Fincastle Resolutions - Virginia American Revolution 250 Commemoration

Salute to Southwest Virginia

Fincastle Resolutions 250th Anniversary

January 18, 2025
2:00 pm

These are our real, though unpolished sentiments, of liberty and loyalty, and in them we are resolved to live and die.

On January 20, 1775, fifteen Virginia frontiersman endorsed the Fincastle Resolutions in response to and in support of the Continental Congress adopting their own association to boycott British goods in protest of the Intolerable Acts. As this revolution of ideas swept across the Commonwealth, the Fincastle Resolutions were the first to verbalize the views of Virginia’s most western counties where “even in (these) remote regions the hand of unlimited and unconstitutional power hath pursued us, to strip us of that liberty and property which God, nature, and the rights of humanity have vested us.”

Out of the Virginia jurisdictions that wrote resolves on the eve of Revolution, Fincastle’s is unique for mentioning the colonists’ interactions with Indigenous Virginians. Many of the signers were veterans of Lord Dunmore’s War, some of the Battle of Point Pleasant. Some were immigrants or first-generation Americans. All were landowners. Together, they penned a resolution in defense of their “inestimable privileges” as rightful British subjects, which they “resolutely determined never to surrender…to any power upon earth, but at the expense of (their) lives.”

On January 18, 2025, Virginia commemorated the 250th anniversary of the Fincastle Resolutions with a “Salute to Southwest Virginia.”

That morning, in Wytheville, the kitchen house of The Homestead Museum was converted into the Fincastle Courthouse for a short history and reenactment of the January 20, 1775 signing of the Fincastle Resolutions. The reenactment was filmed by Blue Ridge PBS and PBS Appalachia Virginia as part of the upcoming documentary: “Resolved to Live and Die: The Revolutionary Roots of Southwest Virginia.”

Then, the commemoration continued at the Hotel Roanoke with a 2 pm procession that led to the O. Winston Link & Roanoke History Museum. Event highlights included:

Patriotic musical performances by: the VMI Regimental Band and Roanoke Symphony Orchestra brass and drum ensemble.
Master of Ceremonies Joe Dashiell of WDBJ
Flag presentation by the Virginia SAR Color Guard
Reenactment of William Christian delivering the Fincastle Resolutions to Williamsburg on horseback
Dramatic reading of the Fincastle Resolutions by local students
Living history demonstrations with Fincastle Company
Keynote remarks by VA250 National Honorary Chair Carly Fiorina
Grand opening of three new exhibits at the Roanoke History Museum
Ribbon-cutting ceremony and official debut of the VA250 Mobile Museum Experience