State Board Approves 11 New Historical Highway Markers
Virginia Department of Historic Resources
(dhr.virginia.gov)
For Immediate Release
October 2026
Contact:
Ivy Tan Ager
Department of Historic Resources
Marketing & Communications Manager
ivy.ager@dhr.virginia.gov
804-482-6445
State Board Approves 11 New Historical Highway Markers
—Markers cover topics in the counties of Hanover, James City, Fauquier, Lancaster, Louisa, and Northumberland; in the cities of Virginia Beach, Richmond, Lynchburg, and Alexandria; and in the Town of Leesburg—
—Text of each marker reproduced below—
PLEASE NOTE: DHR creates markers not to “honor” their subjects but rather to educate and inform the public about a person, place, or event of regional, state, or national importance. In this regard, erected markers are not memorials.
RICHMOND – The Department of Historic Resources (DHR) has announced 11 new historical markers coming to roadsides in Virginia. The markers will recall various topics in the Commonwealth’s history, including a courthouse that anchors one of the most complete sets of historic judicial buildings in Virginia; churches established in the 18th and 19th centuries with storied pasts; and three lynchings that took place in Virginia during the Jim Crow era.
The Virginia Board of Historic Resources approved the markers on September 17, 2026, during its quarterly meeting in Orange County hosted by DHR.
Hanover Courthouse was built about 1740, twenty years after Hanover County was formed. As a young attorney, Patrick Henry earned his reputation as an orator and launched his political career at Hanover Courthouse in 1763 after he argued against the Crown’s right to overturn a law passed by Virginia’s General Assembly in a case known as the Parsons’ Cause. In 1978, a trial held at the courthouse led to a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision holding that the First Amendment generally guarantees the right of the press and the public to be present during criminal trials. The courthouse green, which includes a 19th-century clerk’s office and jail, encompasses one of the most complete sets of historic judicial buildings in the Commonwealth.
One newly approved marker highlights the self-emancipation of enslaved individuals at Jamestown during the Civil War:
- Windsor Powers was enslaved by John Coke, who built the Amblers house circa 1852 in James City County. During the Civil War, Coke hired Powers out to construct Confederate fortifications in Jamestown in early 1862. Powers and many other enslaved people self-emancipated after Union forces arrived in the area in May. Powers became the leader of more than 100 men, women, and children who gathered at the Neck O’ Land behind Jamestown Island. On October 20, men from this group shot and killed several people who had traveled to the island on business, including their former principal overseer. In the middle of war, slavery collapsed near Jamestown, the site where Virginia’s first slave laws were codified 200 years earlier.
Three new markers focus on important people of the 19th and 20th centuries in Virginia:
- Born in Delaware in 1831, Rebecca Lee Crumpler became the first Black female physician in the United States during the Civil War after she graduated in 1864 from the New England Female Medical College in Boston. Dr. Crumpler, who married a Virginian named Arthur Crumpler in 1865, moved to Richmond in 1866 to serve the city’s large postwar population of formerly enslaved men, women, and children. Dr. Crumpler worked with the Freedmen’s Bureau to treat people who had no other access to medical care. She had returned to Boston and opened a medical practice by 1869. Crumpler’s Book of Medical Discourses in Two Parts, published in 1883, was the first medical book written by a Black doctor in the U.S. and focused on women’s and children’s health, noting her experience in Richmond. She died in 1895.
- Born circa 1896 and raised in Fauquier County, American baseball player Ernest Judson “Jud” Wilson held a lifetime batting average of .352, which placed him among the top five hitters in Negro League baseball. Wilson was invited to a tryout in Baltimore after serving in the U.S. Army during World War I and settling in Washington, D.C. He played from 1922 until 1945, primarily at first and third base. Wilson was known for his explosive left-handed hitting. His talent contributed to championships with the Baltimore Black Sox, Philadelphia Stars, and Homestead Grays. Fiercely competitive, Wilson was a player and manager for several seasons and played in three East-West All-Star Games. He was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2006. Wilson died in 1963 and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
- George G. Loving Jr. was born in 1923 and grew up near the City of Lynchburg. While serving in the U.S. Air Force, he rose to the rank of lieutenant general. Loving joined the Army Air Forces during World War II and flew 151 combat missions in the Mediterranean theater, where he downed five enemy planes and became a fighter ace. After flying 113 fighter-bomber missions during the Korean War, Loving tested aircraft in the Air Proving Ground Command and served as commandant of the Air Command and Staff College in Montgomery, Alabama. In 1975, Loving served as the senior U.S. military representative at the NATO-Warsaw Pact arms negotiations. He also oversaw the Sixth Allied Tactical Air Force in Turkey. Lt. Gen. Loving retired in 1979 as commander of U.S. forces in Japan and of the Fifth Air Force in Japan and Korea. He died in 2016.
