The decisive vote in November not to move the Confederate monument from Mathews Court Green brought to mind an editorial we wrote in 2017. This week we reprint it. A marker on each of our court greens to honor the people who labored in the background, who were working through no choice of their own, and who were often the craftsmen responsible for the buildings in our treasured past, would do much to open a hidden part of our history. For our own residents and for our visitors, let’s tell the whole story.

Honor the builders

Reprinted from the Gazette-Journal of July 20, 2017

Let us walk around our historic buildings: Rosewell, the colonial churches, plantation homes, old courthouses and other public buildings.

On our stroll through history, we find signs to tell us how these places came to be, and who was responsible for putting them in our communities. We are prompted to honor the builders … the people with the plans and the money who established these structures that hav...