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About

Project Overview

Histories along the Blue Ridge (HBR) is a collaborative project between James Madison University and the Rockingham County Circuit Courthouse that is making rare documents from Rockingham County’s storied past accessible to the public. This ongoing project will digitize and publish collections from the courthouse’s substantial archival materials, which have long been inaccessible to researchers. Each year, a graduate history intern, in coordination with Courthouse leadership and staff, will select and digitize a collection of documents from the courthouse archives. In addition to gaining valuable experience in archival and digital historical methods, the graduate intern will then use those records to develop an interpretive historical essay and publish it on the HBR site. This dual approach—publishing archival documents and an interpretation from those documents—will allow the public to explore Rockingham’s past on their own and see how emerging professional historians employ and interpret the same materials.

Sponsors

This project owes a great deal of gratitude for the continued support from the Town of Harrisonburg, Rockingham County, The Circuit Court of Rockingham County, James Madison University, and JMU's Libraries.

Rockingham County, Virginia   Rockingham County Circuit Court   City of Harrisonburg, Virginia   James Madison University   JMU Libraries

How to Use the Surname Word Cloud

We filled this ‘family surname cloud’ with the family names of all the owners identified in the legal documents. The size of the name in the tree indicates how often that name was associated with ownership of land. Hover your mouse over the name and click on it to discover the history of the park. Click here for a bigger version of the Families Word Tree.