County Life
The Old Church Gallery has been preserving Floyd County lore since 1978 and many of our artifacts fit categories unto themselves. What they have in common is telling a fuller story of the lives of Floyd County people. While it is a fallacy to suggest that we have long been isolated (prehistoric artifacts indicate even the first peoples here were traders and travelers), there are distinctions among our communities that thread back through generations.
The integration and consolidation of public schools in Alum Ridge, Check, Floyd (including Harris Hart), Indian Valley, and Willis culminated with the opening of Floyd County High School in 1962. This blending has accelerated social changes even as current residents maintain a love of place and pride in home communities.
A sampling of the pieces representing different communities in this collection are:
- Ballard telephone exchange panel connecting neighbors to their party lines and to the world
- Gentry Harter’s taxi stand, once stationed in the center of town
- Wertz family wooden blackboard used at their home in Aria
- People’s Bank vault door, with the combination to the lock etched on the door’s handle
- Document box passed down through generations of the Booth family living near Beaver Creek
The George Phlegar family owned this soapstone sundial, thought to have been carved by a nineteenth-century tombstone maker. See the record page here: Phlegar Soapstone Sundial
Inscribed below the dial is this verse:
“Time, love, luck, are birds that soar from sight. Arrows are in vain to stop their flight.”