The Historical Memory of Frontier War in Twentieth-Century Shenandoah Family Histories, speaker series: April 15, 2026 – Ben Bankhurst

Dr. Ben Bankhurst of Shepherd University will present “The Historical Memory of Frontier War in Twentieth-Century Shenandoah Family Histories” on Wednesday, April 15 at 7 PM at the Byrd Center for Congressional History and Education.

The talk will address the privileged place that the era of white settlement on the eighteenth-century frontier holds in the family lore of the Shenandoah Valley and central Appalachia. For the descendants of white colonizers, the arrival of their pioneer ancestors and the conquest and settlement of the region serve as a heroic origin story, rooting them to the land while simultaneously connecting them to the grand narrative of the nation’s founding. Throughout the twentieth century, family historians with a connection to the region, whether resident or not, published hundreds of family histories celebrating their families’ colonial lineage. Dr. Bankhurst, Associate Professor of History at Shepherd University, will examine how white families, in the Valley and Central West Virginia, utilized genealogies anchored in the colonial or revolutionary periods to tie them to the land and, through the positive depiction of pioneer ancestors, counter demeaning narratives of the region and its people. Central to this process was the construction of often demeaning Native American stereotypes.