Storied churches founded in the late 18th and 19th centuries ground three new markers:
- Anne Nimmo, a member of a prominent family in what is now the City of Virginia Beach, deeded land to the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1791 at the intersection of two principal roads. The congregation, which became known as Nimmo United Methodist Church, built a simple meeting house on the land. The building was expanded as membership grew. In 1799, Francis Asbury, the circuit-riding bishop who fostered the development of Methodism in America, preached at the church. The church added a gallery for the enslaved after camp meetings during the Second Great Awakening attracted Black and White worshipers. In the 1840s, the church recorded approximately 40 Black members and more than 150 White members. Black members of the church established Mt. Zion A.M.E. Church nearby after the end of the Civil War.
- Shortly following the end of the Civil War, Black members of Morattico Baptist Church in Lancaster County requested dismissal and organized St. John’s Baptist Church on July 4, 1868. As the first Black church in the county, St. John’s served as a spiritual, cultural, and educational hub for the local African American community. Among the church’s hundreds of members were Union Civil War veteran Richard H. Lee, Virginia House of Delegates member Armistead S. Nickens, and Buffalo soldier Alfred Carter. While the congregation at St. John’s dissolved circa 1892, six other congregations had emerged from it. The church’s cemetery, established here ca. 1868, contains hundreds of graves and is likely the county’s largest historic African American burial ground.
- Founded by freedpeople shortly after the Civil War, Bright Hope Baptist Church in Louisa County emerged early in the 1880s from Oak Grove Baptist, led by the Rev. Fountain M. Perkins, a formerly enslaved man who had become a landowner and a member of the Virginia House of Delegates. The church acquired land in the county and built its sanctuary there, reportedly using lumber salvaged from a house damaged in the 1864 Battle of Trevilian Station. The Rev. Dr. David N. Vassar, a professor at Richmond Theological Institute, was an early pastor at the church. Prince Hall Masons and the Shiloh Baptist Association met at Bright Hope. Established in 1957, the church’s cemetery serves as a resting place for veterans of both World Wars. In 1979, Oak Grove reconsolidated with Bright Hope.
From 1866 until well into the 20th century, more than 100 people, primarily Black men, were lynched in Virginia. In its meeting on September 17, the Board approved three markers under a special initiative to place state historical highway markers at, or near, the sites of lynchings that occurred in the Commonwealth:
- Fourteen-year-old Orion Anderson was lynched at a freight depot in the Town of Leesburg in 1889. He had approached a 15-year-old White girl with a fertilizer sack over his head, scaring her, on October 30, 1889. Despite the girl’s inability to positively identify him, and his explanation that he had only meant to frighten her, Anderson was arrested for attempted rape and held in the Leesburg jail. Early on the morning of November 8, a mob of 25-40 disguised men stormed the jail. They forced Anderson to the depot, hanged him, and shot his body multiple times. Nobody was ever brought to justice for Anderson’s murder.
- In the City of Alexandria, Black teenagers Joseph McCoy and Benjamin Thomas were lynched on April 23, 1897, and August 8, 1899, respectively. It was alleged that 18-year-old McCoy had sexually assaulted his White employer’s daughter and that 16-year-old Thomas had attempted to assault a White child who lived next door to him. Throughout Virginia, similar accusations were often used against Black males to intimidate and control the African American community. Ignoring due process, hundreds of people forcibly took McCoy from the police station and Thomas from the jail, brutalized them, and hanged them from lampposts within a block of City Hall. No one was brought to justice for the murders, and patrols continued to threaten Black Alexandrians. The families of McCoy and Thomas moved away.
- William Oscar Page, a married Black man in his late 20s, was accused of assaulting two White girls in Northumberland County on August 15, 1917. He had been promptly arrested and was then seized from the sheriff by a mob of 500. Page was taken to say goodbye to his family, then shot and hanged at Cockrell’s Neck School, a local Black school. A coroner’s inquisition did not identify any perpetrators for Page’s murder. Page's pastor, the Rev. John M. Ellison of Shiloh Baptist Church, met with White leaders and encouraged the Black community to respond peacefully. When no one was brought to justice, the Black community, in an act of resistance in the face of racial terror, collectively refused to work for a prominent White farmer believed to have been a leader of the mob that killed Page.
