Speaker Series – The History of Pottery Making in Shepherdstown 1700s to Present Day – Pam Parziale, March 26, 2025

Pam Parziale

The 2025 Historic Shepherdstown Speaker Series will kick off with three events in the spring, starting with Pam Parziale who with her late husband Ren established Sycamore Pottery near Shepherdstown over 50 years ago. She will talk about the “History of Pottery Making in Shepherdstown 1700s to Present Day.” The event will be held on March 26 at 7 pm in the Byrd Center on the Shepherd University Campus.

It was no accident Pam and Ren Parziale settled near Shepherdstown when they established Sycamore Pottery in 1971. They were continuing the Shenandoah Valley tradition of pottery making. They were also looking for an affordable place to live, moving from Washington, DC. Pam will tell the story of working in clay by placing craftwork in a larger historical context of Jefferson County’s beginnings to the present day. This includes the story of Shepherdstown’s Weis family, three generations of potters who made pottery from the late 1700s to 1901. Present day potters around Shepherdstown continue to turn clay into beautiful pottery.

“The past is prologue. West Virginia is known for its tradition of craftwork, basketry, woodworking, quilting, and pottery,” Pam says. “There’s a lot of history behind what we’re doing, which made it possible for us to move here seamlessly in the 1970’s. People here understood working with your hands.”

When Pam won the Governor’s Distinguished Arts Award in 2005 for lifetime achievement, recognizing her service on numerous local, state and regional arts advocacy organizations, she said “we had quit our jobs with steady incomes to live a dream that was vague on details, but full of romance: to work the land, raise our children with food from our garden, and make pots the way our biblical ancestors did – on the potter’s wheel.”The couple received the West Virginia Governor’s Excellence in Support of the Arts Award in 2016. Ren died in March 2024, and has left a legacy of workmanship, kiln building, and design. Ren and Pam’s work for Historic Shepherdstown spans fifty years.

 

There will be two additional speaker series events in the spring. On April 16 in the Byrd Center at 7 pm, Tim Hodges and Brian LaMaster will talk about the ‘History of Kentucky Rifles from the 18th to 20th century.” The seasonal opening of the Historic Shepherdstown Museum on April 19 will feature a very special exhibit of Kentucky Rifles sponsored by the Kentucky Rifle Association. On May 14 in the Byrd Center at 7 pm, Doug Perks will talk about the “Beeline March,” when in the summer of 1775, militia men from Shepherdstown marched 600 miles in 25 days to Boston with “Liberty or Death” emblazoned on their buckskin shirts to enlist for a year’s service as reinforcements for the newly formed Continental Army.

Speaker Series – The Architectural Features of the Shepherdstown Historic District, 1850 to present – Tom Mayes and Keith Alexander, October 16, 2024.

Tom Mayes and Keith Alexander

Historic Shepherdstown Commission & Museum is pleased to announce the fourth and final presentation in its 2024 Speaker Series.  National Trust for Historic Preservation Chief Legal Officer & General Counsel Tom Mayes and Shepherd University Associate Professor of History Dr. Keith Alexander will discuss and illustrate the architectural features of the Shepherdstown Historic District, focusing on 1850 to present.   Open to the public and free of charge, the talk will be held on Wednesday, October 16 at 7 pm at the Robert C. Byrd Center for Congressional History and Education at Shepherd University.

As West Virginia’s oldest town, Shepherdstown has a rich and diverse architectural and historical heritage spanning four centuries.   The majority of Shepherdstown is within a designated historic district that was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973, just seven years after the register was authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act.

Tom Mayes and Keith Alexander both serve on Shepherdstown’s Historic Landmarks Commission, with Alexander serving as chair.

  • Mayes oversees the National Trust’s legal defense fund, which advocates for the protection of significant places and defends and strengthens historic preservation law. The recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Rome Prize in Historic Preservation in 2013, Mayes is the author of Why Old Places Matter.  For many years, he taught historic preservation law at the University of Maryland.
  • Alexander co-directs with Dr. Julia Sandy the Historic Preservation and Public History concentration within the history major at Shepherd. His most recent projects include a study of the Wheeling National Heritage Area and an analysis of the landscape and structures at Ferry Hill in the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal National Historical Park as a window into the lives of enslaved persons.

Speaker Series – Historic National Road. Tiffany Ahalt, September 4, 2024 – now online

Speaker Series – Historic National Road. Tiffany Ahalt, September 4.

The 2024 Historic Shepherdstown Speaker Series featured Tiffany Ahalt on September 4 at 6:45 pm in the auditorium of the Shepherd University Robert C. Byrd Center for Congressional History and Education, talking about the history, preservation and promotion of the historic National Road.

The National Road was the first major federally funded highway built by the US government.   Built between 1811 and 1837, the original 620 mile road was a major transport path to the West for thousands of settlers and also stimulated the earliest forms of travel-related tourism.  Often nicknamed the Main Street of America, in the 20th century with the advent of the automobile the National Road was connected with other historic routes to California with much of it aligned with U.S. Route 40.   Ms. Ahalt explored this history and how national and state programs are paving the way to preserve and promote the landscapes and main streets along the National Road and other scenic byways.

