Safe at Home: A Season in the Valley, a chronicle of the 2009 season of the New Market Rebels Valley League baseball team written by author Austin Gisriel, has been released by Augusta Free Press Publishing.

The book takes fans “not just into the dugout, but into the stands, and into management, and into the press box,” said Gisriel, a Maryland resident and lifelong Baltimore Orioles fan who has fallen in love with New Market and its Rebels since his first game in Rebel Park in 2008.

“It’s 90 miles from my house to Rebel Park. It’s 90 miles from my house to Camden Yards. And as much an Orioles fan as I am, I’d much rather travel the 90 miles to Rebel Park,” said Gisriel, whose book covers the 2009 season from the final pitch of 2008 through work in the offseason to recruit players and sponsors to the action on the field and on long bus trips to road games.

“I think a lot of fans think, Well, it’s summer baseball, we’ll just invite 25 kids to our town, give them a uniform, and they can come and play for two months. But there’s so much more involved than that. And the reward that those people get from their participation, I thought that was something that was unexplored,” Gisriel said.

The book is available through Augusta Free Press Publishing and online here.

A new book published by the Harrisonburg-Rockingham Historical Society, Death Notices in Extant Issues of the Rockingham Register by Dr. Dorothy Boyd-Bragg, has an Augusta Free Press Publishing touch. Work on the layout and cover design for the book was done by AFP Publishing.

The book is a valuable new resource for historians and genealogists for Rockingham County and surrounding areas. The Rockingham Register was not merely a local paper but was a well-respected regional paper. As such, it published information about residents of surrounding counties such as Augusta, Shenandoah and Page Counties as well as notices of former residents who had moved west. During most of this period, reporting deaths to county officials was not mandatory. Brief notices in the newspaper may be the only source of death dates for many of the people who died during these years.

Death notices for former Valley residents give many details on their lives while living in the valley and later. For instance, there was Joseph B. Alltaffar, aged 24 years, who died in Bridgewater in 1860. He had lived in Montgomery, Alabama for five years before contracting tuberculosis and coming home to die. Or Samuel W. Bowman, who died in 1863 in the 31st year of his age. “He removed to Missouri a few years ago, and was engaged in teaching school when the present war was commenced ….”

Deaths of former soldiers and active soldiers were reported. Revolutionary War soldiers, War of 1812 soldiers, and two Mexican War soldiers are in this book. Deaths of numerous Civil War soldiers were reported in the newspaper, many with explicit details. For instance, John Charles Wittig was shot through the hip at Jeffersonton in 1863 but died five days later. His remains were recovered by his father and reinterred in Rockingham County. Other soldiers such as Joseph Thomas Bumbgardner died of diseases contracted during military service.

Whatever your interest in Valley history—genealogy, Civil War research, or general history, this book is a must-have for your collection. Death Notices is available now. In paperback with over 300 pages, it is $23.99 plus sales tax and shipping. To order, call the Historical Society at 540 879-2616 or write HRHS, P.O. Box 879, Dayton, VA 22821.

Augusta Free Press Publishing has completed the redesign of the website of the Waynesboro Family YMCA.

The new website went live in January. The site features up-to-date information on program offerings in adult and senior fitness, youth sports and childcare.

AFP Publishing also produces content for the site on a regular basis profiling staff and members at the Y and offering information on classes and Y programs.

The Y and AFP Publishing have been partners since 2009 on marketing efforts including the production of the Y Magazine, a program guide that is distributed to residents of Waynesboro and is also made available to readers of the News Virginian as an insert into the Waynesboro-based daily newspaper.

“The AFP has been a great business partner in shaping our marketing efforts, developing an annual theme to rally behind, and provide the technical support to push our efforts,” Y Executive Director Jeff Fife said.