Josephine School Community Museum

09/25/2026

The next Josephine School Community Museum Board meeting begins at 4 p.m. Monday, Sept. 28, at the museum – and new board members are needed, too. Learn more about preserving Clarke County’s Black history by attending a board meeting.

JSCM Board meetings are generally at 4 p.m. on the fourth Monday of each month, occasionally changing because of holidays or inclement weather. Contact the museum at (540) 955-5512 or [email protected].

The Josephine City School was officially added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1995.

The Josephine City School “National Register of Historic Places” nomination form offers a detailed history of the two-room school and the Black community that built it:https://www.dhr.virginia.gov/VLR_to_transfer/PDFNoms/168-5027_Josephine_City_School_1995_Final_Nomination.pdf

09/22/2026

Autumn makes us think about apples and the county’s once thriving apple industry. At its peak in the mid-20th century, there were more than 4,000 acres of apple orchards in Clarke County. The Clarke County Historical Association archives include an early 1900s photo of African American and white apple pickers in the Sprint orchard near Boyce, Va.

The Sprint family farm was known as Bellview. A 1936 land sale advertisement describes 306 acres, including about 25 acres of bearing orchard. A 1939 notice for the sale of farm equipment and livestock notes the Sprint Farm is one mile west of Boyce, south of Route 50. A 1931 apple harvest report in the Clarke Courier newspaper includes, “The Sprint packing house at Boyce packed a large run from that neighborhood.” Other notices about the Sprint apple packing house suggest it was near the railroad.

Other references to “Sprint” in the archives include J.W. Sprint & Sons, a business in Boyce owned by John Sprint, and John Trone Sprint Jr. in Millwood. “The Clarke House” in Millwood – built around 1840 by James Hopkins Clark – was at one time a hotel run by the Sprint family.

The Josephine School Community Museum offers its sincere thanks to Michael, who follows this page and who found numerous Clarke Courier articles and documents related to the Sprint family. Preserving history truly is a group effort.

09/17/2026

On Sept. 16, 2026, Shenandoah Valley Battlefields National Historic District honored a Black man from Clarke County on the anniversary of his significant – and extremely dangerous – contribution to the Union in 1864. The organization unveiled a Thomas Laws monument at its Third Wi******er Battlefield Park, located at 541 Redbud Road in Wi******er.

NOTE: Thomas Laws is buried in Milton Valley Cemetery in Berryville, not far from the Josephine School Community Museum. After the war, Mr. Laws was among the first people to buy property in the new African American community that would become Josephine City.

The monument’s plaque, titled “One Man’s Courage,” reads:

“Here, on the Third Battle of Wi******er battlefield, we honor Thomas Laws, an enslaved man from Clarke County whose courage and resourcefulness helped turn the tide of the Civil War in the Shenandoah Valley.
Risking his life, Laws passed through Confederate lines on September 16, 1864, carrying a secret message from Union General Philip H. Sheridan to Unionist Rebecca Wright in Wi******er, asking for information about the Confederate Army. After Wright wrote to Sheridan that Confederate General Jubal Early’s forces in the area were weakened and divided, Laws carried Wright’s note to Sheridan. This information helped Sheridan plan and secure a decisive victory at Wi******er on September 19, 1864 – a critical Union military success that helped hasten the war’s end, preserve the Union, and bring about slavery’s constitutional death. A critical step on the path to securing civil rights for all Americans.
Thomas Laws’s quiet bravery reminds us that freedom is won not only by armies but also by ordinary individuals who, at great personal risk, answer conscience’s call for the greater good.”

162 Years Ago Today… Thomas Laws Carries a Secret Message

On September 16, 1864, Thomas Laws, an enslaved man from Clarke County, played a crucial role in delivering vital intelligence to Union Gen. Philip Sheridan.

Laws arrived at the home of Wi******er resident Rebecca Wright carrying a secret message from Sheridan, who was seeking information about the strength, position, and intentions of Confederate Gen. Jubal Early’s army. The message had been concealed inside a piece of foil hidden in Laws’ mouth.

Wright provided the requested information, revealing that Gen. Joseph Kershaw’s division and Cutshaw’s artillery had been sent away and that no additional Confederate troops were expected from Richmond. Laws then concealed the response and made the dangerous journey back through Confederate lines to deliver it to Sheridan.

