by John F. Cummings (Author)
Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania County is a region steeped in the history of our early nation, further punctuated by the defining, tragic drama of the American Civil War. Here was the boyhood playground of our first President, George Washington, as well as four tragic battlefields that would yield over 100,000 casualties during an eighteen-month nightmare. The depredations of this war produced a pall over the countryside that wore heavily on the local citizenry for generations.
This volume sets out to demonstrate not only the lasting tangibility of prominent landmarks of this eventful past, but also the starkly contrasting disappearance of vernacular structure, the homes and workplaces of the common man.
The shifting needs of the community amongst the growing technological advances of the modern world render a palimpsest landscape, where faint traces continue to erode, and are lost in popular memory. Visual historian John Cummings brings together some remarkable combinations of then and now journalistic imagery. His intent is go to beyond a pretty picture book of stately homes and florid gardens. Here we see how indeed, time marches on. The reader will also find an exploration of the identification process employed to solve some long-standing photographic mysteries.