Following the Board of Historic Resources’ approval of the markers, it can take upwards of eight months or more before a new marker is ready for installation. The marker’s sponsor covers the required $3,000 manufacturing expenses for a new sign.
Virginia’s historical highway marker program began in 1927 with installation of the first markers along U.S. Route 1. It is considered the oldest such program in the nation. Currently there are about 2,700 state markers, mostly maintained by the Virginia Department of Transportation, except in those localities outside of VDOT’s authority.
Full Text of Markers:
(VDOT must approve the proposed location for each marker in its right-of-way; local public works departments must do so in jurisdictions outside VDOT’s authority.)
Hanover Courthouse
Hanover County was formed in 1720, and this courthouse was built about 1740. Patrick Henry earned his reputation as an orator and launched his political career here in 1763 when, as a young attorney in a case known as the Parsons’ Cause, he argued against the Crown’s right to overturn a law passed by Virginia’s General Assembly. A trial held here in 1978 led to a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision holding that the First Amendment generally guarantees the right of the press and the public to be present during criminal trials. The courthouse green, with its 19th-century clerk’s office and jail, encompasses one of the most complete sets of historic judicial buildings in Virginia.
Sponsor: Hanover County Department of Parks & Recreation
Locality: Hanover County
Proposed Location: 7496 County Courthouse Road
Amblers House and Self-Emancipation at Jamestown
The Amblers house was built ca. 1852 by John Coke, who enslaved Windsor Powers. Early in 1862, Coke hired Powers out to build Confederate fortifications in Jamestown. After Union forces arrived in May, Powers and many other enslaved people self-emancipated. He became the leader of more than 100 men, women, and children who gathered at the Neck O’ Land behind Jamestown Island. On 20 Oct., men from this group shot and killed several people who had come to the island on business, including their former principal overseer. Amid the violence of war, slavery crumbled near the site where Virginia’s first slave laws had been codified two centuries earlier.
Sponsor: Virginia Racial Healing Institute
Locality: James City County
Proposed Location: 2205 Jamestown Road
Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler (1831-1895)
As the Civil War raged, Rebecca Lee became the first Black female physician in the U.S. when she graduated in 1864 from the New England Female Medical College in Boston. Married in 1865 to Virginian Arthur Crumpler, Dr. Crumpler moved to Richmond in 1866 to serve the city’s large postwar population of formerly enslaved men, women, and children. Working with the Freedmen’s Bureau, she treated people who had no other access to medical care. By 1869, she had returned to Boston and opened a medical practice. Her Book of Medical Discourses in Two Parts (1883), the first medical book written by a Black physician in the U.S., focused on women’s and children’s health, noting her experience in Richmond.
Sponsor: Dr. Melody T. McCloud
Locality: City of Richmond
Proposed Location: Intersection of Marshall Street and N. 12th Street
Ernest Judson Wilson (ca. 1896-1963)
Jud Wilson, whose lifetime batting average of .352 placed him among the top five hitters in Negro League baseball, was born and raised nearby in Piney Ridge. After serving in the U.S. Army during World War I and settling in Washington, D.C., he was invited to a tryout in Baltimore. He played from 1922 until 1945, primarily at first and third base. His explosive left-handed hitting contributed to championships with the Baltimore Black Sox, Philadelphia Stars, and Homestead Grays. Fiercely competitive, he was a player/manager for several seasons, played in three East-West All-Star Games, and was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2006. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
Sponsor: Fauquier County Architectural Review Board
Locality: Fauquier County
Proposed Location: Sumerduck Road (Route 651) near the intersection with Piney Ridge Road (Route 820)
Lt. Gen. George G. Loving Jr. (1923-2016)
George Loving grew up nearby and rose to the rank of lieutenant general in the U.S. Air Force. He joined the Army Air Forces during World War II and flew 151 combat missions in the Mediterranean theater, downing five enemy aircraft and becoming a fighter ace. After flying 113 fighter-bomber missions during the Korean War, he tested aircraft in the Air Proving Ground Command and served as commandant of the Air Command and Staff College. Loving was the senior U.S. military representative at the NATO-Warsaw Pact arms negotiations in 1975, commanded the Sixth Allied Tactical Air Force in Turkey, and retired in 1979 as commander of U.S. forces in Japan and of the Fifth Air Force in Japan and Korea.
