Marion Venable is excited about the first of the Surry 250 Lecture Series events, and she hopes folks will come out to hear about the county’s early settlers and their architecture.
The lecture series returns with “Surry Land Grants and Early Architecture” at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 21, at the Surry County Service Center, 915 East Atkins Street, Dobson.
The lecture is being presented by architectural historian Laura A.W. Phillips and Venable who worked together back in 1980 on what would become “Simple Treasures, The Architectural Legacy of Surry County.”
Participants will review the land grant maps of the early settlers of Surry County to identify “where the iron ore deposits were, or where the water was,” Venable said. Seeing the land maps will help paint a more complete picture of the earliest settlers and why they may have chosen to settle where they did.
A PowerPoint presentation will also include highlights of the variety of architecture in Surry County. When Phillips was first cataloging architecture in 1980, she documented 638 buildings. Venable says many of those structures are being lost to time, more than 100 of those initially catalogued are now gone.
“Thankfully, the county and the preservation society saw the need and got the grant funds to protect these buildings. Otherwise, we may have nothing,” Venable said.
She mused that all it once was that all houses were built using the knowledge, skill, and talents of those who were building it. Therefore, the old buildings of Surry County have distinct styles she said. “Until the time when you could basically order a house from Sears and have it shipped to you.”
Phillips and Venable worked together for several years on the Simple Treasures with Phillips doing the writing. “It took about five years getting it together to get it published,” Venable said. She also wanted to give credit to “Lucille Haynes who gave a sizeable amount of money to get the book published in the first place.”
The lecture Thursday “is a celebration of the land grant maps and the architectural uniqueness of Surry County.”
The lecture series is free to the public, and the next Surry 250 lecture will be in June.
Source: https://www.mtairynews.com