County's history on display

Hospital, groups launch beginning of museum

STAFFORD — As Interstate 95 travelers settled in for a long, congested afternoon last Sunday, local history was revealed at the Stafford Hospital Center.

A piccolo piped out “Yankee Doodle Dandy” as the George Washington Foundation’s Skip Nolan, Nick Garafalo and Parker Weeks served as the color guard, presenting a Betsy Ross flag for a celebration of the new history wall — a section of the Stafford Hospital Center’s wall focusing on Stafford County history, telling the county’s tale through photographs, words and artifacts.

The new display was placed in the Stafford Hospital Center on Sunday afternoon. This wall has six panels, each panel describing what happened in one section of Stafford County’s history.

According to Jane Conner, the chairman of the History Wall Committee and Stafford Museum and Cultural Center Inc. Foundation Board member, this wall “is the start of the Stafford County Museum.”

Stafford County has a rich history, and the wall’s panels were “very explanatory,” according to Stafford’s Joan Donahoe. Many people present at the event said they had been unaware of this county’s history before viewing the wall.

The prehistory section describes Stafford as an inland sea during the time of dinosaurs, following the changes right up through the 1600s, when various Indian tribes lived here.

Dale Glasgow, the artist who put the wall together, said, “We really had to struggle to find artifacts [to validate our prehistory].” Evidently the Smithsonian came through in the 1940s and a lot of Indian artifacts were taken up, studied, labeled and categorized, but they now belong to the Smithsonian, and Stafford County doesn’t have a museum yet to lend — or borrow — artifacts.

In the 17th century, John Smith explored the area, and Powhatan (Pocahontas’ father) was the chief of several tribes living here. The first Aquia Church was built, and Stafford County was founded.

The next panel shows George Washington, and, of course, his boyhood home at Ferry Farm, as well as other revolutionary mementos. The 19th century panel discusses the visits Abraham Lincoln made to Stafford County while he was president, not to mention the 135,000 Civil War soldiers encamped on Stafford soil.

The 20th century panel holds Paul Milde’s great-grandfather’s WWI military-issue dog tags and showcases the 1961 integration of Stafford County schools with the Montague girls, and the opening of the FBI academy in the early 1970s.

The panel for the 21st century is half as large as the other panels, for, as Frederick Donahoe said, “In order for us to know who we are we need to know where we come from, so that we don’t repeat the failures of the past.”

“The last panel represents hope for the future,” Jane Conner said. “I’m hoping that we will be able to educate Staffordians for years to come and that the wall will help develop community pride in our rich history.”

To tie the past to the present, Gary S. Cooke, also known as Walk N Crow, Lesser Chief of the Patawomeck Tribal Council, a member of a tribe whose ancestors lived in pre-English settlement Stafford, closed the ceremony with an Algonquian spiritual blessing.

“When my family comes to visit, they’re definitely coming here. We want to show them our history,” said Joan Donahoe. “Look at the end [of the wall]. There’s food across the hall, but everybody’s looking at the wall.”

Megan Sweeney is a contributing writer for the Stafford County Sun. She can be reached at info@staffordcountysun.com.