Appalachian Community Histories – Rosedale, Russell County: Smithfield, Stuart Cattle Country, and a Community Along Route 19
Rosedale does not have the kind of history that can be contained within a courthouse square or a set of incorporated town limits. Its story is scattered across pastures, historic houses, old roads, family cemeteries, a post office, former schools, and the farms stretching along U.S. Route 19 in Russell County, Virginia.
At different times, parts of the surrounding community have been associated with names such as Rosedale, Old Rosedale, Elway, Elk Garden, and Oaks Garage. These names did not always describe exactly the same place, but they belonged to the same connected rural landscape. Newspaper notices, voting records, postal documents, farm advertisements, and bookmobile schedules show residents using these neighborhood names according to where they lived, received mail, attended school, voted, or conducted business.
The clearest early federal recognition came in the United States Geological Survey’s 1904 Gazetteer of Virginia. It identified Rosedale as a “post village in Russell County.” The same gazetteer also listed Elway as a separate Russell County post village, showing that the two names existed alongside one another rather than one simply replacing the other.
Before Rosedale Had a Name
The recorded history of Rosedale begins long before the community acquired its present name. The Elk Garden valley and Clinch River country were part of a larger Appalachian landscape used and occupied by Indigenous peoples, particularly Cherokee communities, before permanent European American settlement expanded into Southwest Virginia.
British authorities attempted to limit settlement west of the Appalachian watershed through the Proclamation of 1763, but land companies, surveyors, hunters, traders, and settlers continued moving into the region. During the 1770s, conflict intensified as settlers claimed land, established fortified houses, and pushed into valleys that colonial agreements had attempted to reserve for Native peoples.
The fertile land around Elk Garden attracted settlers because of its broad valleys, streams, grazing ground, and access to early trails. Families spread outward from the Clinch River into Elk Garden, New Garden, Copper Creek, Moccasin Valley, Cedar Creek, and neighboring agricultural districts. When Russell County was formed from Washington County in 1786, these scattered farms and fortified settlements became part of the new county.
Rosedale itself was not yet a village. The landscape was instead organized around family farms, watercourses, mills, churches, roads, and large tracts held by several of Russell County’s most influential families.
The Smith Family and Smithfield
One of the most important early families in the Rosedale area was the Smith family. The National Register of Historic Places nomination for Smithfield states that Colonel Henry Smith was born in Stafford County in 1745 and moved into the Southwest Virginia region in 1776. His brother Daniel Smith, working as a surveyor for the Loyal Land Company, surveyed early tracts in what became Russell County.
Henry Smith served as Russell County’s first surveyor, a county justice, and a militia colonel. His son, also named Henry and commonly called Harry, succeeded him as county surveyor in 1801. The family’s influence came not only from public office but from its control of valuable agricultural land.
The Stuart Land and Cattle Company traces the beginning of its landholding tradition at Clifton Farm to 1774. The Smithfield nomination places Henry Smith’s physical movement into the region in 1776. Those dates may represent different stages in land acquisition, surveying, settlement, or family tradition, but the original land grants and deeds must be consulted before treating them as the same event. What is certain is that the Smith family established itself in the area during the Revolutionary era and maintained a remarkable continuity of landownership.
The property later known as Smithfield passed through succeeding generations. John Taylor Smith, a physician and farmer, began constructing the present Smithfield house in 1848. It was completed around 1850 at a reported cost of $5,000. The imposing brick residence stood near what became Route 19, surrounded by fields, pastures, farm buildings, springs, orchards, and family cemeteries.
Smithfield was more than a residence. It was the center of an extensive agricultural operation whose surviving field names preserved generations of work and memory. Names such as House Seat, Old Place, Brick Kiln, Red Hill, Hancock Field, Briar Field, Shop Field, Jim Lot, and Morrison Boundary described how the land had been used or connected it to former tenants and workers. The names functioned as an unwritten map passed from one generation to the next.
The Hidden Labor Behind the Great Farms
The architectural beauty of Smithfield cannot be separated from the enslaved labor that helped create and sustain it. Family tradition recorded in the National Register nomination states that bricks were made from clay found on the farm and that enslaved laborers performed much of the construction work under skilled carpenters and bricklayers. The field known as Brick Kiln probably supplied the clay.
