Second hi a Mites

Second hi a Mites

By Don Audette

Special to the Rappahannock News

Probably the best map showing old roads in Rappahannock County is one dated March 1866. Prepared after the Civil War by Stonewall Jackson’s mapmaker, Major Jedediah Hotchkiss, it shows rivers, mountains, house locations and their owners, highways and byways. By way of explanation, after the Civil War ended in 1865, the Union took possession of Hotchkiss’s maps, but Hotchkiss complained, and an arrangement was made by General Grant whereby the Union would pay Hotchkiss to have copies made of his maps. The March 1866 map of Rappahannock County was one of them.

The map is an enlargement of the area between Washington and Sperryville, and includes the Covington River. No bridge is shown where the main highway crosses the Covington River, as streams in those days were crossed by fords. But the point where the highway meets the Covington River is where the Covington River Bridge came into existence in 1917. And after almost 90 years of use since then, the old concrete bridge is in pretty bad shape.

When the small community called Rediviva came into being near the Covington River is not readily known. It was a convenient gathering place, though, as it was midway between Sperryville and the Town of Washington along the old Sperry ville-Rappahannock [River] Tbmpike of the 1850s and later. A post office was established in a small general store there in 1889, but it was closed and moved to Washington in 1913. Rediviva means revival, and many revivals meetings were held on the hill just to the west of the Covington River. That may be how Hie hamlet received its name.

The book, “Rappahannock County, Virginia: A History,* by Elisabeth B and C .E. Johnson, Jr., refers to a 1910 Business Directory of the county and tells a little about Rediviva. DP. Curtis was a merchant there, with his store upstream from the highway. Others settled