USA > Virginia > City of Staunton > City of Staunton > Staunton, Virginia : its past, present and future > Part 1
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GENEALOGY COLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 02397 5516
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TAUNTON
IRGINIA,
STAUNTON
DEVELOPMENT CC.
OGRAVURE 1Pub PLACE NY
STAUNTON, VIRGINIA,
ITS PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE by
ARMISTEAD. C. GORDON, ESQ. With Illustrations from Photo- graphs by Edmund Berkeley.
Designed . Illustrated and Printed by THE SOUTH PUBLISHING COMPANY 76 PARK PLACE. N.Y.
TAUNTON,
VA €
TINTOGRAVURE South Pub Co 76 PARK PLACE N.Y
STAUNTON, IRGINIA.
1212269
ITS PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE.
EVEN miles northwest from the town of Perth, in Scotland, made famous by Sir Walter Scott's im- mortal romance of "Saint Valentine's Day," legend says once stood the house of Lednoch, near the little river Almond. Close by was the house of Kinvaid. The beautiful young heiress of the Laird of Lednoch was Mary Gray. The Laird of Kinvaid likewise had a lovely daughter of the same age; and the two girls were devoted friends. In 1645 a pestilence broke out in the neighbor- hood of Perth. To escape the plague, a bower was built for the lassies close by Lednoch House, in which they took refuge. But possessing " the fatal gift of beauty," they were followed to their retired bower by a young man, who is strangely said to have been in love with both of them ; and from his visits they contracted the prevalent plague which resulted in the death of both. Their fate is celebrated in an old ballad in the earlier Scotch dialect; and the poet Allan Ramsay has linked the names of the two luckless maidens with immortality in his verse.
Thus it happened that when after the battle of Bothwell Brig numbers of the Scotch Covenanters fled from their native land to the north of Ireland, they carried with them a recollection of the romantic legend, and bestowed the names of Mary Gray and Betsey Bell on two adjacent mountains in County Tyrone, near the town of Omagh.
Later on, these Scotch-Irishmen of Ulster, under the persecution of stringent religious enactments, emigrated to Pennsylvania, and thence to the lower Valley of Virginia, where on the suburbs of what is now the oldest and the largest town in the old Dominion lying between Blue Ridge and Alleghanies, they once more gave local habitation to the poetic story, and named the two mountains adjoining Staunton, Betsey Bell and Mary Gray.
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The historian says concerning this people who were Staunton's founders, building their city in the midst of a grant from William Beverley, the colonial magnate, which was called for him " Beverley's Manor," that "the list of prisoners captured at Both well Bridge and herded like cattle for months in Grayfriar's churchyard, Edinburgh, is like a muster roll of Augusta people;" and even to this day so strong are the old Scotch traditions, that the negro nurses, who never saw Scotland, and who know Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee, the persecutor of the Covenanters in the days
SOUTH VIEW FROM CORRIDOR OF HOTEL ALTEMONTE. INSTITUTION FOR DEAF, DUMB AND BLIND TO THE RIGHT, AND BUILDINGS AND GROUNDS OF THE WESTERN LUNATIC ASYLUM IN DISTANCE.
of Bothwell Brig and Killiecrankie, only as a goblin or an evil spirit, frighten the little children into obedience by threatening to "make Clavers ketch 'em !"
It was a stout and sturdy race that laid the foundations of Staunton in Colonial days at that point in the fertile fields of the Shenandoah valley, where the trail of the Indian hunters as they journeyed eastward towards the great
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Rockfish Gap in the Blue Ridge crossed the trail of those who came from the South and went towards the Potomac to fish or take their game.
Following the lines marked out by the untutored son of the forest, the genius of the Anglo-Saxon race has laid its railroad tracks in the same directions ; and to-day the east and west trail of the Red man is followed by the Chesa- peake and Ohio Railway, a trunk line, virtually traversing the Continent, while in the wake of the Indian's lead down
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VIEW FROM CORRIDORS HOTEL ALTEMONTE.
the valley has come from Harper's Ferry on the north,'through to Lexington on the south, and destined soon to reach the limits of the far southwest, one of the most important branches of the great Baltimore and Ohio system. These two roads cross each other in the corporation limits of Staunton; while twelve miles away to the east, along the western base of the Blue Ridge, runs the Shenandoah Valley Railroad, the north-reaching branch of the Norfolk and Western system.