The Smith family’s wealth was deeply connected to slavery. In 1820, Harry Smith was recorded as holding forty-five enslaved people. By 1860, John Taylor Smith held twenty-three enslaved people, including adults and children. A log building behind Smithfield, remembered as a dwelling for enslaved household workers, survived until the late 1960s.
The 1850 agricultural census showed the scale of the operation. Harry Smith’s farm reportedly included approximately 3,500 improved acres and 1,500 unimproved acres. It produced corn, oats, wool, butter, flax, maple sugar, cattle, and sheep. Its 15,000 bushels of corn exceeded the production of other wealthy Russell County farms recorded in the schedules. Most county landowners operated far smaller mixed farms, often on land valued at less than $1,000.
This contrast reveals two sides of antebellum Rosedale. The surrounding countryside included ordinary farm families working relatively modest tracts, but it also contained large estates whose land, livestock, architecture, and political influence were supported by enslaved labor.
War and the End of Slavery
Russell County escaped the large battles that devastated other parts of Virginia during the Civil War, but war still reached the Rosedale countryside through military service, shortages, divided loyalties, and the movement of soldiers.
Dr. John Taylor Smith died in Lynchburg in January 1862 while returning from a visit to the battlefields around Winchester. A Union soldier belonging to the Kanawha Rangers reportedly became ill while being cared for at Smithfield and asked to be buried in the Smith family cemetery. His burial there is a small but revealing reminder that war did not always respect the political boundaries later imposed upon local memory.
Emancipation forced the large farms around Rosedale to reorganize their labor systems. Agricultural census evidence indicates that land rental, paid work, and sharecropping replaced enslaved labor at Smithfield.
An 1886 contract between Florence G. Smith and Julius McNew provides unusually detailed evidence of that transition. McNew rented portions of the farm known as the Old Place, Red Hill, and Hancock Field. He agreed to deliver shares of the corn, fodder, wheat, straw, and oats he raised. He received a house and garden but was also expected to make himself available for day labor when required.
The contract shows how freedom changed the legal status of agricultural workers without necessarily freeing them from economic dependence. Land remained concentrated in the hands of wealthy families, while tenants supplied labor in exchange for housing, land access, and a portion of the harvest.
Old Rosedale and the Houses Along Route 19
Several important historic properties preserve the architectural history of the Rosedale area. Old Rosedale, identified in Virginia Department of Historic Resources records as site 083-0009, dates to approximately 1830. The two-story Federal-style dwelling represented the kind of substantial house built by leading landholding families during the first half of the nineteenth century.
Smithfield followed in the late 1840s, combining a large brick form with Greek Revival detailing. Its interior woodwork drew inspiration from architectural pattern books, showing that even a relatively isolated Russell County family participated in national architectural fashions. The house, farm buildings, cemeteries, historic fields, and surviving water system eventually earned Smithfield a place on the National Register of Historic Places in 1994.
Another house known as Rosedale was constructed in 1912 for Dale Carter Stuart near Old Rosedale. Although its basic form drew from the Greek Revival tradition, it also included Queen Anne and Classical Revival features. The result connected the twentieth-century Stuart family with the grand houses built by earlier generations of Russell County landowners.
A separate Stuart House on Route 19, dated to approximately 1907 by the county architectural survey, was described as one of Russell County’s most prominent Neoclassical residences. Together, Old Rosedale, Smithfield, Rosedale, and the Stuart House transformed the highway corridor into a surviving record of more than a century of wealth, agriculture, family connections, and changing architectural taste.
Even the buildings moved or demolished left traces. Around 1930, the former Rosedale School was relocated to Smithfield. The one-story weatherboarded structure first served the farm as a granary and was later converted into a guest house. In 1970, bricks taken from Old Rosedale were used to replace Smithfield’s front steps. These acts physically joined the histories of the community’s school, farms, and family houses.
The Making of a Post Village
Rosedale did not develop as an incorporated town. It grew as a postal and roadside community serving the surrounding farms.
The United States Geological Survey’s 1904 gazetteer called it a post village, a designation generally applied to a small settlement organized around a post office rather than a formal municipal government. The listing demonstrates that Rosedale had become a recognized community name by the beginning of the twentieth century.
