[Source: History ofWest
Virginia; By Virgil
Anson Lewis; publ. 1887; Pgs. 486-493;
Transcribed
and submitted by Andrea Stawski
Pack]
HAMPSHIRE
COUNTY.
Hampshire
is by twenty-five years the oldest county in the
State. Frederick
County
was formed from Orange in 1738, and
included all the territory lying north of
Augusta and south
of the Potomac River. In 1754, it was enacted by
the Lieutenant-Governor, Council and Burgesses,
"That on the first day of May next ensuing, all
that part of the county of Augusta which lies
within the bounds of the Northern Neck be added
to and made part of the county of Frederick, and
that said part of the county of Frederick so to
be added to, shall, from and immediately after
the said first day of May, the said county of
Frederick and the said part of the county of
Augusta so to be added to, and made part of the
county of Frederick, as aforesaid, be divided
into two counties; and that all that part
thereof lying to the westward of the ridge of
mountains commonly called and known by the names
of Great North, and Cape Capon mountains and
Warm Spring mountains extending to Potomac
river, be one distinct county, to be called and
known by the name of Hampshire; and all that
other part thereof, lying to the eastward of the
said ridge of mountains, be one distinct county
and retain the name of Frederick." It will be
observed that the western boundary is not
defined. It was not necessary, for the county
extended to the "utmost parts of Virginia" which were
bounded west and northwest by the Great Lakes
and Mississippi river.
At
the time of its organization its settled portion
lay within the Northern Neck, the Royal Grant of
which was vested in Lord Fairfax, and the county
owes its name to an incident related in
Kercheval's "History of the Valley." "Lord
Fairfax, happening to be at Winchester, one day
observed a drove of very fine hogs, and inquired
where they were from. He was told that they were
raised in the South Branch Valley; upon which he
remarked that when a new county should be formed
to the west of Frederick to include the
South
Branch
Valley,
it should be called for Hampshire
County
in England,
so celebrated for its fat
hogs."
Owing
to the continuation of the French and Indian
War, the county was not organized until 1757,
when the first court convened, the presiding
justice being the Right Honorable Thomas Bryan
Martin, a nephew of Lord Fairfax. The present
area is 630 square miles.
Romney, the
county seat and the oldest town in the State,
was laid out in November, 1762, by Lord
Fairfax,-who named it "Romney" after the town of
that name in England, one of the Cinque Ports on
the English Channel. It, together with Hastings, Hythe, Dover and Sandwich, received
peculiar privileges on condition of furnishing
ships in time of war. By an Act of Assembly,
December 4th, 1789, Isaac Parsons, Isaac Miller,
Andrew Woodrow, Stephen Colvin, Jonathan
Russell, Nicholas Casey, William McGuire, Perry
Drew and James Murphy were appointed trustees of
the town. In 1792 it was shown to the Assembly
that it was "uncertain and unknown to whom many
lots in the town of Romney legally belonged, for
the reason that the late Lord Fairfax hath made
no deed," and on the 27th of December that year,
that body enacted that "the title to said lots
shall be vested in the trustees, whose title to
them shall be valid in law." January 11th, 1811,
it was enacted that "it shall not be lawful for
any person or persons to play 'at the game
called and known by the name of Bullets, or to
run any horse race on the streets of Romney."
February 24th, 1818, the Assembly appointed a
new board of trustees for the town, consisting
of James Daily, John Jack, John McDowell, Warner
Thorcmorton, Thomas Mullady, Samuel Kercheval,
Christopher Heiskell and James Gibson.
The
town is beautifully situated on a bluff
overlooking the South Branch River, sixteen miles
south of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad at
Green Spring Station, which is fourteen miles
east of Cumberland
City,
and one hundred and sixty-four miles west of
Baltimore.
Washington, on
his journey to the Ohio, spent
the night of the 9th of October, 1770, in
Romney.
