Volume 15 , Issue 9

History of Rockbridge County, Virginia

As we continue our history of Rockbridge county, Virginia, by Oren F. Morton, we learn about the villages, hamlets and summer resorts of Rockbridge county, Virignia.

An aggregation of homes can scarcely be termed a village unless it induced a schoolhouse, one or more churches, two or more business houses, a resident minister or physician, a repair shop, and a garage. When it failed much below this standard, it was a hamlet and not a village.

a petition of 1793 asked the legal establishment of the town laid out on the lands of Robert Wardlaw and Samuel McChesney. Five years later another petition mentioned the town as Brownsburg, and asked an extension of time for the improvement of lots. In 1835, Martin's Gazetteer spoke of the village as containing twenty dwellings, three stores, two shoe factories, three wheelwrights, two smith shops, two tailors, a tavern, a tankard, a saddler, a cabinetmaker, a carpenter, a hatter, a gristmill and a mercantile flour mill. Ten years later Howe spoke of it as having about thirty houses. That Brownsburg had scarcely increased in size, even in seventy years, was obviously because a village which in present time was not a county seat and was not on a railroad, was very much circumscribed as a commercial and manufacturing center. It did week if it could hold its own in population.

Brownsburg lies in the well populated valley which was styled Moffatt's Creek and below what was called Hays' Creek. In a former day it was noted for its high-grade private schools. The academy building yet stands on a rise of ground and recalls the fact that the village and neighborhood had figured to a regrettable extent in the matter of homicide.

It was in this old schoolhouse that Doctor Z. J. Walker killed Henry Miller, november 8, 1889, at the close of the examination of the former before a justice. Walker was speedily killed by Miller's sons. during the confusion, Mrs. Walker received a fatal bullet said to have been meant for the husband, and one of the sons of Miller was severely wounded. The most conspicuous of The other occasions was when two young men were shot dead by a youth they were teasing. Fairfield, like Brownsburg, lies on a well traveled automobile highway. it is of similar size, age, and general appearance, yet stands on higher ground. Its one street was the turnpike along which ti stretched a considerable distance.

In 1835 martin said it had twenty dwellings, one union church, two taverns, one store, one tannery, two doctors, and 130 people. Howe mentioned twenty-five homes in 1845, and it would thus appear tha the village had long been stationary. Following the National highway toward Lexington, you would soon pass Cedar Grove, the mansion home of the McDowells.

Six miles north of Fairfield, where the turnpike enters Augusta, was the hamlet of Midway, formerly known as Steele's Tavern. David Steele had a disfiguring gash on his face, and in his skull was a silver plate, both injuries being due to sword-cuts in the Revolution. In the winter season his guests sat around a blazing fire in the barroom. In the summer they sat on plain benches on the verandah. To the Virginian of his time, the bench in front of a tavern was a necessity. At the dinner table there was plenty of hot coffee, biscuit, and fried chicken. Near Midway, but on the road to Raphine, is pointed out the birthplace of Cyrus H. McCormick, and near by is the stone shop in which his trial machine was built. West of North River is an absence of true villages. Collierstown was an extended section of well-peopled creek valley. Fancy Hill, though much associated with the names of private academies, was but a hamlet.

Mechanicsville, two miles west of Beuna Vista, was even less a hamlet than it used to be, and the same was true of Buffalo Forge. Sprigfield, very near the Botetourt line, was laid out into forty lots as far back as 1797.

Riverside, Midvale, and Vesuvius were small points on South River and the Norfolk and Western railroad, and lie five, ten, and seventeen miles, respectively, north of Buena Vista. Buffalo Forge Station was another little railroad place at the mouth of Buffalo. The one town in the northwest of Rockbridge was Goshen, at the confluence of Mill Creek with the Great Calfpasture, and within sight of the upper entrance to Goshen Pass. As a point on the main line of the Chesapeake and Ohio railroad, thirty-three miles from Staunton and twenty-four from clifton Forge, Goshen essayed a boom during the epidemic of 1890. The principal reminder of the visitation was Alleghany Inn, built in the Queen Anne style and perched on a hilltop. The little town lay in the valley below, astride the course of Mill Creek. In 1873 there was a proposal, never tried out, to make it the seat of government of a new county. The iron deposits and the smelting interest in the vicinity, Goshen lost a third of its population between 1900 and 1910, and had under 200 inhabitants. A mile southward and not in view from the station was the Victoria furnace, and just beyond was a cluster of small, red tenement houses.

The fourth town in Rockbridge was Raphine, which dates from the coming of the Valley Railroad in 1883. It was named by James E. A. Gibbs and laid out on his lands, although he did not expect more than a hamlet to grow up. The first passenger car to make a stop was attached to a work train, and left September 18, 1883 to take his daughter on the beginning of her trip to Arkansas. The first store came the same year. An elevator was opened in 1886 and a bank in 1906. Presbyterian and Methodist chapels were built in 1889 and about 1890.

