Speedwell, Virginia

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Speedwell Historic

(The following was sent to us by Mozelle Porter Kooy and is an extract from Goodrich Wilson, Roanoke Times, Sunday March 6, no year date available)

Speedwell, ancient and unincorporated village of Wythe, is an interesting old town in an interesting section of country. It is a pretty country town with picturesque Cripple Creek running through meadows and under bluffs between hills and a tumbling mountain torrent with its succession of falls and pools making the Wytheville-Independence state highway a delightful sylvan drive over Iron Mountain.

Speedwell has been Speedwell a long time. I have a sort of recollection of hearing or seeing somewhere that a man named Speedwell came up from North Carolina soon after the Revolutionary War and built a furnace and forge there to work iron ore dug nearby. Certainly iron works were established before the year eighteen hundred  and one for in that year young Robertson Gannaway came up from Cumberland county to live with his Uncle William Gannaway and work in the ironworks at Speedwell. In his autobiography he makes brief but interesting comments on both his relatives and the iron works.

He says: "In the winter of 1835 I came to Cripple Creek in Wythe and made my home at my aunt's who was a good old Presbyterian and very Calvinistic. I wrought at my trade [of carpenter] at an iron works called Speedwell on Cripple Creek and a more wicked and blasphemous company I have never fallen into in all my travels."

Speedwell Clubs, Civic & Charitable Organizations

Recycling Center & Trash Collection - 276-621-5251.

US Post Office - Speedwell - 276-621-4721.