Well, it took us a while but we finally solved the mystery of who painted the murals in Shenandoah!
The murals we are talking about used to be displayed in Enchanting Floral & Gifts / Boxcar Deli at 500 & 502 First Street in Shenandoah for 13 years up until the Haggett’s retired in July 2023. Dan and Brenda Haggett have loaned two of the three murals to the Town of Shenandoah Museum. Mr. William Monger had a painter paint these when he ran the Shenandoah Land Title Corporation in Shenandoah, and had them displayed in his business on First Street. It was located in the same building as Boxcar & Deli back in the 90’s.
One mural is currently displayed in the lobby of the museum. It shows parts of First Street between Pennsylvania and Maryland Avenue. It displays the front and end view of the Virginia Wire Manufacturing building after it had burned. This business was run by E.J. Laughlin of Mount Jackson and this business burned on Tuesday May 23, 1978. Also, you will notice that the artist did not include the silos in this paining. All silos were torn down between May and June 1990.
The other mural is currently displayed in the history/library room of the museum. It shows the Shenandoah Railroad Station, locomotive, rail cars and a caboose.
There was a third mural that was painted and it was of a mountain and woods scene. On this mural the artist signed it with “V. Hamilton 90.” A picture of this mural can be found on page 342 in the book “Shenandoah- The Thomas Family Collection.” This mural is not displayed in the museum.
At the beginning of this mystery the only clue we had was the signature on the wooded scene displaying “V. Hamilton 90.” We posted our search for the artist on Shenandoah Newz Facebook page and was contacted by a lady that used to work for Mr. Monger. She told us that she had visited the lady’s house and it was located in Elkton Virginia, across the street from the Farm Bureau. She also told us that the very large 3 section wooded mural was painted to represent a hunting cabin Mr Monger had in Beldor. The area of Beldor is located south of Elkton Va.
We visited Elkton Town Hall and was told that a Virginia Hamilton Lived on Ashby Avenue a while back, but had moved. So at this point we had a name to research. We searched many online newspapers and could not pick up the trail of Virginia Hamilton. We could not find an online obituary and didn’t find anything on Find a Grave website. We had an article published in the Valley Trail Newspaper, but it didn’t lead to any new clues to follow.
It had been over two weeks of research and we were running out of places to look. We finally performed a search for Virginia Hamilton on Ancestry.com website. There we found a Virginia L. Hamilton that lived in Elkton in 1993 at 94 Ashby Avenue Apartment B. We now had more proof that she lived in Elkton and now we learned of her middle initial of L.
While on Ancestry we came across some sad news in the US. Social Security Death Index that indicated she had passed away in October 2011. This record also gave us her birth date. At this point we had a name, birth and death date.
During further research on Ancestry we came across a family tree that her daughter Paula had created. All the data we had matched what she had displayed in her family tree. At this point we still did not know if Virginia Hamilton was actually a painter. We gathered two more strong clues from pictures on her daughters Ancestry tree. One was a sketch Virginian Hamilton did of her mother. This showed us she had artistic abilities! The other clue that we found was a color picture of Virginia Hamilton wearing a painter's palette (some call it a flamingo flower) pin on her blouse. At this point we were 99.9 % sure we had the right person, but we needed to confirm it with her daughter. We were able to make contact with her daughter and on Tuesday morning September 26, 2023 we received confirmation online from Paula that her mother Virginia Hamilton was the one that painted the murals for Mr. Monger! Paula went on to say “She was always painting or drawing something for as long as I can remember. She died a little over 10 years ago but was still sketching right up until her last days. She was very happy to be able to paint these murals -- she always loved the Blue Ridge mountains and all of the Shenandoah Valley.”
Please keep checking back with us, as we hope to gain more information on Virginia Hamilton and will be updating this article.
The Shenandoah Museum is located at 507 First Street in Shenandoah Virginia 22849. The hours are 10am to 5pm Monday – Saturday and is closed daily for lunch from 12 to 1pm. Phone number for the museum is (540) 652-8773.
Virginia Leigh Ralston Hamilton