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The town of Staunton was laid off in the year 1748, and was incorporated the following year. (Campbell's History of Vir- ginia, page 438). Three years before, William Beverley had addressed a letter to the County Court of Augusta County, sig- nifying his intention of conveying to and for the use of said county certain lands for the purpose of erecting thereon a Court House, prison, etc. This intention was subsequently carried out by the conveyance of twenty-five acres in Beverley's Manor, now within the corporation limits of Staunton, for the purposes named.
At that time, Augusta County, of which Staunton is the present county seat, extended indefinitely westward, and its County Court met at what is now Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. It would seem to be a remarkable coincidence in the industrial history of the United States that Pittsburg, the foremost iron manufacturing city of America, was once the county seat of a county whose present capital gives promise of an almost equally notable career as an iron centre of that new South, of which Pennsylvania's distinguished political economist, William D. Kelley, says: "It is the coming Eldorado of American ad- venture."
LEVY BROS
SLOTS BYOS
PRICE & MILLER. HARDWARE.
LOEB BRO>
Augusta county lies in the great valley which extends from Canada to Alabama, and which is noted for its limestone lands, Soutt PubONY iron beds, clear streams, healthful climate, picturesque scenery, PARTIAL VIEW MAIN STREET, STAUNTON, VA., 1880. the number of its towns and its substantial population. The valley is known in Pennsylvania as the Lehigh, Cumberland, etc., where it abounds in natural resources and acquired wealth. In northern and central Virginia
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it is the Shenandoah Valley. Southward it is known as Southwest Virginia.
In the Shenandoalı Valley, the most favored section of the great Canadian southwest valley, is the county of Augusta, and in the heart of the great county, ranking first in value of farms, orchard pro- ducts, wheat, hay and dairy products of all the counties of Virginia, second in amount of cleared land, and fifth in population, is located the city of Staunton.
It is situated at an average altitude of 1,450 feet above sea level, near the middle of an elevated plateau-like limestone valley, here some twenty-five miles wide, and sloping not far from twenty-five feet to the mile.
Its commercial locality is unsurpassed, lying as it does midway between the Atlantic and the Ohio, 200 miles in air line distance from each, and but 100 miles direct from tide-water on the James, the Rappahannock or the Potomac.
COURT HOUSE STAUNTON, VA.
Two great lines of railway, as has been said, cross each other here at right angles; twelve miles away runs another, through the eastern section of the coun- ty; while yet a 4 fourth is coming from the north along the eastern base of the Shenandoah mountains, opening up the rich and virgin section
Dates
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GROUNDS OF THE DEAR DUMB AND BLIND " INSTITUTE,
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of west Augusta. Thus Staunton is within six hours' ride of Washington, seven of Baltimore, nine of Philadelphia, eleven of New York and twelve of Cincinnati.
It is easily accessible to the three great coal and coke fields of the east by competing lines of railroad, to the Connellsville fields by the Baltimore and Ohio, to the Pocahontas or Flat Top fields of southwest Virginia by the Norfolk and Western and Chesapeake and Ohio, and to the New River fields, of West Vir- ginia, by the Chesapeake and Ohio.
OPERAS HOUSE
It is situated in the centre of an iron district where iron making has been pursued for a hundred years in a more or less primitive fashion, and where to-day blast furnaces, foundries and steel plants of splendid proportions, most modern construction and tremendous cost are running succcessfully or are in process of erection.
Out of this region came the iron of the guns that thundered at Cherubusco and Monterey. Later on it furnished the metal for can- non used in the great civil war of 1861-65; and in these more recent and "piping times of peace " its furnaces have produced the successful competitor for supplying the iron used in the construction of the magnificent cruisers of the National navy.
Speaking of the future of the iron industry of this section in a re- cent number of the Arena, Prof. N. S. Shaler says :
"The peculiar advantage of the Appalachian district is found in the fact that the ores lie in the neighborhood of excellent coal beds, which in certain cases can be used as it comes from the mine, or may be used to serve the needs of the smelter after it has been converted into coke. The average distance of the iron ores from the coal needed to reduce it to a metallic state does not exceed one hundred 10
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SOUTH PURCONY
GROUNDS AND BUILDINGS OF THE WESTERN LUNATIC ASYLUM, ONE OF VIRGINIA'S PUBLIC CHARITIES, AFFORDING A HOME AND COMFORTS TO UPWARDS OF ONE THOUSAND UNFORTUNATE PEOPLE OF BOTH SEXES.
miles. Enough ore to make a ton of iron can at many points be mined and put into the fur- nace at a cost between $1 and $2, while to bring the same amount of raw material from the earth about Lake Superior to the smelting points costs at the present time $8 to $12."
