Block · one region of the page, as the scanner read it. It may hold a whole story, part of one, several, or an advertisement; stitching blocks into articles is the next step. Text is supplied OCR.
Page 2 · column 3 of 5 · from the scan, no model involved
Editor:
In 1959, the women of the Episcopal Church asked me to let them have my house, then called “The Oden House,” for one of the tour houses. The name “Oden House” was so-called because the citizens of the town knew the Odens as the only people who had ever lived in the house.
Someone who did the research for the tour told me that at one time a Miss Miller had lived here. I mentioned this to Mr. Ned Jones our Clerk of the Circuit Court, and then I forgot about it. However, one day I was standing in my yard when Mr. Jones came by in his car and stopped. He told me the name of this former resident was not Miss Miller but gave me a name which was not a local name and which meant nothing to me. In fact at that time I was working so hard in Fairfax County to be able to pay my debts to have the place in my name that the incident did not occur to me until recently.
In these past number of weeks I have done a great deal of thinking about the old place. Since the first year, 1952, when I bought it, I have wanted to give the place a name other than “The Oden House.” Each time I would think of a name I thought suitable, another place would have the same name.
On Tuesday, September 23, 1975 I went to the Clerk’s Office having no knowledge whatsoever about research of court records. I reminded Mr. Jones about what he had told me in 1959. Neither of us could remember the girl’s name. He brought out several books but the name evaded us. However, from one book he brought out a single page sent from Culpeper and dated 1789. On the page were names of persons who had bought land in what is now Rappahannock. (Rappahannock County was not formed until 1833.) The names were in parenthesis. If the buyer of the land did not build a home he was required to resell the land. John Miller was the name of the man who had bought my land. Since he did not have the word “resold” by his name, Mr. Jones and I felt that we could say that he must have built the log house.
I felt that I had taken so much of the Clerk’s time that I told him not to worry further, for since I had learned a Miller had been the first to build here I was satisfied. I thanked Mr. Jones for
95.9%