The post office helped give the countryside a common address. It allowed residents living miles apart to identify themselves as being from Rosedale, even when their homes were closer to Elk Garden, Elway, Belfast, or another rural neighborhood.
Postal identity remained important throughout the twentieth century. In March 1978, the Lebanon News reported that the Rosedale Post Office had moved into a new building. The modern post office and ZIP code continue to preserve the community name even though Rosedale never developed a conventional downtown.
The Stuart Land and Cattle Company
No institution has shaped Rosedale’s public identity more than the Stuart Land and Cattle Company.
The business traces its family roots through the Smith, Carter, and Stuart families. The company was formally established in 1884, although its agricultural lineage reaches back to the eighteenth-century Smith properties. Through inheritance, marriage, purchase, and consolidation, the Stuart holdings grew into one of the most extensive cattle operations in the eastern United States.
The company raised cattle, sheep, dairy herds, tobacco, timber, and other agricultural products. At different points, its interests also included coal, gas, and extensive real estate. Its large fields and grazing lands helped define the appearance of Rosedale and the Route 19 corridor.
Virginia Tech’s Beef Cattle Improvement Association described the Clifton Farm portion of the business in 2007 as the oldest continuously operated cattle ranch in the United States. At that time, the larger operation encompassed approximately 20,000 acres in Russell, Tazewell, and Washington counties and maintained around 1,600 commercial cows. The company used artificial insemination, crossbreeding, performance records, and carcass information to improve its herds, showing how an old family operation adapted to modern agricultural science.
The company’s own current history reports that its holdings once exceeded 100,000 acres and now contain more than 16,000 acres divided among four farms. Such figures changed over time as properties were bought, inherited, sold, or reorganized, but the scale of the operation remained extraordinary for Southwest Virginia.
Contemporary newspapers reveal how closely the business was connected to everyday life in Rosedale. In January 1959, agricultural demonstrations were scheduled at the Stuart Land and Cattle Company. In 1960, the Lebanon News reported that Stuart cattle ranked among Russell County’s leading dairy animals, with individual cows producing some of the county’s highest butterfat totals.
The company was not merely a distant landowner. It employed local workers, supported families, maintained roads and farm facilities, hosted agricultural events, and served as a geographic reference point for residents traveling through the community.
Governor Henry Carter Stuart
Rosedale’s most nationally prominent resident was Henry Carter Stuart, cattleman, businessman, and governor of Virginia from 1914 to 1918.
Born in 1855, Stuart attended Emory and Henry College and briefly studied law at the University of Virginia. He returned to Southwest Virginia to manage family businesses and became widely known for his knowledge of cattle, land, and agricultural policy. His success in farming helped establish the public reputation that carried him into state politics.
Stuart served in the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1901 and 1902 and later became a member of the State Corporation Commission. He ran unopposed for governor and led Virginia during the First World War. His administration dealt with taxation, prohibition, criminal justice, wartime mobilization, and racial violence.
His legacy is complicated. Stuart was promoted as a progressive agricultural leader and opponent of unchecked corporate power, but he also participated in the constitutional movement that disenfranchised Black Virginians and many poor white voters. Remembering only the cattleman and governor while ignoring that political record would produce an incomplete history.
Stuart’s career nevertheless demonstrates how far Rosedale’s influence could extend. A man whose authority rested partly upon land and cattle in a rural Russell County community eventually occupied the governor’s mansion and participated in national wartime planning.
Elway, Oaks Garage, and Everyday Rosedale
The history of Rosedale is not limited to governors and large estates. Newspapers preserve the names of smaller places where ordinary residents gathered, traded, voted, attended school, and waited for public services.
In May 1930, the Lebanon News referred to the “Elway section in Elk Garden,” confirming that Elway was understood as a neighborhood within the larger agricultural district. The description suggests that local geography was flexible. A resident might live in Elway, belong to the Elk Garden community, and receive mail through Rosedale without seeing those identities as contradictory.
Oaks Garage became another important landmark. A 1947 newspaper notice described it as both a garage and store. In 1955, the location served as the voting place for the Elk Garden precinct. A 1967 newspaper description placed Oaks Garage at the intersection of Route 19 and the road toward Honaker, showing why the business became a useful name for the crossroads itself.