His successful mission provided Sheridan with critical intelligence that a full Confederate division had been transferred to reinforce Gen. Robert E. Lee at Petersburg, leaving Early’s army significantly weakened in the Shenandoah Valley.

The message Laws carried gave Sheridan the information he needed to launch his attack on Wi******er just three days later.

On the anniversary of this event, we’re proud to announce the newest monument in the National Historic District, honoring Thomas Laws. The monument can now be visited at Third Wi******er Battlefield Park, where his story is remembered and preserved for future generations.

09/14/2026

The Clarke County Historical Association’s newest exhibit – “William & Byron: Art, Memory and the Black Horsemen of Clarke County” – opens with a FREE reception at 6 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 24. The museum is located at 32 E. Main St. in Berryville.

The exhibit, which was curated by CCHA archivist Dana Getka, celebrates the oft-overlooked work of Black horsemen in the county. “Byron & His Groom William,” a painting by John Beale Bordley II (1800 - 1882), is at the center of the exhibit. Other images include photographs and news reports about Black grooms and jockeys who helped Clarke County’s horse industry thrive.

The exhibit is on view through December. Museum is open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Friday; and Saturdays by appointment only. Contact the CCHA at 540-955-2600 or [email protected].

NOTE: On May 2, 2025, the Josephine School Community Museum posted a lot of information and photos about ground-breaking and legendary Black horsemen. Use the “search” feature (click the three dots at top right on the museum’s page) and type the word jockeys to quickly find the post.

09/10/2026

The 9th and 10th U.S. Cavalry were entirely composed of Black Americans as were the 24th and 25th infantry divisions; all were organized following the Civil War. The 9th and 10th U.S. Cavalry served on the western frontier during the Indian Wars, and history suggests it was the Apache and Cheyenne who first called the Black men “buffalo soldiers.” The soldiers adopted the name as a sign of honor and respect.

Clarke County men went west to join the Buffalo Soldiers, too, and in the late 20th century, two men from Clarke were dedicated to preserving Buffalo Soldiers history.

One of those men was Stanley Hamilton Lawson, whose relative Walter Lawson was born in Clarke and was a private in the 25th Infantry during the Indian Wars. After his service, Mr. Lawson moved his family to Spokane, Wash., where he became a full-time police officer with the Spokane Police Department. When he died in 1917, he was the only person of African descent serving as a policeman on the West Coast.

Stanley Lawson served in the U. S. Air Force. He became a Buffalo Soldiers researcher, re-enactor and educator.

Like Stanley Lawson, Clarke County native Houston Douglas Wedlock was also a Buffalo Soldiers researcher, re-enactor and educator. In many of his presentations, Sgt. Wedlock noted the Buffalo Soldiers had to fight prejudice, too. “They wanted to be considered men, and make life better for future generations.”

Sgt. Houston Wedlock, who was born in White Post, spent more than 20 years in the U.S. Army and served two tours of duty in Vietnam; the second tour was with the elite 5th Special Forces known as the Green Berets.

Although numerous Black Union Army regiments were raised during the Civil War – collectively known as the United States Colored Troops – Buffalo Soldiers were established by Congress in peacetime as the first all-Black Army regiments. (The U.S. military did not desegregate until 1948.)

Benjamin Brown, who was born in Clarke County, was Buffalo Soldier who served during the Wars with the Plains Indians. He was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor in 1889 for his bravery in action.

Buffalo Soldier Charles Davis of White Post was a master sergeant in the 9th Cavalry. John H. Thompson of White Post served, too (and is buried in Sugar Hill Cemetery in White Post).

Another Clarke County resident, Albert Young, was a corporal in Company B of the 25th Infantry.

Edward Cross and Robert Jenkins were also Buffalo Soldiers from Clarke County; both are buried in Milton Valley Cemetery on Josephine Street.

We do our best to preserve Clarke County’s Black history. Help us complete the list of Clarke men who were Buffalo Soldiers. Leave names and details in the comment section.

09/07/2026

“Pulpit, Primer, and Hearth: Documenting Heritage Sites” is a FREE presentation from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Monday, Oct. 12, at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church Parish Hall (15 Barnett St., Berryville). Karen Hughes White, director of the Afro-American Historical Association of Fauquier County VA. (AAHA), will discuss her work documenting Black history and preserving cultural heritage sites across Virginia’s Piedmont and surrounding regions.

