place

Linkous Store, Virginia

Blacksburg–Christiansburg metropolitan areaMontgomery County, Virginia geography stubsUnincorporated communities in Montgomery County, VirginiaUnincorporated communities in VirginiaUse mdy dates from July 2023

Linkous Store is a settlement near the town of Blacksburg in Montgomery County, Virginia, United States. It lies on the western edge of Blacksburg at the intersection of Prices Fork Road (SR 685) and Merrimac Road (SR 657) about 1.5 miles (2 km) from Prices Fork. The community is a part of the Blacksburg–Christiansburg Metropolitan Statistical Area which encompasses all of Montgomery County and the cities of Blacksburg, Christiansburg, and Radford for statistical purposes. The settlement is named for a store (not extant) originally constructed in the mid 19th century and owned by the Linkous family. The town had a one-room school, Matamoras No. 9, located behind the site of St. Peter's Lutheran Church. A marker at the site of the church reads in part "Site of St. Peter's Evangelical Church, 1750-1885. St. Peter's was the first Church west of the Alleghanies and the third Lutheran Church in Virginia."

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Linkous Store, Virginia (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors).

Linkous Store, Virginia
Prices Fork Road,

Geographical coordinates (GPS) Address Nearby Places
placeShow on map

Wikipedia: Linkous Store, VirginiaContinue reading on Wikipedia

Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 37.215277777778 ° E -80.468888888889 °
placeShow on map

Address

Prices Fork Road 3600
24060
Virginia, United States
mapOpen on Google Maps

Share experience

Nearby Places

Whitethorn (Blacksburg, Virginia)
Whitethorn (Blacksburg, Virginia)

Whitethorne is a historic plantation house located at Blacksburg, Montgomery County, Virginia. It was built about 1855, by James Francis Preston, who received the land from his father, Governor of Virginia, James Patton Preston. It is a two-story, L-shaped, five-bay-by-three-bay, brick dwelling with a shallow hipped roof in the Italian Villa style. It has Greek Revival style exterior and interior decorative elements. It features a wide, elegant, one-story, five-bay front porch supported by square columns of the Tuscan order. Also on the property is a contributing two-story brick office building.Preston, a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point was a lawyer by trade. He was commissioned a captain in the 1st Regiment of Virginia Volunteers at the outset of the Mexican–American War in 1846. He served in Mexico from January 16, 1847, to July 31, 1848. Upon returning home from the war he resumed his law practice.When Virginia seceded from the Union Preston commissioned into the Virginia Militia, and was subsequently transferred to the Confederate Army, on April 24, 1861. He was promoted to colonel in the Confederate army and became the commanding officer of the 4th Virginia Infantry under brigade commander Stonewall Jackson. He commanded the 4th Virginia at First Manassas where he was wounded in battle. After several months of tending to his wound while in the army, including a brief two-week stint as a brigade commander, due to his health he was forced to resign his commission and returned home to Whitethorn. Preston did not live to see the end of the war. He died on January 20, 1862, at age 49.Whitethorne remained in the Preston family until 1889 when it was purchased by Beverly Stockton Heth, a Radford Banker and son of Chesterfield County coal magnate John Heth. In the early 1970s the majority of the 1,500 acre estate was sold for the Hethwood development, a planned community that includes single family homes, townhomes, apartments and a shopping center. The home and 50 acres of the property are still owned by Heth family descendants after much of the remaining farmland was sold to Virginia Tech in 2001. Whitethorne was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1989.

Solitude (Blacksburg, Virginia)
Solitude (Blacksburg, Virginia)

Solitude is a historic home located on the campus of Virginia Polytechnic Institute at Blacksburg, Montgomery County, Virginia. The earliest section was built about 1802, and expanded first in circa 1834 and then in the 1850s by Col. Robert Preston, who received the land surrounding Solitude from his father, Virginia Governor James Patton Preston. Dating back over 200 years, Solitude is the oldest building on the Virginia Tech Blacksburg campus.It is a two-story, L-shaped, five bay, log and frame dwelling with a hipped roof. Mid 19th century modifications gave the farmhouse a Greek Revival look. Also on the property are the contributing stone spring house with log superstructure and an outbuilding built in about 1844 and renamed in 2019 by the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors as the Fraction Family House at Solitude. This new name recognizes its usage as a dwelling for the largest enslaved population living on the site and symbolically recognizes all enslaved at Solitude. In 1872, the 250 acre Solitude farm became the part of the central campus of Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College, serving primarily as the college's farm. The farm house, after the death of its owner, Robert Taylor Preston, in the following decade, served as a college infirmary from 1882 to 1886. It, as well as the Fraction Family House, was then used as faculty housing for the next 60 years. In the 1940s it briefly was a clubhouse for returning World War II veterans who lived in a trailer park surrounding the building while attending Virginia Polytechnic Institute. At that time, dances regularly were held in Solitude's two front parlors. In the 1960s and 1970s, Solitude was used by the Hokie Club in addition to housing faculty in two apartments. Academic programs started using the building in 1974. For some time, Solitude housed a human nutrition and food laboratory and interior design studios and offices. Its last occupant was the Appalachian Studies Program, which has returned following the restoration of the building. Also located in the building is the Henry H. Wiss Center for Theory and History of Art and Architecture. Solitude had been vacant for many years prior to a $1 million (~$1.32 million in 2022) restoration that began in July 2010 and lasted half-a-year. Much of the project was funded by the Mary Morton Parsons Foundation of Richmond, Va.The house is situated in a landscaped park adjacent to the central campus of Virginia Polytechnic Institute. It was listed on the Virginia Landmarks Register in 1988 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1989.After Solitude's listing on NRHP, decade-long research and archaeology commenced to further study the main house, property, and overall site to extrapolate further historical information and evaluate what would be needed to restore the house and outbuildings. These efforts culminated in a 2000 Master's thesis by Michael Pulice, a then-Master's of Science candidate in Virginia Tech's Architecture Department, now the chief architectural historian for the Western Regional office (Salem, VA) of the Virginia Department of Historic Resources. Pulice concluded in his thesis that the remaining log outbuilding, long believed to be either a doctor's office or kitchen, is a surviving slave cabin and servants quarters.