Winchester Tales

Winchester Tales Winchester Virginia History
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“Look Camilla…here’s how we lost the colonies…that George Washington was quite the cheeky fellow!”
04/29/2026

“Look Camilla…here’s how we lost the colonies…that George Washington was quite the cheeky fellow!”

Reaching out to see if anyone knows someone or may be a historian of Native American cultures in Virginia? I’m intereste...
04/27/2026

Reaching out to see if anyone knows someone or may be a historian of Native American cultures in Virginia? I’m interested because of the Peter Jefferson/Joshua Fry map of the Wi******er area from 1751. Where it says Paris is the old Pearis Fort near Albin, but there is a spot at that location that says Ipacacahana Camp. I can’t find anything on that particular group, tribe, or settlement. Have any ideas?

Private Lemuel Abbott of the 10th Vermont Infantry, fell flat against the ground in the middle field, paralyzed with fea...
04/26/2026

Private Lemuel Abbott of the 10th Vermont Infantry, fell flat against the ground in the middle field, paralyzed with fear with the men of General Horatio Wright’s Sixth Corps. The air shook with Confederate artillery, shells bursting and tearing overhead, officers shouting orders from the ground. It was called the middle field, but many men would later refer to it as the killing field. Weeks earlier at Monocacy, Lemuel had been struck in the hip by a piece of shell, yet he stayed with his command and marched the fifty miles to Berryville. Now, on September 19, 1864, he was fighting in the Third Battle of Wi******er. It was there, in that storm of fire from General John B Gordon’s Confederates, that he was struck again—an exploding shell hitting him in the chest - knocking him down, and almost at once a bullet tore across his face, shattering his jaw and carrying away eleven teeth.

By the time they brought him into Wi******er, the town had become one vast hospital. Along Cameron Street, the York Hospital was filled with wounded men. Abbott, his face broken and body battered, still took note of what he saw. Surgeons worked without rest, and amputated arms and legs were thrown from the open window, piling nearly four feet high on the ground below. It was here, in Wi******er, that his endurance showed itself plainly. He had taken the blow at Monocacy, marched on when others would have fallen away, and now he carried wounds that would scar him for life. He would convalesce at home for two months then return and fight with the 10th Vermont for the remainder of the war. He would write in his diary, “I’m no shirk from battle. I have been four times wounded! I’m no quitter! Besides, I don’t want to be filled with remorse in years to come that I shirked the front when needed. I propose to be able to look any man in the eye without flinching on that score.”

Lemuel Abbott died in 1911 in Aberdeen, Washington, and was buried in Wilson Cemetery in Barre, Vermont.

In February 1757, a young George Washington rode north from Wi******er carrying more than reports of a strained frontier...
04/25/2026

In February 1757, a young George Washington rode north from Wi******er carrying more than reports of a strained frontier. Though a colonel, he found himself outranked by British officers with less experience, simply because he served as a provincial. In Philadelphia, he met with John Campbell, 4th Earl of Loudoun and made his case—requesting a royal commission and urging an attack on Fort Duquesne. Loudoun refused the commission and set aside the plan, offering only limited adjustments to frontier defense. Washington left with his authority unchanged and his frustrations confirmed.

He returned to Wi******er to continue the work, but something had changed in him. Maybe to curry favor, Washington had named the town’s fort, “Fort Loudoun”, and the street laid out by James Wood honored the dismissive Brit as well. Whether done out of duty or design, the name held. But the experience did as well. In those early years, standing in the shadow of British command, Washington began to see its limits. It was here in Wi******er that the first doubts quietly took root. George Washington would eventually step out of the red shadow of the Union Jack and realize that he had been an American all along…

In 1819, in the small mountain town of Romney, two prominent men stepped forward with a simple act—each placed a single ...
04/25/2026

In 1819, in the small mountain town of Romney, two prominent men stepped forward with a simple act—each placed a single book into the hands of a newly formed literary society. It was not a grand opening, nor marked by ceremony, but in that quiet exchange, a library was born. Housed on its original site, the collection grew steadily as neighbors added volumes of history, science, and poetry. In a place often dismissed as backwoods, Romney built something uncommon for its time—an organized intellectual society, one that, in those early years, held a larger and more structured library than nearby Wi******er.