The crossroads also appeared in bookmobile schedules. Stops at Oaks Garage, Elk Garden School, and other roadside gathering points allowed rural families to obtain books without traveling to Lebanon. These schedules unintentionally mapped the places that local people considered the centers of their communities.
Rosedale was therefore not one concentrated village. It was a network of farms and neighborhood centers connected by roads, kinship, schools, stores, churches, postal routes, and public services.
School, Church, and the Rural Community
Schools helped bind the widely dispersed population together. The former Rosedale School preserved at Smithfield proves that the hamlet had a school by the late nineteenth century. Elk Garden School later became another major institutional center for the surrounding countryside.
Churches served a similar purpose. Elk Garden Church traces its organization to 1788 and became one of Russell County’s oldest congregations. Other churches throughout the Rosedale postal area hosted worship services, funerals, community meetings, revivals, and family gatherings.
Church records can reveal a side of community life rarely visible in deeds or agricultural reports. Minutes from Mount Zion Church and New Garden Church record baptisms, membership disputes, dismissals, ministers, delegates, and cooperation among local congregations. Such records place ordinary men and women into the history of Rosedale rather than leaving the story entirely to the owners of its largest houses.
A Landscape That Still Carries Its History
Rosedale’s historical record survives because the land remained largely rural. Farm boundaries, cemeteries, roads, springs, barns, houses, and field names escaped some of the development that erased similar landscapes elsewhere.
The Russell County architectural survey described the broader Elk Garden area as a large agricultural valley between the Clinch River and Clinch Mountain. It identified early dwellings, mills, barns, churches, schools, country stores, and farmsteads along the old transportation routes. The survey recommended further preservation and research because many buildings were vacant, deteriorating, or vulnerable to demolition.
Smithfield remains the best formally documented historic property in Rosedale, but it represents only one part of the community’s history. Old Rosedale, the Stuart houses, former school sites, cemeteries, Oaks Garage, Elway properties, tenant homes, churches, and agricultural buildings all deserve investigation.
County deed books, surveyors’ records, wills, chancery cases, census schedules, post office location reports, newspapers, church minutes, and family papers could reconstruct the community almost farm by farm. These records would also reveal the names of enslaved people, tenants, sharecroppers, domestic workers, farmhands, teachers, storekeepers, mechanics, postal employees, and others whose lives have been overshadowed by the area’s prominent families.
Why Rosedale Matters
Rosedale matters because it represents a form of Appalachian community that is easy to overlook. It was never a coal boomtown, railroad center, county seat, or incorporated municipality. Its history developed through land rather than dense streets.
The community grew from an eighteenth-century frontier landscape into a region of substantial nineteenth-century farms. Enslaved people built and maintained its wealth. After emancipation, tenants, sharecroppers, and paid laborers kept the farms operating. A post office gave the countryside a recognized name, while schools, churches, stores, garages, voting places, and bookmobile stops connected residents who lived across a wide area.
The Smith, Carter, and Stuart families gave Rosedale some of its most visible houses and public figures, but the community was made by far more people than those families alone. Its history belongs equally to the workers who raised crops and livestock, the children who attended the old Rosedale School, the families who gathered at Elk Garden churches, the customers who stopped at Oaks Garage, and the residents who simply wrote Rosedale, Virginia, beneath their names.
Today the open fields along Route 19 may appear quiet, but they hold more than two centuries of Appalachian history. Rosedale is not merely a name on a post office or highway sign. It is a surviving rural landscape where the history of settlement, slavery, agriculture, politics, labor, and community can still be read upon the land.
