By Patrick Hurston
When Hardy County Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB) Executive Director Michele Moure-Reeves first considered the historic Higgins House as a possible home for the organization, she was not immediately convinced.
Judy Patterson of the Historic Landmark Commission had repeatedly encouraged her to take a look at the small log structure on Winchester Avenue in Moorefield. When she did, she wondered what she could possibly do with it.
“It was so small,” Moure-Reeves recalled. At the time, the CVB had little income, making her hesitant to take on another responsibility.
Seven years later, the restored Higgins House has become considerably more than a new office.
The CVB, better known as Visit Hardy, has moved into a newly constructed visitors center adjoining the historic house, while the house itself has opened as the Robert Higgins House Museum.
Together, they create a new tourism destination that Moure-Reeves hopes will do more than tell visitors where to go next. It’s intended to help tell the story of Hardy County itself while placing the South Branch Valley in context with events that shaped the nation.
The project began when the Town of Moorefield offered the Higgins House to the CVB under an arrangement in which Moure-Reeves would pursue grants for restoration and the town would provide matching funds.
She began researching both the building and Robert Higgins, the Revolutionary War veteran who built it. The more she learned, the more ambitious the project became.
“I thought this is a perfect opportunity to link this rural area with international events and place it squarely within those events,” Moure-Reeves said.
Much of the region’s publicly interpreted history focuses on the Civil War. Moure-Reeves points out, however, that the people living in what is now Hardy and Hampshire counties were also participants in the upheaval that preceded it, namely frontier settlement, conflict with Native peoples, the French and Indian War and the American Revolution.
“The Revolutionary War did not happen just in Boston and Yorktown,” Moure-Reeves said.
Initially, she envisioned an exhibit primarily about the architectural history of the house.
The late-18th century log structure was eventually incorporated into a much larger house, effectively disappearing from view until the larger structure was slated for demolition in the 1980s and the original Higgins House was rediscovered inside.
But as Moure-Reeves researched Higgins himself, the focus broadened.
Her research took her through courthouse records, documents in Ohio and collections at the Library of Congress and Library of Virginia, while consulting historians and other experts to separate documented history from stories repeated through generations.
What emerged was an exhibit built not simply around dates, but around Higgins as a human thread through a much larger story.
“I didn’t want it to be a timeline,” Moure-Reeves said. “I wanted it to be a story.”
The exhibit reaches back before Higgins’ adulthood to establish what the region was like in the mid-18th century, including its Native population and European settlement, before moving through the French and Indian War, the Revolution and the founding of the new nation.
Higgins’ own experiences repeatedly intersect with that larger history.
Higgins came to the South Branch Valley as a child, lived through the French and Indian War and later served in the American Revolution, where he was captured at Germantown and spent more than three years as a prisoner of war. He later built his Moorefield home and the town’s first courthouse and jail.
Moure-Reeves describes him as an “ordinary man” whose life nevertheless offers a window into an extraordinary period.
The exhibition’s title, “Robert Higgins: A Man to be Known,” grew from a quote attributed to one of Higgins’ descendants: “Must one be known to be great?”
The exhibit also does not present Higgins’ military service and pioneering life in isolation.
Moure-Reeves said she deliberately incorporated the experiences of Native Americans and enslaved people into the interpretation, including aspects of Higgins’ own family history.
Records show the Higgins family enslaved people while living in the South Branch Valley. Moure-Reeves also uncovered deeds documenting Higgins’ later manumission of three enslaved people after moving west, although those individuals subsequently entered periods of indentured servitude.
“I could tell Higgins’ story without talking about the Native Americans,” she said. “I could tell Higgins’ story without talking about the enslaved people. But I thought that that would be leaving out all of the story. It would be leaving out the truth of the story.”
The research was only one piece of a project that stretched across seven years. Moure-Reeves also pursued grants, worked with the Town of Moorefield and other funding partners, oversaw aspects of restoration and construction, and continued running the CVB while marketing Hardy County tourism.
The Town of Moorefield and Hardy County Commission each contributed $50,000 toward the effort, with additional funding from the CVB, West Virginia Humanities Council, Appalachian Forest National Heritage Area and West Virginia Community Development Hub.
Rather than place the visitors center inside the historic structure, which stands at only 18 by 26 feet, the project eventually grew to include additions providing office and visitor space while allowing the historic interior to remain dedicated to interpretation.
That combination of visitors center and museum also reflects a broader approach Moure-Reeves has pursued at Visit Hardy.
She describes it as “asset development” — essentially helping create experiences that give people a reason not simply to travel to Hardy County, but to stay, explore and spend time here.
The approach has included her grant-writing work supporting development of mountain bike trails at Lost River State Park and the Hardy County Barn Quilt Trail. Those projects, she noted, ultimately belong to and are operated by other organizations in the community rather than the CVB.
“If you can have people come here, there need to be things for them to do,” she said.
The Higgins House adds another such asset, one rooted specifically in the county’s history.
“To tell the story of who we are and what is going on here, you need to have things that relate to this place,” she said.
The museum formally opened in late August. A reception drew about 35 invited guests, including several Higgins descendants, while the following day’s public open house brought a steady stream of visitors, including one man in a militia uniform and another dressed as a Revolutionary War officer.
The opening, however, does not mark the end of the work.
Moure-Reeves said additional money still needs to be raised to replace siding and windows and further secure the historic building’s exterior. She estimates that work will require at least another $50,000.
She also wants to develop an educational program around the museum, particularly one that can involve Hardy County schools. Seven iPads are already available, and she envisions eventually putting additional research and material that could not fit on the museum walls online, allowing visitors to explore subjects in greater depth.
“I really want the schools to get involved,” Moure-Reeves said. “I really, really want the schools to get involved.”
For Moure-Reeves, that may ultimately be one measure of whether the seven-year undertaking succeeds: local children discovering that the events they encounter in history books were not confined to Boston, Philadelphia or Yorktown.
Some of that history happened right here, and one ordinary man who lived through it left behind a small house in Moorefield from which a much larger story can now be told.
The museum and visitors center will be open Monday, Tuesday, Friday and Saturday from 10 a.m.-4 p.m., or by appointment.