Peyton, in his "History of Augusta County," furnishes the following data concerning the earlier furnaces of the county. Elizabeth or Ferrol, sixteen miles west of Staunton on the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad, was built about 1863; the Mossy Creek charcoal cold blast furnace, fourteen miles northwest of Staunton, was built in 1760 and burnt in 1841; Mount Torry hot blast charcoal furnace, fifteen miles east of Greenville, near the line of the Norfolk and Western Railroad, was built in 1800 and rebuilt in 1853; the Ken- nedy charcoal furnace was built in 1842 ; the Estaline cold blast char- coal furnace, twenty-one miles west of Staunton, was built in 1838; the Cotopaxi hot blast charcoal furnace, sixteen miles southwest of Staunton, near the Shenandoah Valley Railroad, was built and oper- ated before the late war; the Vesuvius cold blast char- coal furnace, twenty miles southwest of Staunton on South river, was built in 1828; and the McDowell fur- nace, on South river, thirteen miles east of Staunton on the line of the Shenandoah Valley Railroad, was built be- tween 1775 and 1780. Under the operations of these ante-bellum furnaces the surface of the earth was mere- ly scratched. It was reserved for a later day and gen- eration to demonstrate and develop the great iron ore wealth of this section.
On the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad some sixty miles west of Staunton are the modern furnaces of Low- moor, Longdale, and Princess, which have been as suc- cessful and as profitable to their owners as any iron fur-
EASTWOOD Residence of
M.ERSKINE MILLER
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STAUNTON DEVELOPMENT CO.
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CHESAPEAKE AND OHIO RAILWAY PASSENGER DEPOT.
B &O, DEPOT.
South Pub Co. N.Y.
BALTIMORE AND OHIO RAILROAD PASSENGER DEPOT.
naces in the country during the past two decades in which they have been operated; while the Victoria furnace nearer Staunton, built by English capital, is perhaps the largest furnace in the South. Low- moor iron is to-day regarded as the best foundry iron made from coke, that is produced in America. The New River coke, as here- after stated, is used in its production, and it competes in the mar- kets with the best Scotch pig.
At all points of the compass, in immediate contiguity to Staun- ton, and reached in all directions by railroad, lie the most magnifi- cent iron ore beds and limestone of the finest quality.
This bustling, thrifty, business city of twelve thousand people is
vaidene of DA KEYSER
the hub of the new industrial towns that are now grow- ing up in the Shen- andoah Valley, many of which have been built by the en- ergy, the brains, the enterprise and the capital of Staunton's citizens.
Residence
TDRANSON
In Augusta county and the vicinity of Staun-
ton abound marble, slate, kaolin, fire clays, glass sand, anthracite coal, ochres and manganese.
Marble of great beauty and susceptible of a high degree of polish, has been quarried, and extensive marble works carried on at Craigs- ville, on the line of the Chesapeake and Ohio, fifteen miles west of Staunton. This marble is pink, purple, gray and black ; the black
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being regarded as especially beautiful, high in quality and valuable. It has met with a large and ready sale in the, markets of New York, Cincinnati, and Chicago. Marble has also been discovered at Greenville on the Baltimore and Ohio, twelve miles south of Staunton, and on "Betsey Bell " and the "Steephill " estate of Col. John Lewis Pey- ton, in the immediate vicinity of Staunton.
A valuable slate quarry exists on the Redbud estate near Staunton, adjoining the lands of the Development Company ; and negotiations are now pending for working this quarry on a large scale.
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Kaolin and fire-clay have been found on the Shenan- doah Val- ley Rail- road,some fifteen miles southeast of Staun- ton, and successfully utilized in the manufacture of pottery and fire brick. An excellent stone chi- na was made both during and since the war from these clays; and in Pennsylvania this pure white kaolin has been used for weighting paper, for which purpose it was bought by the paper mills at $7 to $15 per ton. Similar clays of an equally high grade have been dis- covered in large quantities in the immediate vicinity of Staunton, and a joint stock company has recently been organized for their conver- sion into manufactured articles, such as pipe, tiles, fire brick, etc.
Providence of IS AC WITZ
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VIRGINIA FEMALE INSTITUTE, MRS. GEN. J. E. B. STUART, PRINCIPAL.
Glass sand, pronounced by Wheeling and Pittsburg experts to be of the very finest character has been discov- ered in practically limitless quantities in the vicinity of Greenville, on the lines of the Shenandoah Valley and Baltimore and Ohio Railroads, and a company has been organized with a capital of $200,000 to manufacture this sand into glass.
