Category: Burgess Collection
Articles and documents by or about local photographer William Burgess.
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Colonel Henry Gantt of Valmont
by Richard Ludlam Nicholas “On the afternoon of July 3, 1863, Henry Gantt bravely led the regiment assigned to Garnett’s Brigade of Pickett’s Division up Cemetery Ridge in the battle of Gettysburg – arguably the most famous charge in American history.” Perhaps the most overlooked and forgotten man in Scottsville’s history is Colonel Henry Gantt,…
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Auto Endurance Test on Valley Street, 1914
Dr. L.R. Stinson owned the first car in Scottsville, a two-cylinder, bright-red, 1910 Maxwell. Soon these ‘motorized carriages’ were rattling the plank floor on the new town bridge. Cars altered Scottsville’s way of life greatly, wiping out the ferry, carriages and carts, and the blacksmith shop and stable on the corner of Valley and Main…
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Passenger Train from Richmond
The passenger train from Richmond made four trips daily to Scottsville in 1915; each trip took three hours. This photo, taken by Burgess at the C&O Depot in Scottsville, shows the State Farmers Institute Train, which Virginia Polytechnical Institute outfitted with agricultural displays in the coaches. At each stop, local farmers boarded this train to…
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Train Spotting at Scottsville Depot
The James River Division of the Chesapeake and Ohio (previously property of the Richmond and Allegheny Railroad Company), was of great importance to Scottsville as it hauled freight, passengers, and the daily mail to town. As did the James River and Kanawha Canal before it, the C & O train connected Scottsville to the commercial…
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The Covered Bridge at Temperance Wayside
“We rattle through the Hardware River’s old-timey “rabbit burrow” bridge,” wrote Virginia Moore, talking about life in Scottsville between the wars. This was the covered bridge built about 1850 at Temperance Wayside where Highway 6 crosses the Hardware River. Sheridan’s departing troops had clattered over it in 1865. A painting by Cornelia Burgess Dorrier shows…
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1865 Report to Stockholders of James River and Kanawha Canal
In the above photo, mules pulled a canal boat along the James River and Kanawha Canal near Richmond, Virginia, in the early 1860’s. The canal served as a very successful means of transporting produce from the Lynchburg area all the way to Richmond during the 1840-1880 time period. However, bad weather impacted the canal’s operation…
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Getting Off the Cars from Richmond – ca. 1914
Riding the ‘cars’ in 1914 was still a popular mode of travel, as shown in this photo at Scottsville Depot. Burgess captured the William Day Smith family arriving on the Richmond passenger train. Note the throng of townspeople gathered at the depot to watch the train arrive, a Scottsville custom that may date back to…
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The Postcard Collection
Before 1907, the U.S. Post Office did not permit writing a message on the address side of postcards. For that reason, many U.S. picture postcards mailed before then had messages written across their fronts. Postcards with a divided back finally were permitted in the U.S. in March 1907; addresses were to be written on the…
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