Speaker Series – In Their Own Words: The French and Indian War at Fort Frederick, MD, October 15, Robert Ambrose, Park Ranger – recording.

Historic Shepherdstown’s Speaker Series on Wednesday, October 15 at the Shepherd University Robert C. Byrd Center for Congressional History and Education in Shepherdstown, WV, presented “In Their Own Words.” Drawing from primary documents, Maryland State Park Ranger-Historian Robert Ambrose explored the French and Indian War story of Fort Frederick (Washington County, MD) by answering the simple and sometimes complicated questions of who, what, when, why and how.

Fort Frederick (Washington County, MD) is the only stone fort built (1756) by an English colony during the French and Indian War, and is one of the largest fortifications built by English colonists in North America. The 585 acre Fort Frederick State Park borders the Potomac River and the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park. The state park is around a 19 mile walk or bike ride on the Canal Towpath from Shepherdstown.

Robert Ambrose has been employed with the Maryland Park Service since 2009, and at Fort Frederick since 2014 overseeing the largest living history program in the state park system. He resides in Berkeley Springs, WV, and in his spare time serves as the Defensive Coordinator of the Berkeley Springs High School Football team. Since 1996, Ambrose has been involved in living history of various time periods from the 1750s to the 1950s.

Listen to Ambrose’s talk – In Their Own Words, the French and Indian War at Fort Frederick, MD.

Speaker Series – Beyond Storer College Campus: The Early Roots of Black Community in Harpers Ferry, September 3, Lynn Pechuekonis

Lynn Pechuekonis

Historic Shepherdstown’s Speaker Series on Wednesday, September 3, 7:00 pm, at the Shepherd University Robert C. Byrd Center in Shepherdstown, WV, will feature “Beyond the Storer College Campus:  The Early Roots of Black Community in Harpers Ferry, 1867-1917.”

 

Author and Historian Lynn Pechuekonis will talk about the impact that Storer College, which educated thousands of African American students from 1867 until 1955, had on the Black community that evolved and thrived around its campus.  Storer’s policies and approach had a strong influence on Harpers Ferry to ensure that Black residents faced fewer race-based barriers than was typical in the region at the time. Pechuekonis will discuss the roots of this evolution and highlight some of Harpers Ferry’s enterprising and accomplished Black residents.

 

Her talk will be preceded by a short Historic Shepherdstown Annual Meeting at 6:45 pm.

Bee Line March, 1775, Speaker Series talk by Doug Perks, May 2025

The Bee Line March route

Historic Shepherdstown’s 2025 Speaker Series featured a May 14 talk by local historian and Jefferson County, WV, native Doug Perks about the history around the summer of 1775 Bee Line March.   The talk, which begins the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Bee Line March, focused on the stories around the remarkable 26 day 600 mile journey in summer 1775 of 95 Virginians known as the Bee Line March, under the command of Captain Hugh Stephenson, who set out from what is now Shepherdstown, WV to Cambridge, MA to join General George Washington.

Doug Perks – Bee Line March

Speaker Series – 1775 Bee Line March, May 14, Doug Perks

Doug Perks

Historic Shepherdstown’s 2025 Speaker Series continued with a May 14 talk by local historian and Jefferson County, WV, native Doug Perks about the history around the summer of 1775 Bee Line March.   The talk, part of the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Bee Line March, took take place at the Shepherd University Robert C. Byrd Center in Shepherdstown, WV, at 7 pm on Wednesday, May 14.

This talk focused on the stories around the remarkable 26 day 600 mile journey in summer 1775 of 95 Virginians known as the Bee Line March, under the command of Captain Hugh Stephenson, who set out from what is now Shepherdstown, WV to Cambridge, MA to join General George Washington.   In June 1775, the Continental Congress had established the Continental Army, which would include a Virginia company formed in Berkeley County, WV and which gathered in Shepherdstown (then Mecklenburg) for the journey to Cambridge.

The speaker, Doug Perks, recently retired as the Historian of the Jefferson County Museum.   He serves as Historian for the Elmwood Cemetery Association and is a Director of the Jefferson County Historical Society.   In 2023, he published The Civil War Years in Jefferson County, VA.  He was named a West Virginia History Hero in 2017 and in 2022 was named the Historian Laureate of Shepherdstown.

Recording of the talk – Doug Perks – Bee Line March

 

The route of the Bee Line March was recently mapped by Jefferson County GIS and Addressing Department  and Historic Shepherdstown, using Henry Bedinger’s diary quoted by Danske Dandridge’s Historic Shepherdstown. See Bee Line March map

Speaker series: History of the Kentucky Rifles, April 2025 – Brian LaMaster and Tim Hodges

 

Speaker Series – Brian LaMaster and Tim Hodges of the Kentucky Rifle Foundation – Kentucky Rifles

A special exhibit, Longrifles by the Sheetz family and Other Gunsmiths from Jefferson and Berkeley Counties, opened at the Historic Shepherdstown Museum on Saturday, April 19. The exhibit, co-sponsored by Historic Shepherdstown and the Kentucky Rifle Foundation,  featured 15 rifles made between 1740 and 1840, including 10 signed Sheetz rifles. The Speaker Series talk History of Kentucky Rifles from the 18th to 20th century took place on Wednesday, April 16, at which master gunsmith Brian LaMaster spoke about Kentucky Rifles in general and Kentucky Rifle Foundation board member Tim Hodges spoke about the rifles in the exhibit.

The Kentucky Rifle Foundation is the educational arm of the Kentucky Rifle Association. The KRA is an organization dedicated to those people interested in collecting and preserving the art and history of antique Kentucky Rifles, pistols, horns, and accoutrements. Both LaMaster and Hodges are past presidents of the KRA.

This will be the largest display of rifles in the Historic Shepherdstown Museum in its more than 40-year history. The exhibit is the first event for Shepherdstown’s 250th Anniversary Celebration of the Bee Line March, which occurred in the summer of 1775.

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.

Recording of Pam’s talk –  Pam Parziale – History of Pottery Making in Shepherdstown

 

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 “Bee Line 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.