Sponsor: Lynchburg Area Veterans Council
Locality: City of Lynchburg
Proposed Location: 3522 Fort Avenue
Church at the Crossroads
Anne Nimmo, a member of a prominent local family, deeded land to the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1791 here at the intersection of two principal roads. The congregation later known as Nimmo United Methodist Church built a simple meeting house that was expanded as membership grew. Francis Asbury, the circuit-riding bishop who fostered the development of Methodism in America, preached here in 1799. Camp meetings held during the Second Great Awakening attracted Black and White worshipers, and a gallery for the enslaved was added. The church recorded about 40 Black and more than 150 White members in the 1840s. After the Civil War, Black members formed Mt. Zion A.M.E. Church nearby.
Sponsor: Nimmo United Methodist Church
Locality: City of Virginia Beach
Proposed Location: 2040 Nimmo Church Lane
Old St. John’s Baptist Church and Cemetery
Black members of Morattico Baptist Church requested dismissal shortly after the Civil War and organized St. John’s Baptist Church on 4 July 1868. Built near here, St. John’s was the first Black church in Lancaster County and was a spiritual, cultural, and educational hub for the community. Among its hundreds of members were Union Civil War veteran Richard H. Lee, Virginia House of Delegates member Armistead S. Nickens, and Buffalo soldier Alfred Carter. Six other congregations emerged from St. John’s, which dissolved ca. 1892. The church’s cemetery, established here ca. 1868, contains hundreds of graves and is likely the county’s largest historic African American burial ground.
Sponsor: Old St. John’s Baptist Church Cemetery Committee
Locality: Lancaster County
Proposed Location: 49 Calvary Lane, Whitestone
Bright Hope Baptist Church and Cemetery
Bright Hope Baptist Church emerged early in the 1880s from Oak Grove Baptist, founded by freedpeople shortly after the Civil War and led by the Rev. Fountain M. Perkins, a formerly enslaved man who had become a landowner and a member of the VA House of Delegates. Bright Hope acquired land and built its sanctuary here, reportedly with lumber salvaged from a house damaged in the Battle of Trevilian Station. The Rev. Dr. David N. Vassar, an early pastor, was a professor at Richmond Theological Institute. Prince Hall Masons and the Shiloh Baptist Association met here. Buried in the cemetery, established in 1957, are veterans of World Wars I and II. Oak Grove reconsolidated with Bright Hope in 1979.
Sponsor: Bright Hope Baptist Church
Locality: Louisa County
Proposed Location: 9833 Poindexter Road
Orion Anderson Lynched, 8 Nov. 1889
Orion Anderson, a 14-year-old Black child, was lynched at the freight depot that stood just northwest of here. On 30 Oct. 1889, he had approached a 15-year-old White acquaintance with a fertilizer sack over his head, scaring her. Despite her inability to positively identify him, and his explanation that he had only meant to frighten her, he was arrested for attempted rape and held in the Leesburg jail. Early on the morning of 8 Nov., a mob of 25-40 disguised men stormed the jail, forced Anderson to the depot, hanged him, and shot his body multiple times. No one was ever brought to justice. From 1866 until well into the 20th century, more than 100 people, primarily Black men, were lynched in VA.
Locality: Town of Leesburg
Proposed Location: Harrison Street SE, just north of the intersection with Depot Court SE
Lynchings in Alexandria
Black teenagers Joseph McCoy and Benjamin Thomas were lynched in Alexandria on 23 Apr. 1897 and 8 Aug. 1899, respectively. It was alleged that McCoy, 18, had sexually assaulted his White employer’s daughter and that Thomas, 16, had attempted to assault a White child who lived next door. Similar accusations were often used against Black males as a means of intimidating and controlling the African American community. Ignoring due process, hundreds of people forcibly took McCoy from the police station and Thomas from the jail, brutalized them, and hanged them from lampposts within a block of City Hall. No one was held accountable. Patrols threatened Black Alexandrians, and both families moved away.
Locality: City of Alexandria
Proposed Location: N. Fairfax Street between Cameron and King Streets, alongside City Hall
William Oscar Page Lynched
William Oscar Page, a married Black man in his late 20s, was accused of assaulting two White girls on 15 Aug. 1917. Promptly arrested, he was seized from the sheriff by a mob of 500, taken to say goodbye to his family, then shot and hanged at Cockrell’s Neck School, a Black school near here. A coroner's inquisition identified no perpetrators. Page's pastor, the Rev. John M. Ellison of Shiloh Baptist Church, urged the Black community to respond peacefully and met with White leaders. When no one was brought to justice, the Black community collectively refused to work for a prominent White farmer believed to have been a leader of the mob, demonstrating resistance in the face of racial terror.
Locality: Northumberland County
Proposed Location: U.S. 360 at the intersection with Route 683 (Fairport Road), Reedville
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