In the Shenandoah Valley, the Fannie Thompson House in Augusta County is the sole unmodified dwelling remaining in what was once a thriving segregated African American neighborhood known as Jack’s Hill that occupied a hillside along the South River just south of Staunton. Moved to its current location in 1875, the house was among a cluster of dwellings built by newly emancipated African Americans during the Reconstruction Era that became a part of Greenville, a community of working-class Blacks that endured through the Jim Crow era of segregation. Originally a simple one-room dwelling, the log house evolved into a two-story residence with rear additions. Greenville’s population plummeted after the mid-20th-century through the onset of the Civil Rights movement, integration of public schools, and the exodus of residents to places offering better housing and employment opportunities for African Americans. In 1974, the Thompson House’s last resident died. The house encapsulates vernacular construction methods of the late-19th-century and ingenuity in the use of salvage materials, which are character-defining features, and illustrates the growing Thompson family’s changing economic circumstances into the mid-20th-century.
Many properties listed in the registers are private dwellings and are not open to the public, however many are visible from the public right-of-way. Please be respectful of owner privacy.
Abbreviations:
VLR: Virginia Landmarks Register
NPS: National Park Service
NRHP: National Register of Historic Places
NHL: National Historic Landmark
Programs
DHR has secured permanent legal protection for over 700 historic places - including 15,000 acres of battlefield lands
DHR has erected 2,532 highway markers in every county and city across Virginia
DHR has registered more than 3,317 individual resources and 613 historic districts
DHR has engaged over 450 students in 3 highway marker contests
DHR has stimulated more than $4.2 billion dollars in private investments related to historic tax credit incentives, revitalizing communities of all sizes throughout Virginia