LYNCHBURG, Va. – There are more than 100 confederate statues in the Commonwealth. One of them is in Lynchburg on Court Street across the street from the Lynchburg Museum.
WSLS 10's Magdala Louissaint reached out to the museum's director Douglas Harvey. He declined an on interview about the statue, since Virginia's governor made a statement to all cities in the Commonwealth to consider taking down Confederate monuments.
Harvey did speak to WSLS about the history of the statue. He says, it was put up in 1900. The United Daughters of the Confederacy raised the money to have the statue placed. He adds it's a generic statue of a solider and the monument was made in Germany. Harvey also says there's a capsule buried under the statue. In it are pictures of local generals, sheets of poems and music, a list of Lynchburg men who served in the war, and locks of hair from Robert Lee's horse named Traveler.
Museum representatives say there is no specific time on when to open the capsule. We asked him how do they know what's inside. He said, it's written in a book called "The History of Lynchburg Virginia 1786-1946" by Philip Littlefoot Sruggs. Harvey adds, many Confederate statues were place on courthouse lawns after the war and were put up by widows of the war.
We also reached out to the city of Lynchburg to get their thought on the governor's comments. They said,"It is a council policy decision they will have to consider at a future meeting."