Committee:

• Rev. R. B. Blankenship
• Rev. Arthur P. Gray
• Stickley Tucker
• Thomas Whitehead

With its salubrious atmosphere, its beautiful scenery, its varied landscape, its pure water, its temperate climate, its productive valleys, its abundant forests, its mineral hills, its towering mountain its rapid streams, its central location, there is no part of this grand old Commonwealth that has received more of nature's endowment and less of man's exploitation than the county of Amherst - A sure and a rich reward awaits those who with faith, energy and intelligence aw willing to be God's agents in its future development.

In 1761 a new county was carved out of Albemarle and named after the hero to Ticonderoga, the most successful as well as the most popular of all the English Colonial Governors-General.

From this Nelson was taken out in 1808, leaving the county as it now is, bounded on the east by the watershed of the Blue Ridge, on the south and east by the James river and the north by the Piney and Buffalo, situated in the heart of Virginia near the center of the famous Piedmont region, 154 miles from Washington, 138 from Richmond and 60 from Danville.

Long since Capt. John Smith wrote, "Heaven and Earth never agreed better to frame a place for man's habitation than Virginia." Our geographies unite in saying that "Virginia is the Southernmost of the Middle Atlantic States, lying in the region of the middle latitudes between the extremes of heat and cold incident to states north and south of it, and eminently favourable to the salubrious air and delightful climate."

Our state handbook tells us that "the Piedmont Country is the fifth step of the great stairway ascending to the west: its eastern edge, along Middle Virginia, is from 300 to 500 feet above the sea: then comes the broken ranges of the Coast Mountains rising as detached, or connected knobs, in lines or groups from one hundred to six hundred feet higher. These are succeeded by the numberless valleys, of all imaginable forms, some long, straight and wide, others narrow and widening: others again oval and almost enclosed, locally known as "coves" that extend across to and far into the Blue Ridge, the spurs of which often reach out southwardly for miles, ramifying in all directions.

"The Blue Ridge rises from two thousand to four thousand feet above the sea. Numerous streams have their origin in the gorges of the Blue Ridge, and most of them flow across Piedmont to the southeast until near its border where they unite, and for one that runs for a considerable distance along and parallel to the Coast Mountains and takes the name of some of the well known rives that cross 'Middle' and 'Tidewater' Virginia.

"This is a genuine Piedmont country, one in which the mountains present themselves in their grand aw well as their diminutive forms, gradually sinking down into the plains, giving great diversity and picturesqueness to the landscape.

"Few countries surpass this in beauty of scenery and choice of prospect, so it has always been a favorite section with men of refinement in which to fix their homes."

As this is true of the whole section there is no county more representative of the Piedmont than Amherst.

Here is the Blue Ridge with Mount Pleasant towering four thousand and ninety feet above sea level: parallel to the Blue Ridge we have the Tobacco Row Mountains, twenty-nine hundred feet in height with the beautiful Pedlar and Buffalo valleys lying between: further east and yet lower the "The Ridge" separating the James river valley from the middle plateau, and traversing these various sections are the Pedlar river, the Buffalo river, the little Piney, the Indian Creek, Puppies Creek, Harris's Creek and other creeks and their branches all eventually emptying into the James or the Tye. Thus from its central location is the state and in the section it is not extravaganza, but only a just appreciation of natures generosity to claim for Amherst that it is the most favored county, in the most beautiful section, of the grandest State in the greatest country of the world.

On the census map representing the health of the different portions of the United States, Amherst is a clean white spot.

Its salubrious atmosphere is attested by the number of people who annually resort here for their health, a number only limited by the accommodation afforded, whose praises are loud and continuous for the renewed strength they have received or for the little ones, seemingly hopeless, restored to them again.

One of these declared that though he had traveled a great deal, "Amherst was the only spot on earth that he had ever seen which did not have some disease peculiar to it."

Its health giving air is also attested by the longevity and hardiness of those who are native to the soil.

It is no unusual thing to see active men and women here between the ages of eighty and ninety. In the last fifteen years there have been, known to us, four white men who attained over ninety-eight years, two of them over ninety-nine: two white women who reached one hundred and two years, and two colored women, whose ages were authenticated by the families of their former owners, Aunt Sejus, on hundred and eight and Aunt Jody, one hundred and twelve.

It would be an easy thing for a Frederick to raise his company of stalwart men over six feet in heights from Amherst youths.