Speaker series – Where the Rivers Join: Native American Cultures of The Potomac and Shenandoah Valleys. Carole Nash, May 15

 

May 15 Presentation on “Where the Rivers Join: Native American Cultures of The Potomac and Shenandoah Valleys” is now online.

Dr. Carole Nash, James Madison University Professor, presented the second of our 2024 Speaker Series, “Where the Rivers Join: Native American Cultures of The Potomac and Shenandoah Valleys.” Dr. Nash’s talk was held on Wednesday, May 15 at 7 pm at the Robert C. Byrd Center for Congressional History and Education at Shepherd University.

During the period of A.D. 1200-1600, just prior to European settlement, the Potomac/Shenandoah region was occupied by a variety of indigenous Native American cultures. This presentation was be an opportunity to gain important insights about the often overlooked pre-European history of our region.

Carole Nash, Ph.D., RPA, is Professor in the School of Integrated Sciences at James Madison University where she has taught for 35 years. Her research focuses on the Blue Ridge and Shenandoah Valley, specializing in First Peoples archaeology and historical ecology. She is the author of many technical reports, scholarly papers, and publications, including co-author of Foundations of Archaeology in the Middle Atlantic. She is President of Mountain Valley Archaeology which partners with descendant communities on archaeological and historical research in western Virginia. She directs the Virginia Archaeological Certification Program, a citizen science initiative that partners professional and avocational archaeologists.

Recording of Addison Reese’s talk about Black Burial grounds now available

Historic Cemeteries

Speaker Series – “Black Burial Grounds of Jefferson County, West Virginia: Restoring Lost History through Cemetery Preservation”

Addison Reese, cemetery caretaker, advocate, local historian, and educator, presented “Black Burial Grounds of Jefferson County, West Virginia: Restoring Lost History through Cemetery Preservation.” Ms. Reese’s talk was held on Wednesday, April 17 at 7pm at the Robert C. Byrd Center for Congressional History and Education at Shepherd University.

Addison Reese currently works at the Shepherdstown Public Library where she has conducted genealogy and local history research workshops. She serves on the Jefferson County Historic Landmarks Commission for the past three years with a focus on cemetery preservation, documentation, and restoration.

Addison Reese

Speaker Series – “Black Burial Grounds of Jefferson County, West Virginia: Restoring Lost History through Cemetery Preservation”, Addison Reese, Byrd Center, April 17, 2024

Historic Shepherdstown is pleased to announce the first talk in its 2024 Speaker Series.

Addison Reese, cemetery caretaker, advocate, local historian, and educator, will present “Black Burial Grounds of Jefferson County, West Virginia: Restoring Lost History through Cemetery Preservation.” Ms. Reese’s talk will be held on Wednesday, April 17 at 7pm at the Robert C. Byrd Center for Congressional History and Education at Shepherd University.

Addison Reese currently works at the Shepherdstown Public Library where she has conducted genealogy and local history research workshops. She served on the Jefferson County Historic Landmarks Commission for the past three years with a focus on cemetery preservation, documentation, and restoration.

Phillip Sheetz house, ShepherdstownJohn Allen

Recording of John Allen’s talk about Shepherdstown architecture now available

Recording – 18th and 19th Century Architectural Features of the Shepherdstown Historic District”, John Allen, Byrd Center, November 29, 2023

German Street

Speaker Series – “18th and 19th Century Architectural Features of the Shepherdstown Historic District”, John Allen, Byrd Center, November 29, 2023

November 29 Historic Shepherdstown Speaker Series 
Historic Shepherdstown Commission and the Shepherdstown Historic Landmarks Commission are pleased to present local author and architectural historian John Allen discussing “18th and 19th Century Architectural Features of the Shepherdstown Historic District”. Mr. Allen’s talk will be held at 7:00pm on Wednesday, November 29 at the Auditorium of the Robert C. Byrd Center for Congressional History and Education, located at 213 N. King Street on the Shepherd University campus.
John C. Allen, Jr. works as a preservation coordinator and architectural historian near Shepherdstown, West Virginia. Mr. Allen has conducted expansive research on historic structures in Jefferson County and is well known for his excellent book Uncommon Vernacular.  
For more information, contact Historic Shepherdstown at 304-876-0910 or email [email protected].

Speaker series, 2023 – Dr Benjamin Bankhurst, Loyalist rising and conspiracy in the Potomac borderlands before Yorktown

Historic Shepherdstown Commission’s September Speaker Series will be held on Wednesday, September 6, at the Erma Ora Byrd Auditorium on the Shepherd University campus. Dr. Benjamin Bankhurst of Shepherd University will be the featured speaker. His talk is entitled Loyalist rising and conspiracy in the Potomac borderlands before Yorktown.

Bankhurst is the Ray and Madeline Johnston Chair in American History and Associate Professor of History at Shepherd University. He completed his graduate studies at King’s College London. His research focuses on migration to the Appalachian frontier in the colonial and revolutionary periods.  Bankhurst is the co-director, alongside Dr. Kyle Roberts of the Congregational Library and Archives in Boston, of the Maryland Loyalism Project, a public archive and database documenting the experiences of Chesapeake loyalists in the era of the American Revolution.

Historic Shepherdstown Speaker Series talk, September 2023, by Dr. Benjamin Bankhurst