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New Market
adds exhibit
By JAMES J. GEARY
Ranahannock Ncwa Contributing Writer
The Civil War museum at New Market jumps back three-quarters of a century this year and next to feature a neglected 18th century story - the rapid growth and change in this Shenandoah Valley region after the Revolution.
The special exhibit celebrates the bicentennial of the Constitution. And it turns up some interesting data on the period from 1780 to 1810.
Some of the best iron ore in the young nation was being mined and made into pig iron at furnaces in the Valley. Quite a few forges were turning out finished products of iron and steel.
Also the region rapidly became the biggest commercial wheat-growing area in Virginia, and one of the largest in the nation. That was before young Cyrus McCormack - working in his father’s Shenandoah Valley shop - invented the grain reaper that later revolutionized the farming of wheat in the vast plains to the west.
We are surprised at the number of slaves in the Valley, in view of the small number of large plantations and the anti-slavery sentiment among many of the settlers and some of the churches. But the percentages were much smaller than in eastern Virginia and farther south.
New Market Battlefield Park has not reduced its broad Civil War presentation. It has simply integrated the next exhibit into it.
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