There were at one time at least fourteen men in this county over six feet four, threes of them six feet seven. The tallest man of the twenty thousand camped at Jacksonville, Fla., in 1898 was the color-bearer of the Second Virginia Regiment, Charlie McFall of Amherst county, six feet eight inches in stocking feet.

This rich and beautiful county twenty-two miles long with a mean width of nineteen miles contains 300,013 acres of as variegated soil as was ever found in the same number of acres.

The alluvial lands along the James, the Pedlar, the Buffalo, the Piney rivers and their many branches which intersect the county, are very fertile, adapted to the growth of all the grasses, grains, vegetables and fruits, while tobacco of the heaviest grade and finest texture are abundantly grown.

The red lands of the county along the valleys and spurs of the Blue Ridge and Tobacco Row Mountains and across the central portion of the county are among the finest in the state, and in addition to the usual crops, are finely suited to grapes and other fruits.

What is known a "the apple belt" of Virginia, a very narrow strip, runs across Amherst county. According to the State Agricultural Bureau there is more land in Amherst suited to the celebrated Albemarle pippin than in any other county of the state, but it is especially and more largely suited to the red apple.

There are now eight orchards ranging from fifteen hundred to ten thousand trees and numerous smaller ones scattered over the county, and upon the Tobacco Row one fine peach orchard that never fails. The Virginia apple growers have a great natural advantage in that their plentiful years correspond with the scanty years of the North and West, giving them a better general market. One man in this county received $17,000 for his apple crop as it stood on the trees.

The mountain tops afford as fine grazing for cattle and sheep as the blue grass of the limestone counties. Several graziers have lately found it very profitable and in mild winters they grazed all year round.

Our farmers are only beginning to realize their great opportunities in fruit raising and grazing. It is related of a certain gentleman that being a lilted "full" of "mountain dew" he was persuaded by a smooth tongued agent to invest rather largely in apple trees. The next day his brother made much fun over him for his folly. He felt a little ashamed of his weakness, but determined to stick. When his trees were grown, in one season he realized $3,000 profit. The laugh was turned.

Bee culture has enlisted the attention of some, who have found it very profitable.

Trucking and dairying in the neighborhood of Lynchburg has been exceedingly remunerative. The lands of Amherst are comparatively cheap, ranging from two dollars per acre upward, and those contemplating purchasing will find a inviting field with polite, honest and intelligent land agents at Amherst, ready to wait on them and give all possible information, but the prices are steadily rising and those wishing to make bargains should be the first.

Amherst's forests are large and original and filled with oak hickory, walnut, pine, chestnut, maple, dogwood, poplar, cherry, locust, mulberry, etc., but saw mills and lumber companies are all over the county and fast sweeping up the woods for every conceivable purpose, piles staves, shingles, ties, lumber, pulp-wood, firewood, tan bark, etc., and it is at present the chief industry of the county.

The minerals found here are varied and immensely valuable. Great deposits of magnetic and specular iron ores are found here, suited for the manufacture if steel by the Bessemer process, and of a purity not excelled by any ores south of Lake Superior. The brown hematite iron ores are also in great abundance and are cheaply mined, and scarcely less valuable than the specular and magnetic. These ores are found in contact with, or in the vicinity of limestone. There are many mines of these ores which have been opened in the county. Copper, slate, pyrite, plumbago, ochre, allanite, sepetite, apatite, steatite, and manganese are found here.

In minerals the rich hematite, magnetic and specular iron ores of the Central Virginia Iron Company, the Dover coal and Iron Company and numerous individual land owners offer fields for profitable investment. The iron and steel from these ores is of superior quality; some of these veins analyzed as high as 66 percent iron.

The county is also penetrated by numerous veins of copper which have once been worked, also marble, kaolin, and good fire-brick clay and brown sandstone. The grey, red and brown granite of this county has been pronounced by a well known stone cutter in Lynchburg to be the finest he ever saw. (See exhibit.)

The steatite (or soapstone) vein which runs through the county in plentiful croppings is being worked extensively in Nelson up the county line, and also in Campbell county just on the other side, and a company is now negotiating for lands here.

Roofing and furnishing slate is being largely quarried by the Williams Brothers near Snowden in the upper end of the county.

