Dr. Ruffner has left us a description of Timber Ridge, which was built near Fairfield in Rockbridge County in 1776. The school took its name from the fine oak trees which grew along its ridge. He writes:
"The schoolhouse was a log cabin. The fine oak forest, which had given Timber Ridge its name, cast its shade over it in summer and afforded convenient fuel in winter. A spring of pure water gushed from the rocks near the house. From amidst the trees the student had a fine view of the country below and the neighboring Blue Ridge. In short all the features of the place made it a fit habitation of the woodland muse and the hill deserved the name of Mount Pleasant. Hither about thirty youths of the mountains repaired to 'taste of the Pierian spring.' Of reading, writing and ciphering, the boys of the country had before acquired such knowledge as primary schools could afford; but with a few late exceptions, Latin, Greek, algebra, geometry and such like scholastic mysteries were things of which they had heard—which they knew perhaps to lie covered up in the learned heads of their pastors—but of the nature and uses they had no conception whatever.
"It was a log hut of one room. The students carried their dinner with them from the boarding-schools in the neighborhood. They conned their lesson either in the schoolroom where the recitations were heard, or under the shade of the trees where breezes whispered and birds sang without disturbing their studies. A horn—perhaps a cow's horn—summoned the school from play and scattered classes to recitations.
"Instead of broadcloth coats, the students generally wore a far more graceful garment, the hunting shirt, home-spun, home-woven, and home-made, by the industry of wives and daughters.
"Their amusements were not less remote from the modern taste of students—cards, backgammon, flutes, fiddles, and even marbles were scarcely known among these mountain boys. Firing pistols and ranging the field with shotguns to kill little birds for sport, they would have considered a waste of time and ammunition. As to frequenting tippling shops of any denomination, that was impossible because no such catchpenny lures for students existed in the country, or would have been tolerated. Had any huckster of liquors, knicknacks, and explosive crackers, hung out signs in those days, the old Puritan morality of the land was yet vigorous enough to abate the nuisance. The sports of the students were mostly gymnastic, both manly and healthful—such as leaping, running, wrestling, pitching quoits and playing ball. In this rustic seminary a considerable number of young men began their education, who afterwards bore a distinguished part in the civil and ecclesiastical affairs of the country."
Valley Inventions
The Valley of Virginia has often been termed "the granary of the South." It is no wonder that farmers from time to time have tried to shorten their labor in the wheat fields by inventing machines to do their work.
The name Robert McCormick means little or nothing to most of us, yet on his farm, Walnut Grove, near Lexington he made repeated attempts to invent a workable reaper. His son, Cyrus, had watched with growing interest each of his father's undertakings. His regrets must have been as keen as the elder McCormick's when they realized one May morning in 1831 that the clumsy machine could not replace the hand scythe and cradle.
Cyrus knew something of machinery and determined to improve his father's poor invention in time for the next harvesting. During the intervening six weeks he stayed in the workshop as much as the busy growing season would allow and secured the ready help of a slave boy, Joe Anderson.