienced the same thing, it puts them a step closer to you, to understand.

And they understand that brings friendship and love in.

So hopefully that might be one of the things that we can get this world turned around on.

Lucy: Here in Brownsburg., I don't ever remember being called out of a name or anything.

Gwen: It was just phenomenal.

Different people coming in and good people to really come through.

Growing up in Brownsburg, I was just one of the kids.

<5 I see trouble.

<5 One morning I wake up, <5 Wake up!

<5 Wake up!

<5 Wake up!

<5 Wake up to Glory.

That's a really powerful thing.

And churches are finally starting to kind of work together again.

Brownsburg has always been together.

I love driving through Brownsburg and see all you new people.

- Yankees.

- That's right.

And that you feel the same love and excitement in what we saw growing up even though we were separated.

But you still feel the ghosts of Brownsburg saints in Brownsburg.

Very much so.

I work at the food pantry every Thursday.

And I take my vegetables there.

The people just love the home-grown vegetables and the fruits.

And I said, we have a lot of gardeners in this area, so what can we do to bring them together?

So we could all share the fruits of our labors?

I said, I need a front porch.

We just need a place for people to come in to bring their produce, and then I'll take them into the pantry.

Immediately, a member of the board said, you can use my front porch.

That was ten years ago, the birth of the Brownsburg gardeners.

And in that time, over those ten years, between 15 and 20 gardeners have contributed over 14,000 pounds of fruits and produce.

It's a sign of the community.

One of the things that I've really valued in the last year or so is seeing the community come around Asbury and want to help rebuild that church and make sure that it stands for decades to come, not just because it's a beautiful building in Brownsburg, but because it's Asbury and it has its roots here.

It is important!

It is important to hold on to that history and also to give that congregation and that community the opportunity to continue and to thrive.

That's a gift!

That piece of property and how they pull their money together to build the foundation and then put the church there.

It's so much history in that little acre.

And for me to stand in that pulpit as a black woman and preach to you.

That fills me up!

Because at one time, you know why you have balconies in churches?

- Because that's where the slaves were.

- Yeah.

Exactly.

You got the smallest little church, and you'll find a little bitty balcony.

You had slaves outside the windows, listening.

We could work your field and pick your cotton, but we couldn't worship the same God that created you, created me.

Yeah.

I think just to recognize, right?

To take ownership of this is what came before us.

We know that you're right.

Slave sat here.

I'm sure they helped build this sanctuary.

Are listed in minutes and things like that.

To say we know that that's the truth and we cannot change that.

What we can change is the present and the future, and just being respectful of that.

But that was then, and this is me now.

I can change the world one church at a time.

Director: So, do you think this community will still be here 20 years from now?

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Absolutely.

I'm going to come back and raid the post office for my vegetables!

Reporter: This church was built by freed slaves in 1869.

Their descendants brought it back from the ashes after a 1914 fire.

And today the congregation at Asbury Church in Brownsburg is still carrying the torch.

It sounded more like a big thunder, or like something like a big crash.

During an anniversary celebration last year, the board of trustees say the floor at Asbury Church suddenly fell in, revealing a termite infestation in the more than 150-year-old house of worship.

What could have been a tragedy became an opportunity to revitalize the church.

They raised $65,000 to fix the damage caused by termites, the largest donation coming from the Historic Lexington Foundation.

<5 What's there to hold <5 In the light of this moon <5 My mind keeps searching, <5 but my heart decides <5 Thought can be cruel.

<5 They're not mine to own <5 The space unravels <5 When you let go JR: Black folks all used to all worship up at New Providence.

And after the Civil War, we have been told that Black folks wanted their own church.

It was a chance for them to take control over parts of their lives as religion and worship.

So in 1869, this church was established.

I have to laugh about this.

As young as I am at 79, I can go back to when it was standing-room only.

Oh yeah, of course.

Now over the years it has dropped off, but fortunately we've been able to maintain with the few that we have.

And of course, with the help of this community.

It was just a Black church, but it's anybody church now.

- So I'm thankful to live here myself.

- Yes I am.

This church mean a whole lot to me.

I got married in this church.

September 9th, 1959.

Right now, you know, I've been trying to help to keep this church going ever since.

Well, you was the one that done the ceiling here.

- Yep, I did see them by myself.

- Yeah.

And it took me a while, but I got it finished.

And what the people doing now in Brownsburg, restoring the place there and making everybody happy.

Everybody.

Everybody used the church.

- So yes, in Brownsburg, if they need to, without any problem.

- No problem.

I just goes to show you how much people really cares about us and this church.

- Right.

And they still help us.

- Yes.

It means the world as a Black man in this community and in this church, I would say in so many ways, this church is a reflection of a lot of us.

- This incident that happened with the church, it has actually brought out the best.

- Yes.

- And practically everybody that we have in this community, - It's making a stronger.

It's making us a lot stronger too.

So this starts been real blessing to me.

I mean, yeah, I love this church.

I haven't been to church since it the floor gave away, but I've been really happy when when they opened the door, said everything.

Fix everything and you can come back to church.

Not only the church, but I'm excited for the little village of Brownsburg.

Most people that live in and around Brownsburg don't realize that this is the only designated historical village in the whole state of Virginia, and that when you come to this place, you get a feeling like almost no other.

When I was a kid and my grandparents used to come get me every weekend, and so every time my grandmother and granddad would bring me through that Avenue of Trees, I had this warm blanket feeling of love and joy that used to come over me.

And I'll never forget that.

And I still sort of feel that way now when I ride around, and I don't have all these pressures on my mind about jobs and thinking about this and that.

But if I'm just riding, enjoying the ride, those memories flood back to me.

I just really love that.

And so we have those same warm, loving blanket feelings here in this church.

That we're going to get to rekindle and to share with others as well.

Right?

And have all the health that you've given us all.

A big welcome to everyone and thank you for coming to this evening's event.

It's really highlighting the importance of community.

And it's in the latest building renovated in the village, the old Asbury Church, which is very fitting.

Thank you for your presence.

And I don't mean just this evening, I mean, in the broad sense.

Your presence in this community over decades has been why this village works.

Thank you for welcoming us into your home.

And it's been such a wonderful opportunity.

And it still is a special place.

And even though I've witnessed so much change in the past 40 some years, and I have seen all of the lifetime residents, all the people that I knew that have passed and are gone.

It was a place where change was not rapidly accepted, but as time went on, it was more accepted because as I have aged and matured, I know and I've aged well, haven't I, Bruce?

My final wish is for the kids that are here now, growing up, that they appreciate the simplicity.

That they appreciate the people, that they appreciate the history that is here in our small community.

And I wish that every family could raise their kids in a place like Brownsburg.

So the end.

Oh, I forgot two of the questions.

What do you think the future of Brownsburg is?

I think the future of Brownsburg would be .

.

.

A happy place.

Maybe more people would live here.

I really like living here and going to the museum and looking at the historical things.

The thing that I most like about this place is that it has a lot of cool history, and that most of the historical buildings are still standing.

I look forward to growing up here and being a farmer when I grow up.