The rapid fall of the rivers and branches furnishes boundless water-power now used for numerous corn and flour mills throughout the county, and the great stone lock dams of the old James river and Kanawha Canal are being utilized by many factories, mostly on the other side of the river, and also for generating electricity for the City of Lynchburg.

The City of Lynchburg has, at the headwaters of the Pedlar river, at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains, a great dam 90 feet high and one-half mile wide from whence the pure mountain water flows by gravity through wooden pipes three feet in diameter and six feet under ground twenty-five miles into its highest city reservoirs.

Virginia has always been noted for its mineral and healing springs. The Buffalo Springs not now open to the public were once a popular resort for all this section of country. A fire destroyed the hotel, since which time it has not been used except by families in the neighborhood. The spring is a bold white sulphur, rising out of the solid rock, six feet deep. It is near the forks of the Buffalo river, at the foot of the Blue Ridge not far from Mount Pleasant on the one side and the beautiful lake of the Lynchburg water-works on the other. What an opportunity for some one to make a beautiful, delightful, health giving summer resort!

Amherst has long been a paradise for the sportsman as well as for the naturalist. More than 200 years ago an English writer said "There is no Country more remarkable for the variety of birds in it than Virginia where the Woods and Groves in the Spring, Summer, Autumn and almost all year round were rendered as delightful by the Musick of their feathered Quires, as by the Coolness of their shades, or the fragrance of their Flowers."

This is still true of old Amherst county. Its song birds, small birds, vari-colored birds are numerous, sweet and beautiful, but there are wild turkeys, pheasants, partridges (quail) and woodcock, also occasionally on its streams duck, geese, snipe, etc. There are in the mountains and in the river marshes a few deer, some bear and wild cats and innumerable hares, squirrels, opossums, ground hogs, raccoons and foxes. Game fish abound in its streams. In the clear rippling rivulets of the mountains are beautiful mountain trout; in the James and its branches are bass, carp, suckers, perch, etc.

The great Southern Railroad, the chief thoroughfare between North and South, crosses the county from north to south, about midway, having seven stations in Amherst county. The Chesapeake & Ohio, the great route from the Lakes to the Atlantic Seaboard, skirts two sides of the county for sixty-five miles in the county; and the Norfolk & Western, another great system from West to East, goes six miles over the southeast side of the county.

Amherst is a rural district, not thickly populated, but the City of Lynchburg with its thirty thousand population, its splendid waterpower, its healthy location, its three great Railroads crossing there (and one of these branching hence giving it seven outlets), its large wealth, its intense energy, its remarkable enterprise, its recent rapid stride as a manufacturing center (already fifth in the United States in Shoe Jobbing and Manufacturing) all assuring its future prosperity is only separated from Amherst the corporation line with a free bridge over the James to bind the two together.

MADISON HEIGHTS is a suburb of Lynchburg with some two thousand inhabitants. It has beautiful elevated, and healthy building sites overlooking the city. Along the James it has several grist mills, a three hundred thousand dollar plant for the digging, bottling and shipping "Iron and Alum Mass," also a branch of the great Virginia-Carolina Chemical Company's Fertilizing plant, and soon there is to be erected a fifty thousand dollar State Home for epileptics.

MONROE, seven and a half miles north from Lynchburg, is the junction of the Washington and the Spencer Divisions of the Southern Railroad. Here all freight-crews stop, all engines are changed, extensive engine stables, coal-bins, etc., have been erected, and machine shops about completed. Strictly a railroad town, it has only recently been established, but from the necessary number of employees and their families, and those coming here to supply their wants and conveniences it should reach fifteen hundred or more in a very few years. It has already a fine Railroad, Y.M.C.A. building, two churches, several stores, and houses are rapidly increasing.

AMHERST, the county seat , locally known as the "Court House," has between six and eight hundred population, is seven and on-half miles north from Monroe, and fifteen from Lynchburg, near the center of the county on the Southern Railroad. It was established about 1816, is ideally located o the elevated plateau with splendid oak groves, a magnificent mountain view, delightful and picturesque old homes. Here are five churches, a High School, the court-house and its attachments, a hotel, boarding houses, a bank, two liver stables, fourteen stores, etc., etc. It has begun to wake up, and has an energetic, effective and company, several real estate agents, and the improvement is all abroad.

Five miles north of the court-house, and three miles west of New Glasgow station on the Southern Railroad, is the oldest town of this part of the stat. Incorporated in 1785 as Cabellsburg, afterward call New Glasgow, now officially known as Clifford, the Railroad station having stolen its time honoured name.

