Events
40th Anniversary Strother Conference
The William Strother Society will be celebrating its 40th anniversary while also celebrating our country’s 250th birthday by enjoying an amazing program worthy of such milestones. We’ll be exploring our colonial family sites while learning much about our colonial family history from an impressive lineup of speakers.
We begin the celebration on Wednesday evening when we drive from the hotel to Ferry Farm independently. Bill Garner, President of the George Washington Foundation, will kick off the festivities as our first speaker when the sun sets at beautiful Ferry Farm. Thursday morning, we board a bus and head north to Mt. Vernon. Upon our arrival, guests will receive guided tours by expert docents, lunch, and exclusive access to the George Washington Presidential Library, usually not open to the public. Our Strother group will have an educational stop at the Special Collections Vault to view historic Washington/Strother papers before busing back for dinner in Fredericksburg that evening.
Friday, we will board a bus for historic St. John’s Church in nearby King George County. There communion will be offered using our family silver that has been in continuous use for over 300 years! Next we’ll make the quick journey over to Millbank which is the first Strother-owned property in the new world dating back to 1669. There we'll see select archaeological finds from Millbank and be able to walk the historic Strother grounds and view our official Virginia historical marker which is located on the property. We will then head over to nearby Belle Grove and Emmanuel Church where our new Strother Society friend and property manager, Michelle Darnell, will give us the history of the property and all the Strother connections related to the plantation. For instance, President James Madison, the father of the U.S. Constitution, was born on the property. For lunch, we will head back to Ferry Farm where Dave Muraca, Vice President of Museum Content, will lead our archeology “lunch and learn” discussion (box lunches served at the pavilion). There will be docent led tours of the Strother/Washington replica house as well as Strother layer artifact viewings and program discussions led by Ferry Farm experts to finish off the daytime program before busing back to the hotel. Dinner that evening will be at historic Kenmore, including a scrumptious meal while enjoying a Zoom lecture from Dr. Gail Wertz. Dr. Wertz and her husband own Millbank and she will provide more information on her Millbank archeology findings.
Our final conference day begins at the Hyatt Place Hotel with our general business meeting and elections (everyone is invited!). Following that is our 2nd Board of Directors Meeting, which should be completed around noon. Saturday afternoon offers an opportunity for everyone to enjoy their leisure time, including the many available Fredericksburg historical attractions! Later that evening, we will meet at historic Woolen Mill on the Rappahannock River for family portraits, mingling, and a formal meal. Revolutionary War era drum and fife music will set the mood. Professor Michael G. Spencer, Associate Professor and Prince B. Woodard Chair in Historic Preservation at the University of Mary Washington will be our featured dinner speaker. His talk will place Ferry Farm within the broader story of Fredericksburg’s growth during the eighteenth century and the years leading up to the Revolutionary War.
19th Strother Family Conference
Our 2024 Strother Family Conference was held in Louisville, Kentucky, a city with many Strother connections, notably:
Zachary Taylor – 12th President of the United States (William line).
Gen. George S. Patton – 4 star general of WWII fame and pioneer in tank warfare (Jeremiah line)
Meriwether Lewis Clark, Jr. – Founder of Churchill Downs and the Kentucky Derby (William line)
George Arnold Fenwick, Sr. – Born in Louisville, co-founder of the William Strother Society, Director 1988-1992, and President 1994-1996 (William and Jeremiah lines)
Registration began on Wednesday, which included the first of two Board of Directors’ Meetings and the Director’s Dinner at the Captain’s Quarters Riverside Grill.
Thursday began with a bus tour to the Zachary Taylor National Cemetery and Memorial where the former President and his immediate family are buried. The tour then continued on to the Gen. George S. Patton Museum of Leadership, on the grounds of Fort Knox, which highlighted his career and leadership. After a box lunch at a nearby park, we traveled to the James Beam Distillery, founded in the 1780’s by pioneer and farmer James Beam. We toured the distillery and had tastings of famous bourbon brands like Jim Beam, Knob Creek, Old Crow and Old Overholt. The day wrapped up with a Belle of Louisville riverboat cruise on the Ohio River, including a ball-park-type supper!
On Friday, we toured two horse farms famous for Kentucky Derby winners: Stonestreet Farm Nursery and Hill ‘N Dale Farm. We got to see many horses including some foals. Friday evening was ‘free time’ so folks went to different places for dinner.
Saturday began with the General Membership Meeting which included election of officers and directors, and naming Fredericksburg, VA, as the site for the next (2026) Conference. The new officers and directors are shown in the ‘About Us’ section of the WSS website. The second Board of Directors’ Meeting, featuring the newly-elected officers, followed the General Membership Meeting. The day, and the Conference, concluded with a reception and banquet at the Kentucky Derby Museum at Churchill Downs. This beautiful venue provided a fitting conclusion to this Conference and featured guest speakers Benjamin Patton, grandson of Gen. George S. Patton, speaking from his biography Growing Up Patton; and James J. Holmberg, from the Filson Historical Society, speaking on the intertwined legacies of the Clark, Rogers, Lewis and Strother families pioneering the district of Kentucky.
Attached is the Conference Schedule and the bios for Benjamin Patton and James Holmberg.
