A nearly 200-year-old house in the historic section of Blacksburg looks like any other modest house in town. It was built by a father for his daughter and her family in 1830. After her husband died and her children were grown, she began keeping a diary that turns out to be an important perspective on the town’s history.
“Here’s February 1892, Tuesday, the 12th, ‘At 10’0 clock, the snow came down thick and fast. The men from town and 30 students went to shovel snow and didn’t make it to coal bank," s Joann Sutphin reads from the diary of her great-great grandmother, Rosanna Croy Dawson.
"And, this day is like 1840 only the snow ain’t so deep as was then. For I do remember, for it was the night I got married 55 years ago. My husband is dead. All my waiters are dead.”
Sutphin, a business woman and amateur historian, was annotating the diary that her relative wrote.
“I was curious. I didn’t know what she meant by ‘waiters.’ So, I was able to look it up and found it meant the attendants for her wedding," Sutphin said. "I’m sorry she didn’t name them, but that’s’ what they were called in 1845 when she married."
The family had never been wealthy and after her husband, a school tutor, died, she had to find a way to support herself. So, she and her youngest daughter, Ella, opened a dress maker’s shop in their house.
Sutphin explains,” Ella employed women from the town to come in and sew, how many hours they worked; how much they were paid.”
Dawson was not given to elaborate descriptions, nor was she an educated writer. But she faithfully noted what happened day to day, like a beat reporter on deadline. Just the facts. She wrote about food, the buying or gifting of it, the making and eating -- and always, a weather report.
"This is Saturday, April 22nd, 1893. ‘Clear and cloudy and cold high wind very stormey, s-t-o-r-m-e-y. I cooked, helped cut potatoes to plant, fixed honeysuckle at the window. Emma Slusher here today. Ella and Laura went to church, reverend Wizner preached. He came to see us this evening. Ella got some shad. Sherman brought eggs and butter. The students come back tonight half past 10. The boys here shot of the cannons when they marched back through town."
“In one of her footnotes, she talks about Mr. William Alwood. I looked him up," Sutphin said. "He was a professor of Horticulture at Virginia Agriculture and Mechanical school. He founded the Horticulture Department at Virginia Tech."
Dawson’s diary offers us a different perspective, like a reverse shot on local history. And that’s why Virginia Tech Archivist Kira Dietz was so excited when she got the call that Sutphin was donating the diary to the special collections department at Newman Library.
“We have a lot of collections here that represent Blacksburg history and Blacksburg business history, but not a collection that deals with women’s history like this,” Dietz noted.
When the house of the most prominent family in Blacksburg, who’s relatives founded the town that bears their name, burned down, while they were away for the winter, Dawson wrote about it.
"The (Alexander)Black house burning was a big event, we have secondary sources that talk about this, but to have a primary source where somebody is like, ‘Oh yes, that house caught fire and it burned and here’s when they started rebuilding it." Dietz says they’ve only just begun the explore the diary and already she’s seeing more references that flesh the history of Blacksburg.
Rosanna Dawson’s hand written diaries, and the versions annotated by Joann Sutphin, as well as Sutphin’s own mother, who began the project, will become part of the archives, in the Special Collection department at Virginia Tech’s Newman Library.
