Open House and Public Archaeology to Celebrate Walter Reed’s 171st Birthday

The Fairfield Foundation will host an Open House and activities at Dr. Walter Reed’s Birthplace, 4021 Hickory Fork Road in Gloucester County, on Saturday, September 10, from 10am-4pm. Dr. Reed was born in the small dwelling in Belroi on September 13, 1851, while his father was an itinerant preacher to Methodist congregations in the Gloucester and King and Queen County circuit. The youngest of five children, Reed became a U.S. Army pathologist and bacteriologist. He led experiments that proved yellow fever is transmitted by a mosquito bite.

In addition to tours of the house, which is a rare survival of an architectural style once common throughout 19th-century Virginia, visitors may participate in public archaeology to search for evidence of the Belroi community.