This advertisement for William Christian & Sons, who made coffins and furniture, was published December 4, 1896, in the Shenandoah Herald. Established in 1877, it was one of the first known deaf-owned and run businesses in nineteenth-century Virginia. The Christians were part of a shared signing community in Shenandoah County.
This April 19, 1901, bulletin in the Shenandoah Herald announces the death of William Nester. Nester married Barbara Annie Hollar, the great-granddaughter of Petter Haller, who settled in Lantz Mill with his wife, Ann Dorothea Halrin Haller, and their two deaf children. Their arrival marks the first presence of deaf residents in Lantz Mill, a shared signing community. This bulletin was originally published in the Goodson Gazette, the newsletter published by the Virginia School for the Deaf, Dumb and Blind, as the Virginia School for Deaf and Blind was then known, in Staunton.
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