Historic Fincastle, Inc. Membership Drive ~ 2025

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2025 MEMBERSHIP NOTE from Patsy

2024 was a good year with some new activities and participation.  It is my hope that this trend will continue. Your 2025 membership comes with your renewed interest in Fincastle and its history. 

2025 is the 250th anniversary of the beginning of the Revolutionary War and our separating from British rule. In 2026, all the United States will be celebrating the “Birth of the United States”.  Botetourt County and Fincastle were very instrumental in this transition from the “mother country”. Be looking for activities connected with this celebration.  Go to www.VA250.org to see a list of events across Virginia including Botetourt County. This website will help educate, inform and where and how to celebrate this important time in the history of our United States.

Here are some of my goals for HFI in 2025:

1) Involve more of the membership of HFI in the planning and executions of our events.  Hopefully we will increase our notification of committee meetings and upcoming events to keep everyone informed of happenings. (Please add historicfincastleinc@gmail.com to your contact list to receive updates from HFI during the year.)

2) Continue to preserve some of our resources in the Dottie Kessler Collection on the Web page.  This will involve scanning and uploading articles of the interesting history of Fincastle.  If your interest is in this type of preservation of history, please let me know.  We have the resources to “save” but not all the equipment needed to do this.  We can afford to do this, but it will take regular “man or woman hours” to carry it out. (Also, if you have not visited this site on our web page (www.hisfin.org) I encourage you to do so.  There is a lot of interesting information already archived.)

3) Continue our programs and events including Step-Back-Into-History, Historic Fincastle Fall Festival, Celebrating Our Churches, Free Ice Cream Summer Social, Holiday Home Tour and Marketplace, plus The Tinsel Trail and pick-up where we left off with the Around Town, Vol II and Signs to highlight the history of Fincastle, etc. FYI—our properties will need some physical updating.  For example, the Early Cabin has some “soft” floor issues and the Wysong property gathers water when it rains hard and the wind blows, (We were able to get Appalachian Power Company take down the tree at the western corner of the Wysong building so the electric line and the roof are no longer in danger of being torn down by falling limbs.)

4) I hope that we can continue to work with the other historical groups and The Town of Fincastle while keeping the historical importance of the town in the forefront.

5) Establish a working budget to help with the planning of events.

6) Remember that VA250 is coming, and we need to continue to remember and celebrate Fincastle and Botetourt County’s importance in this pivotal time in our nation’s history.