Sources & Further Reading
Boyd, Charles Rufus, Washington County Board of Supervisors, and J. L. Smith Company. Map of Washington County, Virginia and Contiguous Territory: Showing Mineral Resources, Agricultural Areas, Water-Powers, Railway Facilities, Roads, Streams, Educational Institutions, Names and Residences of Many Land-Owners, Post-Offices, &c. Philadelphia: J. L. Smith Company, 1890. https://www.loc.gov/item/2012589244/
Fleenor, Lawrence J., Jr., and Edgar A. Howard. Elk Garden. Big Stone Gap, VA: Big Stone Gap Publishing, 2013. https://www.bigstonegappublishing.net/introduction.html
Greiner, Scott. “Stuart Land and Cattle Company: 2007 Virginia Outstanding Commercial Producer.” Virginia Beef Cattle Improvement Association and Virginia Cooperative Extension, 2007. https://www.sites.ext.vt.edu/newsletter-archive/livestock/aps-07_03/aps-310.html
Humbert, Reuben Lee, and Virginia Polytechnic Institute Engineering Extension Division. Industrial Survey, Russell County, Virginia. Blacksburg: Virginia Polytechnic Institute, 1930. https://books.google.com/books/about/Industrial_Survey_Russell_County_Virgini.html?id=iCK-IkS36OkC
Lebanon News. “Elway Section in Elk Garden.” May 23, 1930. Virginia Chronicle. https://www.virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=LN19300523.1.1
Lebanon News. “Elway School Report.” August 8, 1930. Virginia Chronicle. https://www.virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=LN19300808.1.1
Lebanon News. Notice concerning Oaks Garage and store. January 31, 1947. Virginia Chronicle. https://www.virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=LN19470131.1.1
Lebanon News. Elk Garden voting precinct notice identifying Oaks Garage as a polling location. 1955. Virginia Chronicle. https://www.virginiachronicle.com/
Lebanon News. Stuart Land and Cattle Company agricultural demonstration notice. January 29, 1959. Virginia Chronicle. https://www.virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=LN19590129.1.1
Lebanon News. Report on the Stuart dairy herd and Russell County butterfat production. June 16, 1960. Virginia Chronicle. https://www.virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=LN19600616.1.1
Lebanon News. Description of Oaks Garage at the Route 19 crossroads. July 12, 1967. Virginia Chronicle. https://www.virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=LN19670712.1.1
Lebanon News. “Rosedale Post Office Moves into New Building.” March 15, 1978. Virginia Chronicle. https://www.virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=LN19780315.1.1
Library of Virginia. “Chancery Records Index.” Russell County Chancery Causes, 1840–1960. Accessed July 19, 2026. https://www.lva.virginia.gov/chancery/
Library of Virginia. “Land Patents and Grants.” Accessed July 19, 2026. https://www.lva.virginia.gov/collections/land-grants
Library of Virginia. “Russell County Microfilm.” County and City Records on Microfilm. Accessed July 19, 2026. https://www.lva.virginia.gov/collections/ccmf/VA/VA253
Library of Virginia. “Virginia Chronicle: Digital Newspaper Archive.” Accessed July 19, 2026. https://virginiachronicle.com/
Mitchell, S. Augustus, and W. H. Gamble. County Map of Virginia and West Virginia. Philadelphia: S. A. Mitchell, 1863. https://www.loc.gov/item/lva0000095/
National Archives and Records Administration. “Census Records.” Accessed July 19, 2026. https://www.archives.gov/research/census
National Archives and Records Administration. “Enumeration District Maps and Descriptions.” Accessed July 19, 2026. https://www.archives.gov/research/census/1930/enumeration-districts.html
National Archives and Records Administration. “Post Office Reports of Site Locations, 1837–1950.” Record Group 28, Records of the Post Office Department, Microfilm Publication M1126. https://www.archives.gov/research/post-offices/locations-1837-1950.html
National Governors Association. “Governor Henry Carter Stuart.” Accessed July 19, 2026. https://www.nga.org/governor/henry-carter-stuart/
“Rooted in the Land: A Legacy of Agriculture at Smithfield Farms in Rosedale, Virginia.” Experience Russell County, June 11, 2025. https://www.experiencerussellva.com/post/rooted-in-the-land-a-legacy-of-agriculture-at-smithfield-farms-in-rosedale-virginia
Russell County Circuit Court Clerk. Russell County Board of Supervisors’ Order Books, Court Order Books, Deed Books, Deed Indexes, Surveyors’ Books, Will Books, and Vital Records. Lebanon, Virginia. https://www.russellcountyva.us/192/Circuit-Court-Clerk
