Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, October 6, 1995 TAG: 9510060076
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
It's a paper trail of the travels of Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, Mexican Gen. Antonio de Santa Anna and other luminaries of the last century.
Saturday morning at 10, bidders will have a crack at the guest register from Augusta County's Oakland House as well as the historic inn itself.
It sits in the Deerfield Valley in the southwestern part of the county. In the mid-1800s, the rural spot was the equivalent of an interstate. Statesmen traveling to and from Washington stayed at the inn, as did wealthy families from England and all over the country en route to the mineral springs of adjacent Bath County.
The inn's log, covering 1849 to 1854, contains the signatures of more than 2,500 guests, with the number of servants and horses traveling with them.
Sign-ins for July 15, 1854, in the 107-page register include "T.J. Jackson and Lady, Lexington, Va." Joanna Smith, curator at the Stonewall Jackson House in Lexington, says the signature matches others of Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, the legendary Civil War general.
His wife, Elinor Jackson, was pregnant with their first child during that stay at the inn. Three months later, she and the baby died in childbirth.
The guest book documents the travels right before the Civil War of Prince Jerome Bonaparte, a nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, and Gen. Santa Anna, who traveled the United States in the 1850s lobbying for help in his attempt to regain the presidency of Mexico.
"You could spend weeks, months, years, looking at this," said Roanoke real estate broker and auctioneer Jim Woltz. "There are people who'll buy this for the same reason they'd buy a Van Gogh or a Picasso."
The Oakland House was built in 1848 by Samuel Blackburn and was owned for most of its life by his descendants, the Sitlington and Somerville families. It has not been an inn for many years, though Woltz said some people are interested in reopening it as a bed and breakfast.
Woltz has been like a kid in a candy store as he's readied the house, all its contents and the surrounding 220 acres for the auction. He said many of the oldest belongings of past owners had barely been touched.
He pried open trunks of mothballed English-style tails from the 1800s. In mint condition.
He perused farm ledgers from the last century. Old diplomas and marriage certificates. Blanket chests, a grandfather clock and Shenandoah Valley furniture from the 1700s. All will be auctioned at the old inn on Virginia 629 west of Staunton on Saturday.
Woltz found one of his own ancestors in the guest book, and made a copy for his 3-year-old son.
He said he's gotten more than 300 inquiries about the guest register since he advertised it on his Internet home page. Woltz is amused at the irony of instantly shipping across the country images of a document nearly 150 years old and signed in quill and ink.
Gen. Archibald Sproul, an Augusta County real estate broker who lives near the Oakland House, said Thursday he has Charlottesville media magnate John Kluge interested in the property.
But the guest book ought to become public property so researchers can have access to it, Sproul said. "It really ought to be bought by the state of Virginia and put in the State Library."
by CNB