Mary Draper Ingles Festival, 600 Unruh Drive, Radford, VA (2026)

07/24/2026

Celebrate America’s 250 the founding at the Mary Draper Ingles Festival July 24-26 in Radford and at nearby sites. Visitors will hear outstanding writers, historians, and musicians who bring Virginia’s early frontier to life.

Another Radford University professor joining the Festival will be Sharon Roger-Hepburn. She will present a talk about an African American Union soldier, who left behind some 60 letters, which eventually evolved into the book, “Private No More: The Civil War Letters of John Lovejoy Murray, 102nd United States Colored Infantry.” His letters are considered significant because they are ordinary in some respects yet extraordinary in others.

Check out www.glencoemansion.org/mary-draper-ingles for more information and more events!

07/24/2026

Celebrate America’s 250 the founding at the Mary Draper Ingles Festival July 24-26 in Radford and at nearby sites. Visitors will hear outstanding writers, historians, and musicians who bring Virginia’s early frontier to life.

Along with Music, Speakers will be a host of other activities to fill your day like reenactors and historical interpreters. There'll be great local goods sold by Farmers Market and Craft Vendors. We'll also have food available for purchase from multiple food trucks and booths.

Check out www.glencoemansion.org/mary-draper-ingles for more information and more events!

07/23/2026

Celebrate America’s 250 the founding at the Mary Draper Ingles Festival July 24-26 in Radford and at nearby sites. Visitors will hear outstanding writers, historians, and musicians who bring Virginia’s early frontier to life.

Geoff the Fiddler will bring traditional music to the Festival this year. He plays traditional Celtic tunes, from lively jigs and reels to slow haunting airs and waltzes. He is accompanied by Georgianne on the Bodhran.

Check out www.glencoemansion.org/mary-draper-ingles for more information and more events!

07/22/2026

Celebrate America’s 250 the founding at the Mary Draper Ingles Festival July 24-26 in Radford and at nearby sites. Visitors will hear outstanding writers, historians, and musicians who bring Virginia’s early frontier to life.

One of two Radford University professors joining the Festival will be Geoffrey Pollick. He will discuss “Captivity Narratives and Religious Logics of Settlement Along the Appalachian Eastern Divide, 1740-1770.” He is Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Radford University. His research focuses on religion, race, and culture in the Appalachian region; religious identity and Black Lung disease among Virginia coal miners; and the history of women’s ordination in the late nineteenth-century United States. He holds a Ph.D. from Drew University and co-directs the newly formed Radford University Community History Research Collective, which is building partnerships with local institutions to document and interpret the New River Valley’s past.

Check out www.glencoemansion.org/mary-draper-ingles for more information and more events!

07/22/2026

Celebrate America’s 250 the founding at the Mary Draper Ingles Festival July 24-26 in Radford and at nearby sites. Visitors will hear outstanding writers, historians, and musicians who bring Virginia’s early frontier to life.

There is engaging content for everyone at the Mary Draper Ingles Festival, including our children visitors. On Saturday, there will be a special storytime at 10 am with Radford Public Library's Morgan Esterhuizen. There will be a petting zoo from 10 am to 1 pm. A giant cow Bounce House will also be part of the festivities.

Check out www.glencoemansion.org/mary-draper-ingles for more information and more events!

07/21/2026

Celebrate America’s 250 the founding at the Mary Draper Ingles Festival July 24-26 in Radford and at nearby sites. Visitors will hear outstanding writers, historians, and musicians who bring Virginia’s early frontier to life.

In addition to interpretations by colonial living historians of the Fincastle Company, will be a special performance by Garrett Channell, executive director of the Salem Museum, as patriotic leader Andrew Lewis. Hear about how Lewis established his estate, which once stretched all the way to Kentucky; what role he played in the French and Indian War; and how his actions during the Revolutionary War helped secure the colonies’ independence.

Check out www.glencoemansion.org/mary-draper-ingles for more information and more events!

07/21/2026

Celebrate America’s 250th at the Mary Draper Ingles Festival July 24-26 in Radford and at nearby sites. Visitors will hear outstanding writers, historians, and musicians who bring Virginia’s early frontier to life.

We'll open up the 2026 Mary Draper Ingles Festival with a dedication service in memory of Col. Lewis Bud Jeffries. Dr. Richard Harshberger will deliver special remarks to honor the work of a man who did so much for his country and for his Radford community. Bud Jeffries was a great advocate for history and was a foundational pillar upon which our organization and museum have been built. Kathleen Harshberger will present on the life of Mary Draper Ingles.

Check out www.glencoemansion.org/mary-draper-ingles for more information and more events!

07/20/2026

Celebrate America’s 250 the founding at the Mary Draper Ingles Festival July 24-26 in Radford and at nearby sites. Visitors will hear outstanding writers, historians, and musicians who bring Virginia’s early frontier to life.

Join us for the music of Ball & Chain. Musicians Jon Piro and Lucinda McDermott play original Americana with a touch of edge and eclecticism. Passion, fun and sass pervade their musical blend of rock, R&B, blues, roots, and adult alternative vocals.

Check out www.glencoemansion.org/mary-draper-ingles for more information and more events!

07/18/2026

For the Mary Draper Ingles Festival 2026 celebration, Glencoe Mansion is hosting that Mary Draper Ingles-themed art show, "Homecoming," running from July 15 to August 28.

For this multi-artist, juried show, art work was chosen that reflects the importance of home, Mary Draper Ingles’ homecoming journey, native agriculture or geological locations along her route, and also the universal importance of home. The 16 artists participating are: Mary Barksdale, Jake Conner, Virginia Dale, Cheng Fen, Matt Gentry, Rebecca Harris, Angela Martin, Mary Moore, Marietta Nester, Martha Olson, Melissa Pilkington, Roberta Sallee, Logan Singo, Sharon Taylor, and Susan Trulove. This year’s collection of works feature a diverse array of painting, paper, fabric, and photographic mediums that are both realistic and abstract in styles, highlighting the creativity of both emerging and established local artists.

07/18/2026

Celebrate America’s 250 the founding at the Mary Draper Ingles Festival July 24-26 in Radford and at nearby sites. Visitors will hear outstanding writers, historians, and musicians who bring Virginia’s early frontier to life.

The 2026 event welcomes back Sharyn McCrumb, an award-winning Southern writer and “New York Times” bestseller. She will discuss her book, “King’s Mountain,” that is set in the same era as the Mary Draper Ingles story. The ballad novel tells the story of how a militia of men from southwest Virginia and western North and South Carolina came to fight one of the important battles of the Revolutionary War.

Check out www.glencoemansion.org/mary-draper-ingles for more information and more events!

Mary Draper Ingles Festival

07/24/2026

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