Cooperative Living January 2018 - 34

Bumpass
was once a
booming
village
Clockwise from top left: The Sargeant Museum & Heritage Farm's house is on its original site at 214 Fredericksburg Avenue, Louisa.
The house was built in 1914 by Frank Sargeant, the grandfather of J. Sargeant Reynolds; Conductor's uniform; Bobby Edwards grew
up in Bumpass but moved away with his family while still in his teens. Post-retirement, he moved back to Bumpass in 2002; View of the
railroad tracks that still run through Bumpass, which once hosted the Bumpass Railroad Depot Station; John Nuckols, Bumpass Post
Office postmaster, lives in nearby Hanover and has been Bumpass postmaster since 2015. " My father grew up in this area and knew
everybody in the community, " Nuckols says.
Lassiter and Edwards spearheaded research
that led to the dedication of a Bumpass
Historical Marker on Bumpass Road
in September 2017, on property owned
by CSX Railroad that is currently used/
maintained by the Buckingham
Branch Railroad.
" I got tired of seeing what I saw on that
corner, which was high grass and weeds.
I thought no one has any idea this was
Bumpass unless they grew up here, "
Edwards explains.
A " Bumpass History Day " was held in
April 2017 at the church, featuring photos
and memorabilia from local families. Sales
from lunch and baked goods provided by
Sharon Christian and St. Thomas Baptist
were the beginning of a fund that would
go towards the cost of the marker (the
Virginia Department of Transportation
forges, installs and maintains state markers).
Pastor Sharon Roberts, the ninth
minister at St. Thomas, has been pastor
since 2005. A former Virginia Department
of Corrections employee, Roberts has three
children and grandchildren and is working
32 | Cooperative Living | January 2018
toward a master's degree at Fredericksburg
Bible Institute & Seminary. She also
provides care for her mother, Katherine
Jackson, who lives with her and husband
Melvin, a retiree and part-time bus driver
for Louisa County Public Schools.
She laughs at the irony that when her
church was founded, women could not
oversee them and " today the church has a
woman pastor ... me!
'This is a familyoriented
area; both
white and black
families have a
shared history together.
- Pastor Sharon
Roberts
" We do a lot of cross-fellowship with
other congregations. We try to teach our
people to open up and make people feel
accepted and that we're one family. There
is healing in that, " Pastor Roberts explains.
" This is a family-oriented area; both white
and black families have a shared history
together. Most [locals] do attend church
and new people are welcome here. "
Jackson grew up near Buckner; after her
mother passed away when she was only 7
years old, she went to live with a local
family, where she helped on the farm,
milking cows and walking to school. She
says she worked hard as a child and enjoys
life with her daughter.
County administrator Christian
Goodwin, whose father was chief of the
Bumpass Fire Department when Goodwin
was a child, grew up in Bumpass and lives
on his 17th-century ancestral farm. Lake
Anna, a 13,000-acre freshwater reservoir
created in the late 1960s-1970s to provide
water to cool nuclear generating plants for
North Anna Nuclear Power Station,
has become a popular recreational lake,
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Cooperative Living January 2018

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Cooperative Living January 2018