Once the stopping place of stages en route from the Carolinas to Philadelphia, the center of a highly cultivated rural class of the olden time, it once boasted three taverns, quite a number of stores, dwellings etc., but the new locations of the court-hours and the passing beyond of the railroad have left it but an interesting relique of the past. Here is buried the mother of Patrick Henry, and around here are some of the oldest homes of this section, and an Episcopal Church ninety years old the third building of its name in succession in or near that locality.

The one hundred Public Schools of this county are well distributed throughout its four magisterial districts.

Of these, there is one graded school for colored people, six for white people, and two High Schools. Next year two of these graded schools will be made High Schools affording one for each district.

The High School at Amherst has been given a fifty dollar scholarship at the Washington and Lee University and its graduates are allowed to enter the University of Virginia and other colleges without further entrance examinations. About three miles from Amherst and twelve miles from Lynchburg, on the Southern Railroad, in the centre of the county, is Sweet Briar Institute, a college for women whose doors were opened in 1906. It was founded by an Amherst woman, Mrs. Indiana Fletcher Williams, and has a plant of four hundred thousand dollars, and an endowment of two hundred thousand.

Dr. Mary K. Benedict is President, with a faculty of ten first class professors, and a grad as high and through as any in the North, South, West or East. Tuition is free to all daughter of citizens of Amherst qualified to enter college. This is the capstone of the Public School system of this county and gives the women of Amherst county an opportunity equal to that of any other portion of the country. The grounds of this college cannot be surpassed in natural beauty and scope by those of any other. It also gives free tuition to the daughter of the ministers of all denominations in the State of Virginia, and on scholarship affording free tuition to each congressional district of the state, and one for the South at large.

The county is well sprinkled over with churches, there being about 65, (43 white and 22 colored), that is one to each 251 of the white population, or to each ten square miles of territory. The churches for white people are thus divided, on Catholic, one Dunkard, one Church of the Disciples, two Presbyterian, four Episcopalian, eleven Baptist and twenty-four Methodist (South).

Here great telegraph systems cross the county parallel to the Southern Railroad, Viz: The Western Union, The Postal, and The Southern Bell Long Distance Telegraph and Telephone Company. With these the local companies and private lines are connected reaching all important points and many lesser, and can be extended at will. There are eleven R.F.D. routes pretty well covering the county.

Two county newspapers are published weekly at Amherst, whose names, "the New Era" and the "Amherst Progress," are typical of the county, as well as of the energy, local pride, the push and the enterprise of their editors.

There is also at Amherst a prosperous, stable, conservative, state bank for the benefit of the people.

The people of Amherst have always been with few exceptions an agricultural people, quiet, democratic, simple in their tastes, conservative, lovers of home, lovers of freedom and intensely patriotic. Never was there a call to arms, from the frontier war to the late Spanish embroglio, but Amherst youths were among the first to answer their country's call, and to stand in the fore of the fight.

Old Amherst (including Nelson) furnished twelve hundred men to the Revolutionary Cause, and the present Amherst full two thousand to "Ole Marse Bob," Saratoga and Gettysburg are reckoned among the fifteen decisive battles of the world and the only ones of that number fought on American soil. The chief factor at Saratoga was Dan Morgan's Virginia Riflemen. Company "A{ under Morgan was Sam Cabell's Amherst boys. It was an Amherst boy who, with his unerring aim laid the English leader (Frazier) low, and Cabell was promoted Major for gallantry there.

At Gettysburg where the high tide of the confederacy began to recede, when Virginia men won undying fame, Amherst's highest officer remained upon the field and many of her brave boys beside him. When her country was victorious Amherst was in the lead, but when her people were defeated Amherst was left behind.

When the strife was over our people returned to their humble home, happy and content, loving the old ways, continuing as they were, and slow to take up modern ways, progressive method, the exploitation of their own country, but the brave are always generous, the contented always kind, the rural always hospitable and the door wide, they spread the best they have, they share their all , and are hurt if you do not partake freely, and to those in need or in sickness they will rise nobly to the occasion, and many a stranger has said he never saw such hospitality before.

Things can not always remain as of yore. These people knew their country's worth, loved it for its own value and cared not to have it changed, but of late there are manifest.