Ms. White is a prominent archivist who co-founded the AAHA after researching her own family’s ancestral connections to an estate in Virginia.

Ms. White’s Oct. 12 talk in Berryville includes a Q&A session and free lunch. RSVPs are greatly appreciated to ensure food for everyone.

Contact the event’s host – The Descendants Committee of Clarke County, Virginia – at 703-608-2496 or [email protected]

09/04/2026

John Curtiss Underwood (b. March 14, 1809; d. Dec. 7, 1873) was a lawyer and outspoken antislavery activist. In the 1850s, he and his family lived in Clarke County, Va. By the end of 1856, his neighbors had so often threatened his safety that Underwood left and moved his family to New York. His written account of his exile was published in The New York Times on Jan. 6, 1857.

President Lincoln appointed Underwood a federal judge for Virginia’s eastern district in 1863. He was reassigned to the United States District Court for the District of Virginia on June 11, 1864. In this position, Judge Underwood presided over the grand jury that indicted Confederate president Jefferson Davis for treason in May 1866.

Judge Underwood continued his highly critical and public remarks against former Confederates and their sympathizers in favor of African American suffrage.

He was elected president of the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1867-68, and its “The Underwood Constitution” granted Black men the right to vote, established a system of free public schools, and secured other democratic reforms.

The long letter John Underwood wrote to The New York Times after leaving Clarke County includes this passage:

“We were sad at seeing our household goods scattered around us; for, though in form a voluntary sale, it was, in fact, a forced sale … forced upon us by the oppression of proud and cruel men, who neither feared God nor regarded humanity. Our little children were grieving over the sale of the horses and colts, cows and calves, pet lambs and playthings, which they had been accustomed to call their own, and to which they had become attached, as farmers’ children often are. To increase the gloom and desolation caused by this general breaking up and scattering of those old and familiar associations and objects to which our hearts fondly clung, our kind neighbor, Mr. Feltner, called late in the afternoon with a message from another friendly neighbor, that we must immediately prepare for the reception of a Committee of Vigilance, which was coming on with the most hostile intentions. This seemed to explain the mistake published in the papers respecting the day of the sale. And now came trouble to my wife and her female friends, who urged me to leave the house and them, as they supposed the mob would be appeased if made certain of my absence.”

Read the full text of John C. Underwood’s letter to The New York Times at https://encyclopediavirginia.org/primary-documents/letter-from-john-c-underwood-in-the-new-york-times-january-6-1857/

Read more about Mr. Underwood at https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/underwood-john-c-1809-1873/

09/03/2026

“Still Family: William Still and the Legacy of the Underground Railroad” is presented at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 7, in Henkel Hall, Hester Auditorium, on the campus of Shenandoah University (726 Wade Miller Dr., Wi******er). The event is FREE and open to the public.

Based in Philadelphia, Pa., William Still was a conductor of the Underground Railroad. In his obituary, The New York Times proclaimed Still “The Father of the Underground Railroad” and credited him with helping as many as 800 slaves escape to freedom.

At Shenandoah, William Still’s descendant Valerie Still will discuss her new book, “Still Family: William Still and the Legacy of the Underground Railroad.” For more information, contact Professor Jonathan Noyalas, director of Shenandoah University’s McCormick Civil War Institute at (540) 665-4501 or [email protected].

Read more about the Institute at www.su.edu/mcwi/

09/01/2026

In 1993 – when plans were being made to transform the Josephine City School into Clarke County’s Black history museum – Mary Bell Jackson Howard wrote a remembrance of her childhood education. In the 1920s, she attended the two-room schoolhouse that was built in 1882 to serve the Black community.

We have transcribed her letter to the best of our ability. Scroll through the images; text for each page is in its caption.

Mary Bell Jackson was born March 7, 1909, in Berryville, Va., the daughter of William A. Jackson and Nannie Justice Williams Jackson. She married Earl William Howard; he died in 1947. The Howards had three children: Nannie, Ruth, and Earl Jr. Mary Bell Howard was a member of the Josephine Improvement Association and of Zion Baptist Church on Josephine Street.

