The phenomenon of leaving rocks and pebbles strewn around the countryside — covered in brightly colored paint, or even with messages of kindness and encouragement written on them — seems to be all the rage in recent years.
But Fletcher Edwards of Ararat says the practice is far from new, and he has rocks with nearly 200-year-old messages carved into them to prove his point.
Edwards, an amateur historian with an expansive collections of Native American arrowheads, tools, and other rocky oddities, has at least four stones that have various carvings on them from Samson Fleming, a man who lived from 1794 to 1877.
“He was a farmer and blacksmith,” Edwards said of Fleming. He lived most, if not all, of his life near Richmond Hill in East Bend, where he owned 200 acres of farmland.
The four rocks he has, of various sizes, have all sorts of etchings on them by Fleming. Some are his initials and the date, others appear to be statements of ownership of the land where the rock was thrown, others look like random symbols.
But there may be hundreds of them, Edward said. In addition to the four he owns, he has given two to a friend, and has seen countless others owned by friends. There is one house with a stone chimney which includes a couple of the rocks, and he knows of at least a few that have made their way to South Carolina.
“He would just do these (carvings), then throw the rocks out in the field,” Edwards said.
In his later years, Edwards said Fleming may have had some sort of mental degenerative disease — his sister had to move in and become his caretaker. Nevertheless, he continued carving his messages into the stones and throwing them around.
Edwards said the Fleming stones are not the only items one can find if one knows where to look. He still regularly finds arrowheads and other tools made by Native Americans of the area.
“You can still find them, but you have to find a place that’s (freshly) plowed,” he said. This coming spring, he said he has two such farms, one in Surry County and one in Yadkin, where those plowing the fields have agreed to let him come in and hunt for arrowheads and other items after the fields are plowed.
Edwards will be giving a more in-depth talk next month at the meeting of the Surry County Genealogical Association, set for 6 p.m. on Feb. 13 at the Mount Airy Public Library.
“We are asking everyone to bring any strange looking rocks or arrowheads or Fairy Stones from Fairy Stone Park, which is in Patrick County, Virginia, to bring them,” said Esther Johnson, president of the society.
While Johnson acknowledges the talk might not strictly be about tracing and learning about family histories, Edwards’ talk will serve a twofold purpose — the first of which is to draw a crowd.
“In this day and time, it seems like people think they can find everything online about their family,” she said of the challenge of keeping people coming to groups such as the genealogical association. “We decided to try to do something different. Anything we do, we try to connect to family history.”
At the group’s last meeting, a 12-year-old youth came to talk about his extensive tracing of his family tree, which drew nearly four dozen folks to hear him talk.
Johnson is hoping for at least as big a turnout this time.
“Years ago when people were farming and they had their children out in the fields helping them that was a time when Indian arrowheads were found and a lot of other strange looking rocks or objects, sometimes old bones,” she said. “People lived a different kind of life. Playing in creeks, swinging on grape vines and sliding down red clay banks.
“We are getting to the time of year again when they will be plowing fields and years ago they would wait until a rain came after they plowed and that would uncover things plowed up in the fields. I remember seeing a man years ago out behind Bannertown school walking through a plowed field carrying a tobacco stick and everyone once in a while he would hit at something laying on the ground so he could uncover it and if it was an arrowhead or what he thought might be, he would pick it up.
“I do not see anyone doing anything like that anymore. Now would be a good time to teach children about how to do that. All of these things are still being found. You just have to take time and train yourself to look down.”
Thus, Edwards’ planned talk, not only about finding arrowheads and rocks with strange markings, but he will touch on two gold mines that were once in Surry County, which is the second purpose of the talk — to simply educate area folks on the county’s history, and what their ancestors would have seen and experienced during their lives.
Source: https://www.mtairynews.com
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