Shearer, Katharine C. Working for Stuarts: Life on One of the Oldest and Largest Cattle Farms East of the Mississippi. Emory, VA: Clinch Mountain Press, 2015. https://search.worldcat.org/title/922541935
Society of Architectural Historians. “Elk Garden, Hendricks-Stuart House.” SAH Archipedia. Accessed July 19, 2026. https://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/VA-02-RU8
Stuart Land and Cattle Company. “Our Story.” Accessed July 19, 2026. https://www.stuartlandcattlecompany.com/ourstory
Tate, Leland Burdine. An Economic and Social Survey of Russell County, with a History of the County by Daniel Trigg. Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1931. https://books.google.com/books/about/An_Economic_and_Social_Survey_of_Russell.html?id=GqbXAAAAMAAJ
United States Bureau of the Census. Population and Agricultural Census Schedules for Russell County, Virginia, 1820–1950. Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration. https://www.archives.gov/research/census
United States Geological Survey. Gazetteer of Virginia. Bulletin 232. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1904. https://pubs.usgs.gov/bul/0232/report.pdf
United States Geological Survey. “Rosedale, Virginia, and Neighboring Historical Topographic Maps.” TopoView. Accessed July 19, 2026. https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview/
Virginia Department of Highways, Committee for the Study of Russell County Secondary Roads. A Study of the Secondary System of Roads in Russell County, Virginia, and the Influence of Population, Geography and Natural Resources in Its Development. Richmond: Virginia Department of Highways, 1953. https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/browse?c=x&key=Roads+–+Virginia+–+Russell+County&type=lcsubc
Virginia Department of Historic Resources. “Carter Hill.” National Register of Historic Places Registration Form, DHR No. 083-5012. Richmond: Virginia Department of Historic Resources, 2000. https://www.dhr.virginia.gov/VLR_to_transfer/PDFNoms/083-5012_Carter_Hill_2000_Final_Nomination.pdf
Virginia Department of Historic Resources. Comprehensive Survey Report: Survey of Architectural Resources in Russell County, Virginia. Richmond: Virginia Department of Historic Resources, 2009. https://www.dhr.virginia.gov/pdf_files/SpecialCollections/RU-045_AH_survey_Russell_County_2009_WMCAR_report.pdf
Virginia Department of Historic Resources. “Old Rosedale.” Architectural Survey File, DHR No. 083-0009. Richmond: Virginia Department of Historic Resources. https://www.dhr.virginia.gov/location/russell-county/
Virginia Department of Historic Resources. “Rosedale.” Architectural Survey File, DHR No. 083-0011. Richmond: Virginia Department of Historic Resources. https://www.dhr.virginia.gov/location/russell-county/
Virginia Department of Historic Resources. “Samuel Gilmer House.” National Register of Historic Places Registration Form, DHR No. 083-0003. Richmond: Virginia Department of Historic Resources, 2014. https://www.dhr.virginia.gov/VLR_to_transfer/PDFNoms/083-0003_Samuel_Gilmer_House_2014_NRHP_FINAL.pdf
Virginia Department of Historic Resources. “Smithfield.” National Register of Historic Places Registration Form, DHR No. 083-0012. Richmond: Virginia Department of Historic Resources, 1994. https://www.dhr.virginia.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/083-0012_Smithfield_1994_Final_NR_Nomination.pdf
Virginia Department of Historic Resources. “Virginia Cultural Resources Information System.” Accessed July 19, 2026. https://www.dhr.virginia.gov/programs/architectural-survey/v-cris/
Virginia Department of Transportation. “Official State Transportation Maps and Historical Maps.” Accessed July 19, 2026. https://www.vdot.virginia.gov/about/our-system/highway-map/
Virginia Humanities. “Henry Carter Stuart, 1855–1933.” Encyclopedia Virginia. Accessed July 19, 2026. https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/stuart-henry-carter-1855-1933/
The Southern Planter. Advertisement for registered Hereford cattle at Rosedale, Russell County, Virginia. January 1, 1942. Biodiversity Heritage Library. https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/69852
Author Note: Rosedale’s history survives not in a traditional downtown but across farms, houses, roads, cemeteries, and scattered community landmarks. This article brings those records together while recognizing the enslaved people, tenants, laborers, and families who shaped the landscape alongside its best-known landowners.