Local Choir Director Learns about His Past

Horace Scruggs may be known to students at PVCC as a choir teacher they previously had. He has worked with many public schools in our area, such as: Fluvanna county, Madison county, and Louisa county public schools. Scruggs also worked at PVCC for a few years but has since retired from teaching.  

In the last few years, Scruggs has continued doing part time work at the Trinity Presbyterian church here in Charlottesville. He has been working with them since 2018 as a choir director. According to Scruggs, he has enjoyed working with them, but COVID-19 did make meetings difficult. He explained how COVID-19 “shut musicians down,” and how he ended up doing nine months of Zoom meetings with the church choir. 

Scruggs has also done research with Virginia Humanities that he hopes to be sharing with the public soon. Last year, he and Hannah Scruggs (his daughter) started taking trips along the James River to create a documentary for Virginia Humanities. The purpose of the documentary will be to go over how to navigate the river and go over the African American history that occurred on the plantations along the river. The documentary for Virginia Humanities is estimated to be 10 minutes long and will be out in May. Virginia Humanities supported the Scruggs family in this venture to help “promote history, culture, and the human side of Virginia,” according to Scruggs. 

Scruggs is planning to have an expanded edition of this documentary for personal use. The reason he is making an expanded version is because there is a significant amount of information that he found out about his own family heritage, including the fact that he and Hannah Scruggs both had ancestors who had worked the plantations of Bremo Bluff.