Local history gets a bit more interesting

By Darrell Laurant

Published: November 19, 2008

All too often, the phrase “local history” used to be synonymous with “boring.” I think that’s changing.

Part of it is the culture. Given the proliferation of publishing options (print on demand, e-books, etc.), and the blogging craze that is encouraging more and more people to channel their inner James Michener, local history has been dusted off and re-packaged.

No longer must such books present a grim choice between pseudo-genealogies thick with names, anecdotes of interest only to the immediate family of the author and extended graduate theses. Now you have, for example, Phyllis Coleman (“A Place Called Brookville”) and Charles Stinson (“Hogtown”).

Coleman and Stinson are two of the writers appearing Saturday (1 to 3 p.m.) at one of the “Author Extravaganzas” put on at Givens Books. Others include Jim and Anne Huston (authors of multiple books, including World War II histories and Civil War romance novels), Lona Greer Watson (whose mystery novel “Nocturne” has gotten serious love among Amazon reviewers), and ghost chronicler Jason Farris (“The Apparition and Other Tales of the Supernatural”).

All of these would probably be worth an individual article. Having written local histories myself, though, I confess to having a soft spot for Coleman and Stinson.

Phyllis Coleman never thought about chronicling her old high school until she attended the 50th reunion of her class in April of last year.

“We presented Jim Whorley (the current Brookville principal) with a framed lap throw showing the old school,” she said, “and they hung it up in the library of the new school.”

To put that into perspective, the “new school” was built in 1966.

“A lot of the students were really interested in it (the lap throw),” Coleman said, “because they had no idea there had ever been another Brookville High School.”

Indeed there was, having been created in 1926, part of the consolidation of no less than 105 separate county schools. It is now only a razed memory, its ghost located somewhere on the present grounds of Heritage High School.

“I really did this (the book) for the current students,” Coleman said, “because there was all this history they knew nothing about. That sent me on a journey like I’ve never been on in my life.”

A journey into libraries, courthouses and thin air (when she discovered that many of the earlier county school records had been “purged” into a Dumpster).

Coleman also has an interesting personal perspective on Brookville.

“Jerome (her husband of more than 50 years) and I were married when I was still in high school,” she said, “and they wouldn’t let you attend school if you were married.”

That changed, ultimately, and so Coleman (maiden name Wood) went back for her senior year at the age of 29, a year after the new Brookville High School opened.

“All the other kids were wonderful to me,” she recalled. “I was just one of them. I even went to the Homecoming Dance.”

Meanwhile, Charles Stinson was growing up in Madison Heights, a place known for as long as he can remember as “Hogtown.”

The cover of his book depicts a group of young men slouching against an old car above the caption: “Yeah, we’re from Hogtown … so what?”

Madison Heights has always been something of an orphan, not belonging to Lynchburg, not really belonging to the seat of county government some 10 miles away. An orphan with an attitude.

“I was pushing for some preservation work to be done on old Madison Heights,” said Stinson, who now lives in Forest, “and I was taking some local officials on a walking tour of that area, and I kept stopping and telling stories about things that had happened. A couple of them said: ‘You should write all that down,’ and I thought, ‘Yeah, maybe I should.’”

So why “Hogtown”?

“The best I could figure,” Stinson said, “the city of Lynchburg passed an ordinance somewhere in the 1800s that banned hog raising within the city limits. So people took their hogs across the river to raise.

“I feel pretty comfortable with that explanation, because I heard the same thing from a lot of different people.”

And besides, it’s his history book.