The old county is waking up, stretching herself and looking around, soon she will be on the move, then the world will hear from her, for what she does, she does thoroughly and well. The South with an increase of only ten percent in population has increased the value of her farm products in the last sex years fifty-seven percent, and he manufacturing products fifty two percent, and Amherst is in the South with great resources.

Within the last few years the county supervisors have employed a force of convicts to work the roads all the year around, the second county in the state to adopt this system.

Only a few months since the county voted to issue bonds to the amount of eighty thousand dollars to McAdamize roads.

A large increase in appropriation for Public Schools was made last year, and two High Schools were added last year with several graded schools, and next year two more High Schools are to be added. New jail and a new house fo the poor have been built, fire proof vaults made to the clerk's office, and treasurer's office, and three thousand dollars spent in improving the interior of the court-house, so we now have a building equal to any of our sister counties.

Very recently the Railroad town of Monroe has been built, and the Sweet Briar Institute established.

The Southern Railroad is now tearing down the old unsightly stations and building neat modern buildings in their places. It is also double tracking its road and spending tow million dollars on a new route through Lynchburg beginning about five miles this side. Many of the Churches and private residences in the county have been improved and new ones have been added.

New and better stock is being brought into the county. We have had hitherto Jersey, Durham, and mixed but very recently Holstein, Guernsey, Hereford and an especially fine herd of Brown Swiss have been added.

Two fine German Coach Horses, and several fine Percherons for breeding purposes were brought in last year and some good riding stock. The number of good saddle horses is perceptibly increasing.

There has of late been almost a rush in purchasing modern vehicles and improved machinery.

Farms are changing hands: new people are coming in: farmers are diversifying their crops; orchards are being planted more and more. When the old county is thoroughly aroused she will find tobacco will only be a secondary crop, though she has stood third in the state as a tobacco raiser, fruit raising and manufacturing are to be her chief industries, and bless will he be who is fortunate enough to have a part in the great awakening.

Amherst is the Genius of the Old Dominion. A living, real, everlasting, representative of the State, to be seen and known of all men. Look at her, the great Giantess, sitting upon the highest portion of the central Virginia with her back against the Blue Ridge and her feet dabbling in the noble James. Mound Pleasant her head, lifted 4,090 feet in the air, the Tobacco Row for fruitful breasts: "The Ridge" her knees holding under them a wealth of minerals: the upper James her strong right arm, the piney her left, wide open to welcome those who come in peace: across her lap the Southern Railroad representing that rifle whose crack has bee heard from Point Pleasant to Santiago, now turned into a bond of peace and a means of commerce. But don't tread on her. Don't touch her daughters. Don't cause her sister counties to cry out in alarm, or presto, there will be a magic change, for her eye hath not dimmed, no her courage failed or her hand weakened.

"Liberty or Death" is her birthright. "Millions for defense, not a cent for tribute," her unforgotten lesson. Now she is at peace with all; she would remain at peace; she welcomes all who come in Peace. Her great heart is warm and her welcome is sincere. Come! And she will adopt you as her child: she will bless you, care for you, and protect you unto death.

A.P.G.

Twenty-ninth Judicial Circuit, Judge B. T. Gordon, Lovingston; Court held on 3rd Monday in February, April, June, August, October and December.

• Clerk of Court - W. E. Sandidge, Amherst
• Commonwealth Attorney - O. L. Evans, Amherst
• Treasurer - H. C. Joyner, Amherst
• Division Supt. of Schools - C. L. Scott, Amherst
• Sheriff - Jno. P. Beard, Amherst

  Board of Supervisors

• F. B. Tyler, Elon District - Chairman
• A. H. Moore, Court House District
• J. V. Ware, Temperance District
• L. F. Parr, Pedlar District
  
  
• Population, white, 10,807; colored, 7,057; total 17,864.
• Voting population 1900, white, 2,619; colored, 1,419; total 4,038
• Presidential vote 1904; Democratic, 878, Republican, 177; total 1,055
• Taxable property $3,100,000.00.
• Bonded debt $40,000 at 4 ½ percent.
• Rate of taxation, State 35 cents; County 95 cents to 103 cents.
• Mean annual rainfall at Lynchburg (25 years) 42.85.
• Elevation from sea level 500 to 4,090 feet.
• Land surface 464 Square miles.
• Public Schools, white 70, colored 30. Churches, white 43; Colored 22.