Stephens City

By Linden A. Fravel, Byron C. Smith and Stone House Foundation

On October 12, 1758, a newly appointed lieutenant governor of Virginia approved a set of bills passed by the colony’s legislature, and the town of Stephens City, originally named Stephensburgh, was born. As the town grew over the next century and a half, its inhabitants participated in events of national significance, including the French and Indian War, the American Revolution, and the Civil War, when the town was almost burned by Union forces. Throughout its history, the town has had a reputation for labor, industry, thrift, and the overland travel and vehicle traffic associated with the modern U.S. Route 11 corridor. Where 150 years ago the town was famous for producing high-quality freight wagons, it is today a growing suburban community with residents who commute to work in the surrounding region.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Release date: Sep 18, 2012
• ISBN: 9781439635667

Linden A. Fravel

Drawing on the rich collection of historical photographs, paintings, drawings, and maps of the town, authors Linden A. Fravel and Byron C. Smith, members of the community�s historical society, reveal the colorful story of a town and its people from the earliest days in the 1700s to the beginning of the 21st century.

Book preview

them.

INTRODUCTION

On October 12, 1758, Lt. Gov. Francis Fauquier of the royal colony of Virginia gave his approval to a set of wartime bills passed by Virginia’s House of Burgesses. Among them was An Act for erecting a town on the land of Lewis Stephens, in the County of Frederick. Thus the town of Stephens City was born and originally named Stephensburgh. The town’s origins date back into the early 1730s, when an immigrant named Peter Stephens (1687–1757), originally from Heidelberg, Germany, built his homestead on land that would become part of the far southern end of the town. Peter Stephens had come to Virginia with his family from an area outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, along with a small group of other German families. The leader of this group was Jost Hite (1685–1761), who had purchased a large land grant in the lower Shenandoah Valley.

Hite, Stephens, and the other German Protestants who came to this valley in 1732 established the Opequon Settlement south of what would later be known as the town of Winchester. The Opequon Settlement was not a town but a group of homesteads on land claims that stretched along the rich bottomlands next to the streams that emptied into the Opequon Creek and the Shenandoah. These first homesteads were built in the area around the Indian Road, also known as the Great Philadelphia Wagon Road (U.S. Route 11), in the core of what is today the central and southern part of Frederick County, Virginia. Hite settled on the north bank of Opequon Creek in what would later be known as the community of Bartonsville. Peter Stephens established his claim on the North Branch of Crooked Run, a stream that would later be named Stephens Run. Shortly thereafter, an informal community of family members and their associates began to grow up around the Peter Stephens’s homestead.

Peter Stephens and his wife, Mary, had seven children. The oldest of them, Ludwig (or Lewis), had been born in Germany in 1714 and was already a young man by the time his father moved the family to Virginia. As early as 1736, Lewis had a license to keep an ordinary—what we might call a tavern or hotel—at his home in the family settlement. It is unclear how long he operated his business, but we do know Lewis was married around 1740 to Mary Rittenhouse and shortly thereafter began purchasing land from Jost Hite and others.

Just before the outbreak of the French and Indian War in 1754, Peter Stephens gave his son Lewis 424 acres of his original grant. During the first years of the war, Lewis began to lay out his plan for what would become the town. The petition that called on the Colonial government to recognize this new community stated that the people living in the region needed a town where they could gather to better defend themselves against enemy attacks. The legislation that established the town stated that All which lots, with the land annexed thereto, are purchased by different persons who are now settling and building thereon … may enjoy the like privileges as freeholders and inhabitants of other towns in the colony do enjoy. In other words, the local population had not waited for the government to recognize their rights as freeholders, but had already started to establish homes on these lots.

By the end of the French and Indian War, Stephensburg was becoming known by a nickname that would eventually become part of its official designation. In some period documents, we find New Town being used to identify Stephensburg. It is hard to know when this nickname was first used, but it is likely that it had something to do with the fact that Stephensburg was the new town on the Wagon Road south of Winchester. By the time of the Civil War, this nickname had caught on so well that it was used almost exclusively.

Many who journeyed through the valley during this period rested in Newtown-Stephensburg. Fortunately one of these travelers kept a journal. On May 23, 1775, a young Princeton-educated Presbyterian minister named Philip Vickers Fithian (1747–1776) came to Stephensburg to stay while he preached to nearby congregations. On June 8, 1775, he described a common scene in Stephensburg that gives us an insight into the important role that transportation has always played in the life of the town. We see many every Day travelling out & in to & from Carolina, some on Foot with Packs; some on Horseback, & some in large covered Waggons—The Road here is much frequented, & the Country for an hundred & fifty miles farther West, thick inhabited.

Fithian left Stephensburg shortly thereafter and eventually joined the fight for American independence. During the Revolution, a number of young men from town served and died for this cause. One group of Stephensburg’s patriots was recruited in August 1776 and joined other rifle troops from Martinsburg, in Berkeley County to the north. They were marched to New York, and on Manhattan Island, they were ordered to defend Fort Washington. On 16 November 1776, a British and Hessian force that outnumbered them by more than 5,000 captured the 2,818 Americans defending that fort. Among the captured was Gabriel Stephens, a grandson of Peter Stephens. Sadly Gabriel and the other men from Stephensburg all died of starvation and disease, which was due to the intentional neglect of their captors.

After the Revolution, the town’s population grew. By the 1790s, there was so much growth that the townspeople petitioned the state government for the town boundaries to be expanded north along the wagon road on additional lands owned by Lewis Stephens. By 1820, the wagon-making trade was emerging as the dominant and notable business in town. Gazetteer Joseph Martin published the earliest account that mentions the town’s famed industry in 1835: Great numbers of wagons are made,—no less than 9 different establishments being engaged in this business, which make and send wagons to almost every part of the State, which for neatness, strength, and durability, are said not to be surpassed in the United States. Ten years later, in 1845, traveling author Henry Howe described Stephensburg as a neat & thriving village and went on to say