Anthracite coal exists, and is believed to be in large quantities in the North mountain, seventeen to twenty miles from Staunton; and a railroad from this point to reach these coal fields has been projected.
The largest manganese mines in the world, from which two million dollars worth of ore has been taken, are situated at Crimora, twelve miles east of Staunton on the Norfolk and Western Railroad, and most promising out- croppings of this valuable mineral have been found all along the western foot-hills of the Blue Ridge, through- out Augusta county.
George Washington, who as a young man surveyed many tracts of land in this Shenandoah Valley, some of whose plats and surveys as an engineer are filed and preserved among the records of the Clerk's office of the Circuit Court of Augusta, spoke of it in a letter to Sir John Sinclair as " the garden of America," and said, "The lands in what is called The Valley, that is, lying between the North mountain and the Blue mountain, are the richest lands we have." Elihu Burritt, " the learned blacksmith " of Connecticut, a man famous for his knowledge of places no less than of languages and men, says of it, that the Shenandoah Valley is "one of the most beautiful, fertile and delightful regions on the American Continent."
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THE STAUNTON FEMALE SEMINARY Rev JAMES WILLIS Principal.
South Publ. NY.
AUGUSTA FEMALE SEMINARY, MISS M. J. BALDWIN PRINCIPAL.
The climate of this section is as agreeable and healthful as any in the whole country. Its latitude is 38º 9/ N., that of Louisville, St. Louis, and San Francisco on the west and southern Maryland on the east. Its summer temper- ature is moderated by its elevation, and its winter temperature by the mountain ranges which cut off the winds and storms of the northwest and southeast. The climate of the Shenandoah Valley is mild, dry, and suited to outdoor work during the whole year.
An authoritative statement in regard to comparative healthfulness of different sections is not inappropriate in this connection. Such a statement was recently made by a scientific authority of the highest class, Professor Felix L. Oswald, whose scholarly articles have contributed to the great reputation and influence of the North American Review. He puts the scale of general healthfulness as follows :
First, the uplands of the South ; second, the uplands of the North, third the lowlands of the North; fourth the lowlands of the South. No comment on this scale is necessary. So far as favorable climate is concerned, the manufacturing and min- ing section of the South is at least equal if not superior to that of Pennsylvania and Ohio, and to the still greater mining and manu- facturing districts of northern England.
So too, Professor Shaler says in Scribner's Magazine for October, 1890, that " this region of Southern uplands has in its soil, its forests, and its mineral resources a combination of advantages perhaps greater than those of any other area in the world ; and in addition to these favoring conditions the region possesses an admirable climate. In winter the temperature falls low enough to insure the preservation of bodily vigor, in summer the heat is less ardent than in the lower lying regions of the New England and New York group of states. In the Virginia section we find a climate resembling in its range of temperatures those which characterize the most favored regions of the old world, and it is there, per-
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Residence of CAPT JOHN MCQUAIDEC
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YVESLE YAN FEMALE INSTITUTE Rev.W.A. HARRIS, Principal
SOUTH PULCO NY
AM PHOTO
haps, we may look for the preservation of our race's best character- istics."
Situated in the best section of the great valley, possessing vast agricultural and mineral resources, where health is found, where the pleasures of a delightful climate and of beautiful scenery exist, with an atmosphere suggestive of the "most pellucid air," which the poet Pindar attributes to ancient Greece, Staunton possesses the additional attraction of being the centre of an aggregation of health and pleas- ure resorts, and of natural wonders unsurpassed, perhaps, any- where in the world within the same radius.
In the adjoining county of Rockbridge, and within a few hours by rail, is the famous Natural Bridge ; and in the same vicinity and equally accessible, are the Balcony Falls, where James river cuts its way through the stone obstructions of the Blue Ridge mountains. At the base of the same mountains, in SouTHP Va Nelson county, bordering Augusta on the east, and at no great distance from the Shenandoah Valley Railroad, are the Crabtree Falls, a natural curiosity, scarcely less wonderful than the cataract of Niagara itself, though little known, where a stream of clear and sparkling mountain water, from ten to twelve inches in diameter, is precipitated in a sheer cataract for a perpendicular distance of 1,880 feet.
At Iron Gate, sixty-odd miles west of Staunton, is another wonderful break of the head waters of the James river through a mountain, a perfect arch, as if constructed by the land of man, outlining itself upon the mountain wall on either side of the river in a successive series of strata several hundred feet high.
On the Chesapeake and Ohio, at a point where it passes the Blue Ridge twenty miles to the east, lies the valley of Rockfish Gap, presenting a panorama of beauty unsurpassed, perhaps, in the Tyrol or Switzerland.
