A presentation about “Keetsville to Washburn and Roller Ridge to Seligman” and the “Heart of the Burn Zone” will be given on Friday at the Southwest High School cafeteria.

Glenn Erwin, of the Washburn area, is organizing the meeting, which he hopes will become a historical society of sorts.

“The motive is to have follow- up meetings where old Barry County families can give their ancestry up to today, and I have one guy that can come and talk about the schools,” he said. “If people are interested, we will have more meetings like this.”

The idea for a presentation came on the heels of numerous historical artifact finds on Erwin’s and his neighbors’ properties.

“Before COVID, I had this old daguerreotype, and I located a letter from a boy in a picture that he had written to his grandkids,” Erwin said. “It described the log cabin he lived in and the frame house his grandmother lived in. I contacted some metal detector guys to come out and search my land to see if we could find them.” Erwin said the archeologists were certain where the log cabin was, and they found enough artifacts to prove where the frame house stood.

“We found the lock to the door of that house and other items that verified its pre-Civil War location.”

Erwin also has several pre-Civil War wells on his property, and searches around those uncovered even more.

“We’ve found a lot of artifacts, and there’s one spot they believe was a Civil War camp,” Erwin said. “On my neighbor’s property, they found 100 dropped bullets, unfired, and some Union soldier brass shoulder pads. They said they’ve never found anything like that before.”

Keetsville, which became Washburn in 1868, played a prominent role locally in the Civil War, considered a staging area for troops who fought in the Battle of Wilson’s Creek, as well as Pea Ridge.

“They all came down the Wire Road to Keetsville to fight in Wilson’s Creek, regrouping there and moving south,” Erwin said. “There was a big skirmish in Keetsville that is recorded, and we know General Franz Sigal had about 8,000-10,000 troops camped in tents there for about a month.”

Erwin said artifacts found by the archeologists will be displayed at the meeting on Friday at 6 p.m., which will be under an hour and cover the history of the area relating to the Civil War and the time Keetsville and Roller Ridge became Washburn and Seligman.

“We also talk about the stage line and the trail of tears,” he said. “And, we want to have more of these.

“If people can tell the stories of their families, or hear them, that can resonate.”

There is no cost to attend the meeting on Friday.