Up next, we take you inside the main gallery of the Lynchburg Museum to learn more about the history of manufacturing and transportation. Welcome to the Lynchburg Museum. I am laura wilson and i am the curator here. I am going to tell you about lynchburg history. We are going to focus on transportation and manufacturing history. We are standing in the timeline gallery main courtroom of the Lynchburg Museum and our exhibit s start in 1607. Was not a town yet. The monaghan indians were here. Lynchburg was not started until the 1750s by john lynch. That is who lynchburg was named after. The whole reason the town is here is because of the james river. Crossedd a fairy that from here in downtown lynchburg over to what is now Madison Heights in amherst county. Lynchburg the river, history begins with transportation. Early me, we have examples of the boats on the river with the creation of the canal in the 1830s. The canal comes to lynchburg in 1836 and this is a model of the type of boat that wouldve been on the river. It is called a bateau. On the other side of the case, is a boat designed to carry people. Batteausows carried cargo. One of the most important crops in lynchburg was tobacco. When lynchburg was barely 70 years old, there already 40 tobacco warehouses. There was less than 500 people but 42 tobacco warehouses. This was one of the main crops for the city. Lynchburg is known as the hill city. It is really here. Moving tobacco was difficult. The way they did it was in these. Arge barrels known as hogshead we have one of those on display. The point of a hogshead is it could hold 1000 pounds of tobacco, and tobacco was pressed into these large barrels which were attached to horse or oxen and rolled through the city streets. These barrels started some of the first streets in town. At the tobacco warehouses, one of the most important things they did, was open the tobacco for inspection. This large phone born here at the top is what they blew to signal it was time for the tobacco inspection. You can see some dried tobacco. Washburg in the early 1800s a frontier town. The Main Industries were tobacco, but also mills. That is due to the james river and the tributaries that the the river. It was the perfect location to set up mills for corn, flour. Farmers took their crops to the mill and it got shipped down the river and down the canal to richmond, where things came back to lynchburg, like fancy food, wine, things they could not make in town. Of theearly 1800s, one things lynchburg is well known for, is we had one of the first municipal water systems. You can see this is one of the early water pipes in town. Some of those are still underneath the city streets. When they started to replace them, the water resource folks give us examples. Building of the can now, which opened in 1836, there was a large irish immigrant popping it population. There was also a significant slave population. They helped take the canal and create the canal. , theg on from tobacco tobacco does not really leave lynchburg until the early 20th century, it is still big in manufacturing through the late 19th century and a postcivil war. That drives the population in lynchburg is the iron ore industry. There were several foundries in town. Lynchburg has a reputation of a manufacturing town, which plays a part in its Civil War History and helps the town recover after the civil war. Manufacturing was already here and the transportation route. 1870sal ends in the because it was too expensive and the competition from railroads. The bedse canal, all and rose that go beside it, turned into railroad tracks. The canal paved the way for trains, which helped lynchburg into the 20th century. Lynchburgs manufacturing was impacted during the civil war at the begin civil war. At the beginning, there was ammunition from the factories to support the confederacy. , ande war went on confederate money was worth less, munitions dropped off and production ended. Because the bones of the factories were still here after the war, it allowed lynchburg to recover. We are going to leave our timeline courtroom gallery of lynchburg and had in the back, where we are going to show you examples of items that will remain in lynchburg that have national prominence. Welcome to our maiden lynchburg display. Artifacts display representative of the businesses in lynchburg and products they made. Here fromis flour bag the Piedmont Mill. This company was in business for over 100 years, and what is cool, this building is being turned into wasp downtown. Shoes. Lynchburg there was a large shoe manufacturer in the south, made 30,000 peers of shoes every day. Boat, whichdel of a is not exciting except it represents the First Nuclear reactor that was used and that Nuclear Reactor was made by a company in lynchburg. This display case is a jumble of a bunch of different things, but now we are going to leave this display and check out some behindthescenes things in more detail. Here i have pulled out additional artifacts for you to see. Like most museums, we have only 5 of our collection on display at any one time, so there is a lot we have that we cannot display. , are flour sacks from the Piedmont Mill company and this mill Company Started in the 1840s right after lynchburg became an official town, and local farmers would harvest their crops and bring them to the mill where it was turned into flour and cornmeal and those goods were sent down the river, down the canal to richmond to be traded and sold for other goods. This business was in business for over 100 years. They did not close until the 19 and throughout their lifetime, they moved from individual production, small sacks of flour to large bags and sold to nationwide distributors by krispy kreme. Haveg on, on the table we examples of shoes. The shoe Company Started in the late 18th 1880s. It grew to be the largest manufacturer of shoes in the south. This Company Built the first Shoe Manufacturing Company in the south after the civil war. As i mentioned earlier, lynchburg was a dress petition hub. It had the canal and which turned into the railroad. They would send salesman and tradesmen all over the u. S. I rail to sell their shoes. Businessany was in also for 100 years. They closed finally in 1997. The arward, here is company known for medical products. They are most wellknown their most wellknown product started with soda, which is an early laxative that turned into the sleep am enough. Enema. One of the other things they are well known for is chapstick. The inventor of chapstick could not figure out how to make it a viable product, so he sold the rights to his friend, john morton for five dollars. Which is the cost of a suit at that time. This company is still in business today. In the early 20th century, lynchburg was known for its accessories. Product terry was making thousands of shoes every day. More than 15,000 pairs per day. That madecompany purses. What is interesting about this company is it started in 1925 and was run exclusively by women. Women held all of the management positions. It was founded by two sisters and what they were known for is these handbags. They designed cloth and leather held the first patent for slipcovers on purses, so you could have the same shall and change the outside. The employeeso of of the factory, the owners actually hated the word factory and wanted to be known as the studio because they thought it encouraged creativity. This company had a show room in new york and san francisco. They were in business until the late 1960s 1960s. Covered our lynchburg transportation and manufacturing history, but lynchburgs story does not stop there. I invite you to come visit us in lynchburg, virginia and learn about what we have to offer. Our citys doorstep recently traveled to lynchburg, virginia. Learn more about lynchburg and other stops on our tour at watching you are American History tv all weekend. The National Museum of african American History and culture recently opened in exhibit looking at the 1968 poor people. Poor Peoples Campaign to shift the focus of the Civil Rights Movement to economic issues. Reverend king was assassinated before the campaign got underway in washington, d. C. A panel of activists and Smithsonian Museum staff look at this legacy. This is about one hour. It is our pleasure to welcome you to this meeting events for city of hope. You are in for a wonderful discussion from some brilliant people. My name, because they told me, it is my pleasure to be the Deputy Director of the National Museum of african American History and culture. We are going to get started in a mo