ROANOKE, Va. (WDBJ) – The Austinville community in Wythe County might be best known as the birthplace of Stephen F. Austin, often described as the Father of Texas.
But just a short drive from the monument honoring his legacy is a smaller roadside marker commemorating a pivotal event in the birth of the nation: the drafting of the Fincastle Resolutions.
“No one had ever put down on paper, we’re actually willing to fight about this,” said Eric Monday a member of the VA250 Commission. “As the Fincastle Resolutions say we are willing to live or die in liberty.”
Two months before Patrick Henry declared “Give me liberty or Give me death at St. John’s Church in Richmond, fifteen landowners gathered in what was then known as Fincastle County and declared that America’s independence was a cause worth fighting and dying for.
“That’s the onset of the revolution. That… was the very beginning of the documentation that we’ll support the Continental Army and continental force as we move forward to eliminate the British trade and separate ourselves from the King,” said Del. Terry Austin. “That’s very, very important, because that was here. That was in this region.”
Austin is Chair of the Virginia American Revolution 250 Commission, which is coordinating a multi-year observance of Virginia’s role in the birth of the nation.
During a program on the Fourth of July at the State Capitol in Richmond, and in events yet to come, the commission is emphasizing the march “toward a more perfect union,” embracing all parts of Virginia and all Virginians, including the state’s indigenous tribes and African American citizens.
“History is not just about the past. It is about the present, and where we are going in the future together,” VA250 Commission Vice Chair Sen. Mamie Locke said during the ceremony.
“Learn your history. Learn my history. Learn our history,” said Chief Stephen Adkins, Chickahominy tribal leader and VA250 Commission member.
“I think this needed to happen,” Austin told WDBJ7 in a recent interview. “It needed to occur, to bring forth some unity, and maybe put some of our history behind us that occurred. You can’t deny our history. It is our history, but it doesn’t mean that it has to be the history that we carry forward.”
And rather than commemorate a single moment in time, Commission member Eric Monday told us the VA250 events are celebrating a journey that began 250 years ago and continues today.
“The story of the revolution is not so much about what happened in 1776. I mean that’s what started the story,” he said. “The important part of the story of the revolution is that those ideas and those concepts and those words really have come to have genuine meaning for all Americans in the ensuing 250 years.”
And this weekend, Southwest Virginia is at the center of this observance.
In Wytheville, an event commemorating the Fincastle Resolutions is scheduled Saturday at 10:30 a.m. at the Homestead Museum.
And then at 2:00 p.m. in Roanoke: A Salute to Southwest Virginia: 250th Anniversary of the Fincastle Resolutions. That event will include dramatic readings, keynote remarks from VA250 Honorary Chair Carly Fiorina, a new musical fanfare written for the VA250 events by Broadway Music Director and Arranger David Chase and performed by the brass and drum ensemble from the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra, and the debut of a new mobile museum experience that will travel across the state.
For more information, visit the VA250 website.
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