Watson
Town, in
the extreme southern part of the county, is a
famous resort visited by several hundred guests
annually. It was established by law December 12,
1787, on lands of Joseph Watson; and Elias
Poston, Henry Fry, Isaac Hawk, Jacob Hoover,
John Winterton, Valentine Swisher, Rudolph
Bumgardner, Peter McKeever, John Sherman and
Isaac Zane were appointed trustees. December 27,
1800, the following additional trustees were
appointed: Andrew Woodrow, James Singleton, John
Little, Stephen Pritchard, Moses Russell, Henry
Beatty, John Croudson, and Henry Powell.
Januarys 1816, new trustees were appointed as
follows: Charles Brent, Philip Williams, David
Ogden, John Little, George Huddle, William
Herron and Archibald Craigwell. March 8, 1849,
an addition of ninety-five acres was made to the
town. It was surveyed by John B. Sherrard,
deputy surveyor of the
county.
Springfield, in
the northwest, named from a' Massachusetts
battle field of the Revolution, was established
December 16, 1790, at the Cross Roads on the
lands of William and Samuel Abernethy, with John
Taylor, William Campbell, Robert Reynolds, Jacob
Earsom, John Pancake, Fielding Calmes and Andrew
Hughes, trustees.
Ancient
Battle
Field.—Tradition
tells of a fierce battle between the contending
tribes of the Delawares and Catawbas,
which occurred within the present limits of
Hampshire
County. Of
this contest Kercheval says:— "A great battle
between these hostile tribes, it is said, was
fought at what is called the Hanging Rocks, on
the Wappatomaka, in the county of
Hampshire
where the river passes through the mountain. A
pretty large party of Delawares had
invaded the territory of the Catawbas, taken
several prisoners, and commenced their retreat
homewards. When they reached this place they
made a halt, and a number of them commenced
fishing. Their Catawba enemies, close in
pursuit, discovered them, and threw a party of
men across the river, with another in their
front. Thus enclosed, with the rock on one side,
a party on the opposite side of the river,
another in front, and another in their rear, a
most furious and bloody onset was made, and it
is believed that several hundred of the
Delawares were slaughtered. Indeed, the signs
now to be seen at this place exhibit striking
evidence of the fact. There is a row of Indian
graves between the rock and public road, along
the margin of the river, from sixty to seventy
yards in length. It is believed that very few of
the Delawares
escaped."
Indians
Approach the Fort near Romney.—A
few miles below the present site of Romney stood
one of those primitive works of defense against
savage incursion. Shortly after Braddock's
defeat, there was among the inmates of this fort
a family named Hogeland. During harvest, Mrs.
Hogeland, with two men acting as guards, went a
short distance from the fort to gather beans.
Suddenly eight or ten Indians made their
appearance, when one of the guards took to
flight. The other, whose name was Hogeland,
placed himself between the woman and the
savages, and, with rifle presented, retreated
from tree to tree, until both reached the fort
unharmed. The old men within gave the alarm to
the harvest hands by a discharge of rifles. The
men hastily retreated to the fort. The same day,
while returning to work, they were fired upon by
Indians, and Henry Newkirk wounded. They
returned the fire, and the Indians
fled.
Bowers
and
York
Attacked.—Another
of these early forts was at the Forks of Capon,
in the present county of
Hampshire.
Four or five miles distant was a fertile field
which the inmates of the fort cultivated. About
the year 1758, two men—Bowers and York by name—
returning from the field to the fort, were
waylaid by seven Indians. Bowers was shot and
fell dead. York fled,
pursued by three of the savages, and, after a
desperate race, reached the fort in
safety.
Furman's
Fort was
situated about one mile above the Hanging Rock
on the South Branch. In the year 1764, Henry
Furman and Nimrod Ashby left the fort to hunt in
the Jersey
mountains.