Mary Bell Jackson Howard died in Oct. 24, 2009, at age 100.

Excerpts of Mary Bell Howard’s 1993 letter are included in the comprehensive Josephine City School “National Register of Historic Places” nomination form dated March 1, 1995: https://www.dhr.virginia.gov/VLR_to_transfer/PDFNoms/168-5027_Josephine_City_School_1995_Final_Nomination.pdf

08/28/2026

A great man once lived in the center of Millwood, and it would take a book to tell William “Bill” Layton’s story. Fortunately, he wrote one a decade before he died in 2007 at age 92. “Layton Looks at Life,” published in 1996, is available at the Josephine School Community Museum and the Clarke County Historical Association museum.

His Millwood home, “Rock Cliff,” was built on land his family owned since 1871. Though his career was in Washington, D.C., (beginning in 1965), the Laytons spent their summers in Millwood.

Bill Layton’s obituary in The Washington Post sums up his education, career, and community service while only hinting at his compassion and kindness. It does not mention his warmth and humor, nor does it mention the extraordinary family he and his wife Phoebe raised.

The Post wrote: “Mr. Layton was born [July 17, 1915] in Hanover, Va., and graduated from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. He received a master's degree in sociology from Fisk University in Nashville in the late 1930s and did further graduate study at Michigan State University.

“After working in the Nashville public schools, Mr. Layton began his professional career in 1942 with the Urban League in Columbus, Ohio. From 1951 to 1959, he was executive of the Urban League chapter in Muskegon, Mich. He then spent six years as director of education and community services for the Michigan Civil Rights Commission in Lansing, Mich., before moving to Washington.

“Mr. Layton lived in Washington since 1965, when he became director of contract compliance for the Department of Agriculture. In 1971, he became one of the first African American senior staff officials of the Federal Reserve Board, where he was director of affirmative action hiring throughout the Federal Reserve System. He retired in 1977, but continued as a consultant to the Federal Reserve Board until 1981.

“He collected documents associated with the Civil War and the abolitionist movement and often lectured about his collection. He was a member of many historical organizations, including the Columbia Historical Society, U.S. Capitol Historical Society, the Lincoln Group of the District of Columbia and the McCormick Civil War Institute of Shenandoah University in Wi******er, Va.

“He was a founding member of the Fort Collier Civil War Center in Wi******er and served on the boards of the Grafton School in Berryville, Va., the Shenandoah Arts Council, the Clarke County chapter of the Red Cross and the Wayside Theater in Middletown, Va. He was a member of the Kiwanis Club; the Torch Club, a youth leadership group; and the Omega Psi Phi fraternity.”

Bill Layton’is wife of 67 years, Phoebe Anderson Layton, died at age 101 in 2018.

Their daughter Andrée Roaf, who died in 2009, was the first Black woman to serve on the Arkansas Supreme Court, and she is the mother of former NFL offensive lineman Willie Roaf.

Daughter Mary Layton is a public relations professional who served director of public relations for the Girl Scout Council of the Nation’s Capital and was Assistant U.S. Postmaster General in the 1980s.

Daughter Serena Davis, who worked in advertising, died in 1988.

A Washington Post article published before Mr. Layton’s death begins, “On March 4, 1933, William Wendell Layton came to Washington with his family to watch the inauguration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

“As a student of history, he recognized the importance of Roosevelt's presidency, which had arrived in the midst of the worst financial crisis of the century. And as an African American who had grown up near Richmond in a rigidly segregated society, the 17-year-old Layton saw hope in Roosevelt’s message of uniting all Americans.”

And the article includes this: “Wherever he went, Layton had a way of bringing people together from all backgrounds and races.”

The Stewart Bell Jr. Archives at Handley Regional Library in Wi******er contain “The Layton Family Collection” of news clippings, correspondence, and writings regarding African-American history and the Civil Rights Movement. Mr. Layton also donated some of his vast collection of historic documents to Shenandoah University.

He had documents signed by Abraham Lincoln and his Cabinet, plus items autographed by Jack Johnson, Marian Anderson, Langston Hughes, and Rosa Parks, who was Mr. Layton’s friend.

Links to The Washington Post articles mentioned in this post are in the “comments” section.