By Ray Ezell
Membership Renewal
By now you should have received the 2025 membership renewal form in your mailbox.
Please take a moment to fill it out and renew your Society membership by returning the completed form with your payment to our office at
130 Caroline St., Orange, VA 22960.
Or you can visit our website to renew by credit card at https://www.orangecovahist.
org/membership. And you are most welcome to make a general contribution to our operating budget. Your support is essential for us to fulfill our mission to the community.
Year End Summary
As I look back on our accomplishments during 2024, I am grateful for your support and thankful for our ability to continue to offer interesting programming and to provide a venue for conducting historical research. Here are the highlights of our successes of the past year:
• Redesigned the Society website with increased functionality
• Received a significant grant from the Virginia Museum of History and Culture to conduct research on the pre-Civil War free Black population of Orange County
• Substantially increased the number of historic Orange County Review negatives cataloged
(a collection of about 15,000)
• Conducted a history bus tour for new county schoolteachers and added historical online resources for teachers to use
• Reached an agreement with the James Madison Museum to collaborate on artifact
and document collections shared between our organizations
• Conducted a successful fundraising campaign for gutter and roof repair
Finally, I want to extend to society members and the community as a whole—Best wishes for a safe and happy holiday season.