They
were discovered and both killed by a party of
eighteen Delawares, who thence
passed into Frederick
county, where they divided into two parties, and
continued their savage work. One of the parties
returning with a number of helpless victims whom
they were carrying into captivity, encamped near
Furman's Fort. Early in the morning, alarmed by
the report of guns at the fort, they fled across
the Wappatomaka. In their haste one of the
prisoners, Mrs. Thomas, being left to ford the
river without help, succeeded in escaping, and
found refuge in William's Fort, two miles below
the Hanging Rock.
Thomas
and Samuel Mullady.
Prominent among those whom the county has given
to public life were the Mullady brothers, two
sons of Thomas Mullady, an Irish Catholic. The
sons, Thomas and Samuel, were both educated at
the Propaganda at Rome. After two
years devoted to study, Thomas served two years
as tutor of the Crown Prince of Naples, after
which he returned to his own country and was
soon made President of Georgetown College. That
institution never had in its faculty a riper
scholar than he. He was perhaps the most
accomplished scholar in the language and
literature of Italy
which this country has produced. Samuel,
scarcely inferior to his brother, died while
serving as President of Worcester College,
Massachusetts. Both stood high as preachers and
ecclesiastics.
Captain
William Keiter, of
the Tennessee Artillery, Confederate Army, was a
native of Hampshire county. He was the son of
Benjamin Keiter, whose father emigrated to the
county from Pennsylvania
about the year 1790. Young Keiter was born June
3, 1830, and after attending two terms at
Romney Academy,
he entered the Virginia Military Institute, from
which he graduated July 4, 1859. Repairing to
Shelbyville, Tennessee, he
there engaged in teaching. In 1861, he entered
the Confederate Army, and was made captain of an
artillery company. He was killed in 1862, by the
explosion of a gun.
Rev.
William Henry Foote, D. D., an
eminent Presbyterian divine and author, was long
a resident of Romney. He was born at Colchester, Connecticut, December 20,
1794, and after attending Bacon Academy in his native
town, entered Yale College in
1814, where he graduated two years later. He
came to Fredericksburg, Virginia, and united with
the church in 1817, after which he studied
theology at Princeton, and was licensed to
preach by the Winchester Presbytery at
Gerrardstown, October 21, 1819, and entered upon
his pastoral work at Woodstock. In
1824, he became pastor of the Romney Church, then known as
Mount
Bethel
Church,
at the same time serving the congregations at
Springfield and
Patterson's Creek. In 1835, he was appointed
agent for the Central Board of Foreign Missions,
and removed to Philadelphia, where he resided
until 1845, when he again assumed charge of the
Romney Church, in which connection he continued
until his death, November 22, 1869, with the
exception of the years of the Civil War which he
spent in East Virginia employed as a missionary
among the wounded. He was a voluminous writer,
and in addition to his contributions to the
periodical literature of the day, he was the
author of several published works, among them
being "Sketches of North Carolina," "The
Huguenots, or Reformed Dutch Church," and
"Sketches of Virginia," the last published in
Philadelphia, in 1850.
Craig
W. McDonald, of
the Confederate States Army, was born in this
county in 1837. His maternal grandfather was
William Naylor, a prominent lawyer and
distinguished member of the Virginia
Constitutional Convention of 1829-30. His father
was Colonel Angus McDonald, a son of Major Angus
McDonald, who was the builder of Fort Henry at Wheeling, and
long prominent in the Border Wars. He was
descended in a direct line from the McDonalds of
Glengary, so famous in Scottish history.
Young
McDonald, after a thorough course in the
Romney
Classical
School,
entered the Virginia
Military
Academy
in July, 1855, but in the following October
became a student in the Virginia
University.
When the Civil War began, he was teaching school
in Culpeper county, but with the call to arms he
hastened to Winchester,
where he joined the command of General Elzey,
who made him his aid-de-camp. He followed the
fortunes of his commander to the battle of
Gaines' Mills, where he was struck in the breast
by a grape shot and fell dead upon the field.
His remains now repose in Hollywood cemetery—the
Beautiful City of Dead—at Richmond.
