Events

The Eighth National Strother Conference held in Fredericksburg, Virginia and the host hotel was the Holiday Inn Select.  Formerly the Sheraton Fredericksburg Resort and Conference Center, the hotel underwent a complete renovation and is operating under a new name.  The 139 attendees enjoyed the program, including:

• A visit to Millbank at the invitation of the owner, John J. Ballentine, Jr.  We had just learned that Mr. Ballentine had sold Millbank and the closing was just after the Conference.  We toured the grounds, visited the little graveyard to the east, and enjoyed box lunches.
• We again visited the Strother family sites Albion, Ferry Farm, and St. John’s Episcopal Church, and two new sites, King George Museum (which contains some artifacts from the Millbank dig), and Emmanual Church in Hanover Parish.
• A very successful Town Hall Meeting.
• The banquet speaker was Margaretta Barton Colt, who gave a review of her book “Defend the Valley: A Shenandoah Family in the Civil War.”

Mr. Ballentine has granted the Strother Society a perpetual easement to a parcel of land located adjacent to the entrance road and on which we will place the William Strother Memorial Stone and the crimson maple tree planted in memory of George A. Fenwick, one of our founders.

The Seventh National Strother Conference was held in Arlington, Virginia, and the host hotel was the Arlington Hyatt Hotel. Attendance was 129.  This location was chosen for its proximity to Washington, DC, and the opportunities for research that were available.  The program included: 

• Tours to Gunston Hall, home of George Mason, and Mount Vernon, home of George Washington, and including lunch on a cruise ship on the Potomac River.
• On Friday evening, member William G. Clotworthy presented an informative and humorous talk about our former presidents.  Also, Anita Dodd, an archeologist who worked on the dig at Millbank and is now at the Kenmore Foundation, spoke about “Ferry Farm Progress”.
• Our speaker at the Saturday night banquet was Cecil D. Eby, author of “Porte Crayon:  The Life of David Hunter Strother”, who talked about what we would see on Sunday’s tour to the Hagerstown Museum.
• Member Sarah Strother King and her husband, Robin, joined us at the banquet and on the Sunday tour to Hagerstown, MD, to view the artwork of her great-grandfather, David Hunter Strother.

The William Strother Society celebrated its tenth anniversary at the Sixth National Strother Conference held in Fredericksburg, Virginia.  The host hotel was the Sheraton-Fredericksburg Resort & Conference Center. Attendance was 167.  In addition to revisiting the family home sites in the area and offering our genealogy research session, we introduced several new features to our program:

• A special session on family research for our younger members, and for those who have not as yet become immersed in the family research, was offered.
• A “Town Meeting” for all members was held where attendees could ask questions and where our Society’s objectives and programs were reviewed, acclaimed and criticized.
• The Strotherland Tour was repeated with stops at Millbank, Albion, and St. John’s Episcopal Church.  The tour included a visit to Wakefield, George Washington’s birthplace, and lunch at Stratford Hall Plantation, birthplace of Robert E. Lee.
• Dr Otho Campbell, Professor of History, Mary Washington College, spoke about “From Revolution to Early Republic."
• A panel discussion on the “Past and Future of Ferry Farm” was headed by Prof. John Pearce, Director of the Center for Historical Preservation at Mary Washington College, and included Mrs. Thena Jones, Virginia Historian, C. M. Williams, Secretary of the George Washington Boyhood Home Foundation, and Dennis Pogue, Mount Vernon Archeologist.