The boom fever paid a visit to Raphine and held out the prosper of a shoe factory, as well as making the place a health resort because of its lithia waters. The town had about 350 people. The high school had six rooms, five teachers and more than 100 pupils. The commercial interests of the place included a bank, four stores, a fine garage, and an automobile agency, a wagon maker, a blacksmith, and a firm handling grain, hay and fertilizer.

A little more than a mile south of the town was a low stone house situated near a bold spring and built as a fortified house in the Indian times.. It was still occupied as a dwelling hour, but the windows had been widened. many years ago mysterious occurrences held sway her for three months. It is related that the poker and fire shovel waltzed across the room, a trunk flew out from under a bed, hot stones fell upon and smashed dinner plates on the table, and hot pancakes fell in the meadow as manna did for the Hebrews in the wilderness of Sinai. A woman who was the mother of a child was the reputed witch. The only actual sufferer was a colored girl on whose person welts appeared as if from blows, and who screamed from what she believed to be pin-thrusts. The spell was broken when the girl was sent South. Such tales were seemingly absurd, yet in this instance were believed to rest on a basis of fact. The manifestations appeared to be due to what was called poltergeist by the Germans.

The summer resorts of Rockbridge had enjoyed much renown. A contributor to the Gazette in 1874 wrote in a very interesting manner of old times at Wilson's Spring at the lower entrance to Goshen Pass. The strong sulphur waters issue from a rocky islet in the midst of North River, and consequently the spring was temporarily overwhelmed in time of flood. By virtue of a land deed theses waters had been made accessible to the public for all time. The first land patent was in the name of William Porter in 1755. The next owners were the Stricklers, whose name attached itself for a while tot he spring and the pass through the mountain.

Most of the springs began business as deer licks. by accident or otherwise, a curative value was found,a nd then some one built a hut. Other people built huts, and in July and August there was a lively concourse of the dual yeomanry. Visitors put up their horses at Wilson's stable, fed the animals themselves, washed their hands and faces at the spring branch, and perhaps slept in the barn. Wilson's Spring was still a popular resort for the people of the county. Guests from a distance boarded at the farmhouse.

Little more than a mile down North River was the hamlet of Rockbridge Baths, eleven miles from Lexington. It had grown up around a small hotel on a level lawn very near the stream. The amnesia waters were thermal, had a temperature of seventy-two degrees,a nd acted favorably on the digestive organs. They were also useful in cutaneous affections. In the spring was a growth of algae that reproached itself when cut back. A mass of this applied wet to a sore had a tendency to heal it. This resort was opened by the Jordans. The guests were city people of a class not much attracted to the sulphur spring.

Nine miles above Goshen, well toward the source of Bratton's Run, and in the narrow valley between Mill and NOrth mountains, was Rockbridge Alum. Five springs, varying somewhat in their mineral strength, issue from the base of a slate bluff. The waters contained iodine, magnesia, sulphuric acid, and the sulphates of iron and alumina. The waters were purgative and diuretic, and they relieved congestion and inflammation. They were also tonic, and they improved the appetite. Their action on the skin was secondary, and like the waters at Rockbridge Baths they were very serviceable in cutaneous affections, including indolent sores.

The realty including these springs was one of my distant ancestors, John Dunlap and a Campbell, each man holding a half-interest. It was opened as a resort about 1834. The property was said to have been considered at one time as the most valuable single piece of real estate in the South, and was sold in 1853. The spot used to be frequented by throngs of people from all the former slave states, as many as 400 guests being registered in a single day. The various buildings of the hotel property formed a quite extensive array, but were of a type that was antiquated in the early 1900's. The lawn, lay in the in creek valley, was fairly level. For several miles around there was almost no settlement.

A much less important resort was Cold Sulphur Spring, about two miles southwest of Goshen. John Dunlap was also the owner of this spring, and he permitted visitors to camp around it without charge. All the buildings were burned years later.

The Funstaine was a resort on the old Major William Dunlap farm near Goshen. It was afterward owned by the Bells. A part of the old building was yet standing in the Bell orchard.

It was no later than the summer of 1887 there are 1,700 summer visitors in this county. But the present reign of the automobile had robbed the resorts of Rockbridge of much of their old-time popularity. The mineral springs were comparatively remote from railway, weren't reached by macadamized thoroughfares,a nd during the recent years of the early 1900's their patronage had very much fallen off.

Natural bridge was without mineral waters, but maintained itself by reason of the great natural curiosity within the bounds of the hotel property. It was also on the main automobile route through the valley of Virginia, and was but two miles from Natural Bridge Station on the Norfolk and Western and Chesapeake and Ohio railroads. The hotel itself was a quite pretentious structure, and was pleasantly shaded by trees. There was a swimming pool at the head of the hollow, down which a footpath lead to the brink of Cedar Creek.   |  View or Add Comments (0 Comments)   |   Receive updates ( subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

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