Strother Conference - 2022
Due to the nationwide coronavirus situation, the 2020 Strother Conference was first postponed to 2021 and then to 2022, same location and same program. For our 18th Biennial Conference, our focus was on David Hunter Strother, also known as Porte Crayon. He gained fame in the 1850s for his illustrations for Harper's Magazine and his books, including Virginia Illustrated. He served in the U.S. Army as an officer during the Civil War and as consul-general to Mexico (1879-1885).
Wednesday’s only activity was the Board of Director’s Meeting and dinner. On Thursday, several optional tours were planned, including bus trips to Weyer's Cave and to Ferry Farm for those who missed it in 2018 or who wanted to see the continuing progress. In addition, a Winchester city tour and a cemetery tour were available. We also toured the Museum of the Shenandoah and its beautiful gardens followed by a catered dinner with a talk by Hunter Lesser, an historian and David Hunter Strother researcher.
Friday’s main event was a visit to the site of the old Strother Hotel (now the Old Country Inn) in Berkeley Springs, WV, and a luncheon there. This was followed by a visit to the Old Roman Baths, also visited by George Washington, and a dedication reception at the newly revised Porte Crayon exhibit in the Museum of the Berkeley Springs. This exhibit was funded by the William Strother Society.
Saturday featured the General Business Meeting, including elections of officers for the next two years, and the Board of Director’s Meeting. The Banquet that evening ended with a tribute to Ernst Strother Bauer for his many contributions to the Society, and a talk by Don Teeter, a David Hunter Strother impersonator and historian.
For the 42 attendees, there was lots to see and do and many of our members trace their recent ancestry to this area. Our hotel was near Old Town Winchester, where you could find many attractions and restaurants. One historic site was the Taylor Hotel which served as Stonewall Jackson's HQ several times during the Civil War, and also as a field hospital for both sides during the War. Another was the old wooden building used by a young George Washington when he was a surveyor there.
Attached is the Conference Schedule, showing the activities and times for each day, and the Conference Registration Form. Both can be downloaded and printed out.
Strother Conference - 2018
The 17th Biennial Conference of the William Strother Society was held in Fredericksburg, VA, at the Hilton Garden Inn. 98 people -- members, families and friends -- were registered. The main focus of the conference was on the Strother Family history at Ferry Farm (the most visible expression of our ties to George Washington), Millbank and the town of Fredericksburg. The George Washington Foundation, owners of Ferry Farm, provided a great deal of assistance in setting up this conference and in making the many features of Ferry Farm available to us. The current owners of Millbank, Gail Wertz and Andrew Ball, graciously hosted our group, displayed the ongoing archeological research at Millbank, and explained their plans for the future. The schedule included a variety of activities:
- a trolley tour of old Fredericksburg and the Fredericksburg Civil War Battle Field, with a US Park Service guide who explained the details of the Battle of Fredericksburg. The day ended with dinner at Brock's Riverside Grill overlooking the Rappahannock River. The evening speaker, Paula Thomas, presented a few of the stories from her book "Potluck: Little Stories from a Big Table" about some of her own family's experiences.
- a tour of the restored Ferry Farm house with guides who explained how the house was designed, built, and restored using a combination of archeological field work and research. Also on display were a few pieces of reproduction furniture. Lunch was provided in the pavilion, an open-air structure built in the manner of an 18th century barn, and included a further discussion of the restoration by one of Ferry Farm's archeologists.
- a tour of Millbank that included a discussion by Gail Wertz on the archeological digs underway and a ride across the fields in a hay wagon to observe several of the sites.
- Saturday included a meeting of the current Board of Directors, the Business Meeting with election of officers, and a meeting of the new Board of Directors. The Banquet that evening at the Hilton Garden Inn featured a Col. George Washington impersonator who participated in the photo sessions.
- The banquet was followed by an awards presentation to Jimmy Strother, Mike Noble, and outgoing President Dan Strother in appreciation for service to the Strother Society. The program included a discussion by Gail Wertz on future plans for Millbank, a discussion by another archeologist from Ferry Farm on different approaches to their research, and discussions by Ernst Bauer and Bill Garner, President of the George Washington Foundation, on future plans for Ferry Farm and how the Strother Society can have an impact on those plans.
For more details on the activities at the 2018 Conference and accompanying photographs, check the Conference Photos section of this website and the upcoming issue of the Houses of Strother Newsletter.
Strother Conference - 2016
The Strother Conference 2016 was held in Charlottesville, Virginia, and the host hotel was the Holiday Inn Charlottesville-Monticello. Sixty-four members and their families enjoyed an interesting and historical program that included, in addition to the Board and Business Meetings:
- a tour of the restored Montpelier, home of James and Dolley Madison, and its visitors' center; also a dinner presentation by Dr. Gail Williams Wertz on the restoration and archeological findings at Millbank.
- a tour of Ferry Farm, in Fredericksburg, VA, boyhood home of George Washington and previously owned by William Strother, grandson of William the Immigrant. The tour included our first view of the foundation of the original Strother house and the work underway to restore it.
- a tour of Kenmore House, also in Fredericksburg, the home of George Washington's sister, Betty.
- artifacts from a fallen tree at Millbank, offered for sale to members by the Emerald Sun Wood Shop.
- the Saturday night banquet at the Holiday Inn featured a presentation by Jennifer Glass, Montpelier's Director of Architecture and Historic Preservation, discussing the restoration of Montpelier and the ongoing archeological digs.
For more details on the activities at the 2016 Conference and accompanying photographs, please check the December 2016 issue of the Houses of Strother Newsletter.