Priscilla Richardson

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"All of my first three books are about what I call forgotten patriots, and this man Thomas Posey is a forgotten patriot. He served his country for almost 40 years, all during the Revolutionary War and then in various government posts afterwards. I want to remind people of the service of people like this."

Michael "Mike" Cecere gave this as his rationale for his long drive to Fincastle from his home in Dumfries to speak to the Botetourt Historical Society at the Botetourt Historical Museum. His book, "Captain Thomas Posey and the 7th Virginia Regiment," relates Posey's career with the Fincastle Rifles, starting from the Botetourt Committees of Correspondence through the peace.

Cecere came wearing his re-enactor uniform. He carried a rifle as well as a musket, to illustrate clearly the difference between those two. The rifle was built for shooting game, boasting accuracy although not very speedy reloading capability. The musket, meant for use in fighting, had such poor accuracy they didn't even bother to aim, Cecere explained. "They didn't say 'ready, aim, fire' with a musket. They said 'ready, present, fire.' " The reason muskets got used in warfare was that a skilled person could reload about four times in one minute, a life-saving capability when under fire. It took one minute to reload a rifle, so you had to plan your shooting carefully.

Details such as this gave even longtime visitors to our museum a new insight into the artifacts displayed there. I had always thought musket and rifle were simply different names for the same thing, but I won't fall into that error again.

If you haven't been to the museum lately, not only can you now appreciate the difference between rifles and muskets, you can see all the objects in a new light. Because, just as there were forgotten patriots, there were unseen volunteers who went to the museum a few weeks before his speech. They dusted and cleaned, and huffed and puffed, and moved items around, the better to show them to you, the public.

The big difference you notice at once: the bookstore and office equipment now reside in the enclosed back porch area. All the exhibits that had been there now are grouped in the Botetourt Room, the new name for the small room to your left as you enter the museum.

But, how did Dr. Randall Hays, Stephen Vest, Loretta Caldwell, Alice Crowder, Janice Thompson, Katherine Harris, Nadine Rankin, John Graham, Weldon Martin and John Rader move the bell? The bell, of solid cast brass that once hung in an earlier Fincastle courthouse from 1818 to 1847, sits in a case made for it by the late B.M. Phelps. Phelps, a former downtown Roanoke furniture dealer, appreciated Botetourt's history and gave the bell and case to the museum.

They took the bell out of its case, of course, but the case didn't fit through the interior doors. They had to take the back porch door off its hinges, ease the case outside, take it around the building and then bring it back in using the large back door. Get the volunteer on duty to explain the outs and ins to you the next time you're there.

So now all the courthouse items, the bench, the witness chair and the bell, are in the Botetourt Room. According to Harris, who used to live in the rooms that now are the museum space, the Botetourt Room was once a kitchen. She related how another family also lived upstairs, although their staircase was then on the outside, not the inside as it is now.

Harris observed that the museum that moving day was "like a beehive. Some started cleaning; the men were wonderful moving that stuff. We finally got it done. It reminded me of a barn building -- so good to see people come in and work."

So to learn more about a forgotten patriot, come to the museum and buy Cecere's book. And just to enjoy the results of the unseen volunteers, come again to the museum to see the new face it now presents to the world.