The militia was organized in 1777 after the county was established in the previous year. All men between the ages of 18 and 50 were required to register, attend muster and perform others with their captain of the militia. Only those who were infirm or not fit were allowed not to attend and this information is often listed on the muster rolls.

The history of African Americans in southern Appalachia after the Civil War has largely escaped the attention of scholars of both African Americans and the region. In Facing Freedom, Daniel Thorp relates the complex experience of an African American community in southern Appalachia as it negotiated a radically new world in the four decades following the Civil War. Drawing on extensive research in private collections as well as local, state, and federal records, Thorp narrates in intimate detail the experiences of black Appalachians as they struggled to establish autonomous families, improve their economic standing, operate black schools within a white-controlled school system, form independent black churches, and exercise expanded—if contested—roles as citizens and members of the body politic. Black out-migration increased markedly near the close of the nineteenth century, but the generation that transitioned from slavery to freedom in Montgomery County established the community institutions that would survive disenfranchisement and Jim Crow. Facing Freedom reveals the stories and strategies of those who pioneered these resilient bulwarks against the rising tide of racism.

"Virginia, or the Old Dominion, as her children delight to call her, has always been famed for the style of her living ... Tearing the glittering arms of King George from their sideboards, and casting them, with their costly plate and jewels, as offerings into the lap of the Continental Congress, they introduced in their homes that new style of living in which, discarding all the showy extravagance of the old, and retaining only its inexpensive graces, they succeeded in perfecting that system which, surviving to this day, has ever been noted for its beautiful and elegant simplicity. This system, which combines the thrifty frugality of New England with the less rigid style of Carolina, has been justly pronounced, by the throngs of admirers who have gathered from all quarters of the Union around the generous boards of her illustrious sons, as the very perfection of domestic art." -- Preface.

Foreword / by James C. Giesen -- Introduction : a more rural metropolitan history -- Clearing the backwoods -- Cultivating the fringe -- Damming the hinterlands -- Settling the forest -- Enshrining the countryside -- Conclusion : a tale of two villages.

A century ago, Montgomery White Sulphur Springs was one of Virginia's most elegant mineral springs resorts. This book tells of its time as a Confederate hospital during the Civil War & of the nuns & the doctors who came to tend the sick, the wounded, & the smallpox victims. There are lists of the meager belongings of some of the soldiers, of the supplies ordered when the hospital was being established, of the people who worked there during the war, & of the Confederate soldiers who died there, some of whom were buried in the "Soldiers' Cemetery" nearby. The book also tells of the resort's hey-day of fun & frolic--concerts on the lawn, dancing, & socializing--& names of many of the guests. But in the twentieth century the people stopped coming. Eventually the buildings were removed & the valley returned to its quiet peace. Bodell also tells of the caretaking activities of the local chapter of United Daughters of the Confederacy, of the landowners who have preserved a few of the markers & the monument, & hints at the current threat, a proposed "smart" highway.