Rockbridge APVA Spring Tour of Rockingham County’s Mennonite Community   Lexington, VA - March 18, 2007 - “General Motors, Ford and Chrysler are having their troubles, but the Burkholder Buggy Shop in Dayton, Virginia, is doing just fine with a well tested product and satisfied customers,” so notes local APVA board member Tom Kastner. “Chalk it up to a form of preservation that is well worth our attention.” Members of the Ruth Anderson McCulloch Branch of APVA will have an opportunity to see the buggy shop and other interesting sites when it tours the Dayton/Bridgewater section of Rockingham County on April 14. Together with Kastner, APVA member Dan Pezzoni has put together a tour that will be one of the more interesting in recent memory. Chief among the sites on the tour is the Harrisonburg-Rockingham Historical Society Heritage Center in Dayton. The Heritage Center complex includes the Cromer-Trumbo House, a brick residence built ca. 1844 with a log section believe to date to ca. 1815. The museum in the Center has two permanent exhibits: the “Shenandoah Valley Folk Art Collection” and “Invincible Spirit, History in the Heart of Shenandoah.” The exhibits contain examples of the Valley’s rich pottery, ironmaking, Fraktur, quiltmaking and gunsmithing traditions. Another tour site is the Martin Harness Shop, a noteworthy assemblage of harnesses and other accoutrements supporting the horse-based transportation system of the Old Order Mennonite community. Harnessmaker Lewis Martin will provide a tour of the shop. The route to the harness shop passes a Mennonite school and Pleasant View Church, a plainly detailed Mennonite meetinghouse fronted by rows of hitching posts. Dan Burkholder started the Burkholder Buggy Shop in Lewis Martin’s chickenhouse in 1967 and moved to his present location in 1972. Here Burkholder and his craftsmen build and repair the sleek black buggies that are the transportation method of choice among the Old Order Mennonite families of the area. Listed in the state and national registers, historic Dayton got its start in the 1820s and today preserves a rich architectural legacy that includes gems like the fanciful Queen Anne “Bird Cage House” (Hoenshel House) and buildings from the Shenandoah College and Conservatory of Music, established in 1875. Also on the tour, the Reuel B. Pritchett Museum at Bridgewater College is described by museum director Dale Harter as a “cabinet of curiousities”—what most museums were before late 20th century repackaging. Church of the Brethren minister Rev. Pritchett amassed a collection of 6,000 artifacts from a variety of cultures and geological periods, including a saber-tooth tiger skull, a Babylonian cuneiform tablet, rare books, and over a thousand bottles and glassware. Tour participants will enjoy lunch in the Thomas House Restaurant situated in a 19th century house in Dayton. For more information on the tour, call APVA board member Tom Kastner at 540- 261-1221

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