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Shepherdstown claims to be the oldest town in the state. In 1734, Thomas Shepherd was granted 222 acres, on the south side of the Potomac river. From that tract, he selected 50 acres and laid out a town. He named his town Mecklenburg and petitioned the Virginia Assembly for a charter. It was officially chartered in 1762 by the Virginia General Assembly. Thomas Shepherd was the sole trustee. He owned the town and had the responsibility to conduct its government. In 1798 it was renamed Shepherds Town, which was shortened to Shepherdstown after the Civil War. The town's population was 1208 as of 2002. The town is also home to Shepherd University. [source: wikipedia.org]
It may astonish some readers to learn that in the early settlements in the Shenandoah Valley tobacco was, for a long time, the staple crop, and also the medium of exchange, so many pounds of tobacco being equivalent to so much hard money. Instead of the fields of growing corn and waving wheat that we now see throughout our agricultural districts, fields of tobacco covered the arable land, and under the whip of the overseer negro slaves and white indentured servants toiled together up and down the long rows of tobacco, half wilted in the hot suns of July and August. Only enough grain was raised to maintain the planter's stock and family, while nearly all his efforts were expended upon his tobacco crop...........
....... It was in the year 1765 that the famous town ordinance was made against the rats and mice which afflicted the house-keepers of the old town so sorely. A town meeting was appointed to determine the best course to pursue in order to rid the village of these pests. The result of the meeting was that it was "ordered that Jacob Eoff is authorized to procure a sufficient number of cats to destroy the rats that infest this town and to procure the same on the most reasonable terms in his power, as soon as possible, and that the money he expend in procuring the same levied for him the tenth day of June next." All the country people came to the village on the next market day with bags and baskets full of cats and kittens, and held a cat market, probably on the spot where, later, the old market house was erected. Mr. William Briscoe wrote a most amusing poem based upon this order of the old town council.
........When Henry Bedinger came to Mecklenburg in 1762 he built a stone house on the land southeast of Morgan's spring branch. But at the time of his death he lived in a house in Mecklenburg. The old Bedinger house near town was probably torn down in 1799, when his son Daniel built his beautiful home southeast of Mecklenburg, which he called Bedford, and which was destroyed by General Hunter during the Civil War.' The will of Henry Bedinger, who died in 1772, shall be given, as it mentions names and localities in the village and neighborhood. ["Historic Shepherdstown", Chapter 3, By Danske Dandridge - Submitted by K. Torp]
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