Written by Sara Lewis, Development Officer Born in the fall of 1852, Hettie Catlett was the ninth child of 49-year-old John W. C. Catlett of Timberneck (1803-1883) and the fourth child of Frances “Fanny” Burwell Catlett (1814-1903), his second wife. Hettie’s birth was not celebrated in any known letters or journals, perhaps since, in the […]
Dr. Walter Reed and Yellow Fever: Part 2
In case you missed it: Dr. Walter Reed and Yellow Fever Part 1 When the Civil War broke out, Walter Reed’s older brothers, Tom and James, fought on the side of the Confederacy. The Reed family had left Gloucester County and were living in the Piedmont countryside. Walter, who was barely a teenager at the […]
Dr. Walter Reed and Yellow Fever: Part 1
The Fairfield Foundation announced a collaborative partnership with the Gloucester Preservation Foundation last year. As part of our agreement, we will care for Dr. Walter Reed’s Birthplace and the surrounding property while hosting public events and educational experiences there. Though Reed was in Gloucester for only a short time, the house where he was born […]
The Thruston Library: What One Family’s Books Tell Us About Their Past
By Jordan Knepper, Fairfield Intern Jordan Knepper was a digital intern with The Fairfield Foundation in the summer and fall of 2020. He recently completed his undergraduate degree in history from Regent University. I have spent several weeks this past summer exploring a collection of books owned by the Thruston family of Gloucester. The Thrustons […]
Gloucester’s Public School Past: Archaeology and Artifact Update!
Guest blog written by Colleen Betti, current doctoral candidate at UNC-Chapel Hill and long-time Fairfield Foundation friend. In 2019, I wrote a guest blog post talking about the research I was doing on Gloucester’s schools. In the year and a half since then, I’ve excavated 54 test units at three of Gloucester’s black schools. Woodville […]
Irene Morgan: Virginia’s Freedom Fighter
In 1944, a woman named Irene Morgan was riding a bus from Hayes to her home in Baltimore. Ms. Morgan was at a hard point in her life. She was a mother to several children and had just suffered a painful and dangerous pregnancy ending in miscarriage. After an operation associated with this, she […]
Students across the Middle Peninsula: Fairfield’s Educational Outreach in 2018
Since our founding in 2000, the Fairfield Foundation has been dedicated to involving the community in our efforts to discover and preserve local history through hands-on learning experiences. These include public dig days, lab nights,school programs and activities at local events and festivals. We offer educational programming to schools across the Middle Peninsula (see our […]
Fairfield Mantel Returns Home
The Fairfield manor house is most recognized for its massive diagonally-set chimney stacks. which stand out to anyone who sees them. The house had several sets, including two doubles and two triples, although one set was lost around 1839 when the west wing came down. These iconic elements of this once grand building are only […]
The CAPE crosses the finish line!
With the recent ribbon cutting at the CAPE we have reached the exciting end of a long journey. In 2010 we purchased the Edge Hill Service Station and embarked on a dream to transform this 1930s gas station into a regional center for the archaeological, preservation and education efforts of the Fairfield Foundation. The […]
Preserving Fairfield from the Ground Up!
Last week we hosted our second Adventures in Preservation (AiP) workshop of 2017 and made great progress at Fairfield Plantation. We opened a new excavation block on the south end of the house foundation, and continued work around a collapsed chimney that we’ve been excavating for the past two summers. The AiP participants (aka “Jammers”) started […]
