April 4, 2017 By
Martha Grace Mize, an honors student in the Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College at the University of Mississippi, recently completed and successfully defended her honors thesis entitled “History and Heritage Made Accessible: the Lee County, Virginia Story.” As part of this thesis, she wrote a complete history of Lee County, conducted a survey of county residents and educators to identify what they considered important about their heritage and history, and created a website: www.theleecountystory.com that highlights the history of the county.
Screenshot of The Lee County Story website, created by Martha Grace Mize.
This website is a new online heritage resource for the community. It contains information on local organizations supporting the project, including Wilderness Road State Park, Lee County Tourism office, J.R. Hoe and Sons, the Lee County Quilters, and the Virginia Department of Historic Resources. There are pages for each of the towns in Lee County, with space for residents to continue filling in historic information about their areas. Another section is dedicated to Lee County Quilters, and contains photos and stories about quilts passed down through families in the community. A field school blog for the archaeological excavations at the Carter Robinson site, along with information on artifacts from the site, is also included. In addition, information on proper treatment of archaeological sites, the VDHR, and the ARK resources is also present.
This project was supported in part by a 2015 Council of Virginia Archaeologists (COVA) grant. The website will be turned over to the Wilderness Road State Park for maintenance, and local groups will have the ability to continually add to the website.
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UPDATE (4/26): The Council of Virginia Archaeologists (COVA) recently awarded Mize another year of funding to support her project.
