The Shenandoah

Valley Tour III

325 XXVIII VALLEY TOUR III * * * GO NORTH THEN ON THE VALLEY PIKE, where at least one man has died for every yard over which the automobile runs equably. You may try to see the present only, but the tread of the dead soldiers, blue and gray, still has power to shake the Valley hearts, and on this ground they cannot be forgotten. Here is Newmarket, where the army bands played “Rockabye Baby” when the cadets came in. This is Mount Jackson, where Stonewall rested with his lemons and his Bible, where Sheridan once said to a dying captured soldier,“Aren’t you McNeill of the Rangers?” and the answer was, “I am.” Five hundred Confederates still rest in this burying ground, more than one hundred of them unnamed and unknown. And here is Woodstock, where Peter Muhlenberg threw off his parson’s gown to show the blue and buff of an earlier war. But there were men of peace as well as warriors in this most peaceful Valley—and men of healing. In Edam, near the homestead whence the Lincoln family sprang, lived Dr. Joseph Bennett, who in 1794 performed a successful Caesarean operation on his wife, and saved both mother and child. This was fifteen years before Dr. McDowell’s oöphorectomy . Dr. Walter Reed, the hero of yellow fever research, spent part of his youth in Harrisonburg. Dr. Wilmer, the eye surgeon, long had a country home near Berryville. 326 the shenandoah The law has its representatives also. In the high-ceilinged, flyhaunted courthouse at Woodstock, the record books are full of the copper-plate writing of Thomas Marshall, county clerk, and father of Chief Justice John Marshall. Edmund Randolph, the first attorney general , sleeps in the churchyard of the Old Chapel at Millwood. But this tour is rolling through the Valley of today, the middle Valley, where the Shenandoah bends seven times through black alluvial soil. Shenandoah County comes next after Rockingham. In 1930 it had a population of thirty thousand, of which 97 7/10 per cent were native born white, 2 1/10 per cent were Negroes, and the foreign born were less than sixty souls. Their work was the production of food, with a few mills and canneries to complete the process. Seventy per cent of the farms have less than one hundred acres, but only ten per cent are worked by tenants. The average farm income is $1,642, and the homes in the villages rent for $8 to $30 a month. Dry figures which paint a picture of a settled and substantial population, industrious and independent—and that Shenandoah County is and has always been. Once it had a group of famous potteries. Strasburg and Maurertown , just north of Woodstock, were nicknamed Pot Town and Jug Town. A family of Palatinate refugees, Anglicized as “Bell,” potters by trade, followed the usual route through Pennsylvania and Maryland to the Valley. Samuel Bell set up his wheels at Strasburg in 1833. He was a patient man, and skilled. His workmen earned $9 a month and really learned their business. He was followed by sons and sons-inlaw , all with an honest love of their craft, who attracted others until there were six potteries in operation. The last wheel turned in 1908, and the industry has been abandoned . Now if a collector should find an old blue jar, a brown stone crock, a decorated mug or pitcher, it would have to be at a dim old house or remote farm. The junk-filled antique shops along the road have discovered the rarity of these items, and have set a prohibitive price upon “the Shenandoah Pottery.” If Strasburg is to have a well- valley tour iii 327 known product again, it will be through its printing presses, for the Shenandoah Publishing House has established itself there. The road leads on through Middletown and Kernstown, where Jackson fought his first Sunday battle, and suffered his first defeat. Along this stretch Miss Charlotte Hillman dropped her tollgate in front of Sheridan and his whole army. The general humored her courage by paying for himself and his staff, but told her that she would have to hold the United States government responsible for the rest.And that is what she did. She counted the soldiers as they passed, presented her bill after the war, and collected. Here on the gentle swells of land just south of Winchester...