Easily accessible by the Shenandoah Valley Railroad are the wonderful caverns of Luray ; and some sixteen miles from Staunton, reached by two railroads, or by the more attractive country road, are the beautiful Grottoes of the
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Shenandoah, made familiar to the ante bellum readers of Harper's Magazine as Weyer's Cave by the genius of Porte Crayon.
Near Mt. Solon, in Augusta county, and not far from the Cyclopean Towers or "Chimneys," hereinafter spoken of, is the less celebrated Madison Cave.
On the Staunton and Winchester turnpike, familiar alike to many a Northern and Southern soldier of the late war, is the Old Stone Church, the first edifice built for the worship of God, of which history gives us any ac- count, in the Valley of Virginia. The original walls and the quaint roof still stand as when in earlier days the pio- neers gathered within its precincts with their rifles ready at any time for the attack of the Indians; but the inner part of the building has been altered and modernized to meet the OLD HOUSE BUILT BY THE SOUTH POL CON.Y. HESSIANS DURING THE REVOLUTION demands of the worshipers of later days. In its graveyard lie the bones of many heroes and saints of an earlier generation; and the history of the spot is closely interwoven with that of Presbyterianism in Virginia.
Forty miles west of Staunton, on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, is Lex- ington, the seat of Washington and Lee University and of the Virginia Military Institute, two institutions of learning historically associated with the names and lives of two of Virginia's greatest soldiers. At the Virginia Military Institute Stonewall Jackson was a professor when the great civil war began; and at its close General Robert E. Lee became the president of Washington and Lee
SOUTHPOS CONS
TRE OLD STONE CHURCH { PRES ) BUILT 1747
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Free School for Colored Children
University, which was founded by George Washington. The grave of Jackson is in the little village burying-ground, and under the monumental marble of the sculptor Valentine, in the chapel of the University, lie the ashes of the great eader of the Lost Cause. Within the precincts of the classic little town, in the midst of a refined and scholarly society, lives the famous Southern poet, Mrs. Margaret J. Preston; and here, too, Matthew Fontaine Maury, the sounder of the deep sea depths and the discoverer of its strange geography, lived and taught and died.
At about the same distance from Staunton, and reached by the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad, is another even more celebrated institution of learning, established by a man whose fame is that of the whole country, the University of Virginia, at Charlottesville, overlooked by Monticello, the home of its founder, Thomas Jefferson.
Between Charlottesville and Staunton, and not far from the beautiful Rockfish valley, is the most liberally endowed and best equipped prepara- tory school of technology and the mechanic arts in the South, the Miller Manual Labor School.
Nearer home, and indeed only twelve or fifteen miles from Staunton, are the Cyclopean Towers, gigantic stone structures of bygone ages, surrounded with all the mystery, if not the romantic associations, that cluster about the Old Stone Mill at Newport, Rhode Island, and scarcely less suggestive to the imagination.
To the westward lie many of the most famous springs and watering places of the South; notably, the famous White Sulphur, ninety-one miles west by rail, the Southern Saratoga; the Rockbridge Alum, the Warm, the Healing, the Hot, and the Old Sweet Springs, and a number of others, all easily accessible to the tourist who makes Staunton his headquarters.
To lovers of hunting and fishing the surrounding mountains offer, in season, abundance of game. Bears, deer, wild turkeys, pheasants and smaller game are easily found by the energetic sportsman, while the
Souritevbtomy
CYCLOPIAN TOWERS AUGUSTA (O. STAUNTON.VA near
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Residence of MRS. MARGARET L GAY
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sparkling mountain streams are thronged with that gamest of all game fish, the speckled mountain trout. On the line of the Chesapeake and Ohio, to the west, lie the properties of the various coal and coke companies which have their chief offices in Staunton. Among them may be especially mentioned the New River Coke Company, whose coke-oven plant is half a mile in length, and whose mines have been supplying Lowmoor and Victoria Iron Works with fuel since the blowing in of these furnaces ; and the Thurmond Coal Company, whose operations are conducted by the agency of electricity, who mine their coal by the latest and most approved methods, using the Jeffrey electric mining machine, electric motors for hauling coal and incandescent lamps for lighting the mines. These are Staunton enter- prises, conducted by Staunton brains, energy and money, and offer the highest qualities of coal and coke at lowest prices. All of these coal fields are located in a region of great natural beauty of scenery, and are worth visiting whether by the tourist or mineralogist. To the latter an analysis of some of their products may not be uninteresting :
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