Hampshire County WV Archives History - Books .....Hampshire County 1889
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Alice Warner http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00015.html#0003503 June 9, 2009, 3:14 pm

Book Title: History Of West Virginia In Two Parts By Virgil A. Lewis

HAMPSHIRE.(p. 486-493)

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 Win- terton, 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. January 4, 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.



Additional Comments:
History of West Virginia In Two Parts by Virgil A. Lewis published 1889 by
Hubbard Brothers, Philadelphia.

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