By the time war came, that small beginning had grown into nearly 3,000 volumes. But the Civil War did not spare Romney. As armies moved through the town, the library suffered heavy losses—its shelves stripped and its books destroyed, many at the hands of Union soldiers, leaving only about 200 behind. What remained, however, was enough. In the years that followed, the society rebuilt—rising again in a new brick home known as Literary Hall. There, the people of Romney restored not just their library, but their commitment to learning.

On a cold night just before Christmas, December 23, 1861, a stagecoach pulled to a stop in front of the Taylor Hotel in ...
04/23/2026

On a cold night just before Christmas, December 23, 1861, a stagecoach pulled to a stop in front of the Taylor Hotel in Wi******er. The hour was late—near midnight—and the streets were quiet. From the coach stepped Mary Anna Jackson, travel-worn but steady, carrying with her a small bundle among her belongings. Inside that bundle was a forage cap, handmade for her husband, General Stonewall Jackson. Although the main construction of the cap may have been done elsewhere, there is little doubt she brought it with her to Wi******er and made the finishing touches here. She would stay at the Graham House on North Braddock Street, where the parlor likely became her workspace. One can picture her there, completing the final stitches for Christmas, preparing a gift meant not for ceremony, but for the field.

That cap, dark blue-black when first made, would soon follow Jackson into the realities of war. He wore it through the Romney Campaign in the bitter winter of 1862, and then into the opening clashes of the Shenandoah Valley—at First Kernstown and later at First Wi******er. Time and use would change it. The indigo dye, once deep and rich, slowly broke down under sun and weather. The wool itself aged, oxidizing into a brownish tone. Dust, sweat, and long marches left their mark until the cap took on the familiar “butternut” cast seen in so many Confederate uniforms. In September 1862, after the fall of Harpers Ferry, Jackson passed the cap along to his trusted mapmaker, Jedediah Hotchkiss, after a new hat was secured in nearby Martinsburg. What began as a quiet Christmas effort, most likely finished in a Wi******er parlor, became a piece of living history—worn in campaign, altered by time, and still carrying with it the handiwork of the woman he loved…

In the spring of 1964, as the Shenandoah Apple Blossom Festival parade moved south along Loudoun Street, it passed the o...
04/23/2026

In the spring of 1964, as the Shenandoah Apple Blossom Festival parade moved south along Loudoun Street, it passed the old Kurtz Funeral Home—the stone residence many knew as the Dowdall House. The bands played, the floats rolled, and the crowd stood shoulder to shoulder along the sidewalks. In the far-left window on the ground floor, the sash was raised just enough, and there she was. Miss Lucy Fitzhugh Kurtz, seated as she had been for years, lifting her hand in a quiet wave as the parade went by. People along the route knew to look for her. Some waved back. Others simply nodded, as if acknowledging a piece of Wi******er itself.

Inside that home, visitors once stopped to see the uniform of her father, Captain George Washington Kurtz of the Stonewall Brigade, carefully displayed in the study. His service traced back through a family line that reached even further—her great-grandfather, Adam Kurtz, who stood with General Daniel Morgan’s “Dutch Mess” during the Revolution. And long before any of them, the ground beneath that house held its own story, when Cock’s Tavern stood there and a young George Washington lodged here during the French and Indian War. Miss Lucy carried all of it quietly. In her later years, she returned to that window often, watching the town pass by, the seasons turn, and the Festival come and go. If you walk the mall today and glance toward that far-left window, it’s not hard to picture her still there—seated, smiling, and wondering where all the years have gone. As another Festival draws near, it feels right to pause and thank Miss Lucy for the steady, simple way she loved this town...

I just found this postcard on eBay. At first glance, nothing stood out. But something about this short note to a young g...
04/22/2026

I just found this postcard on eBay. At first glance, nothing stood out. But something about this short note to a young girl's dad made me take a closer look. I’m glad I did.

On a rainy afternoon in 1968, a young girl named Susan Truby stood with her mother on Cork Street in front of George Washington's Headquarters. She picked up a small rock and kept it. Later, she wrote to her father in New Mexico: “I saw this in real life. I got a rock and we have had some rain.” Her father, Frank K Truby, was working at Sandia Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico...supporting the Apollo 8 mission. His role focused on system integration and safety—bringing together sensors, control electronics, and testing to ensure systems would perform under extreme conditions. Apollo 8 became a turning point, sending the first crew to orbit the Moon and return safely, with critical systems performing at an extraordinary level of reliability, approaching a 99.9 percent success rate. Engineers like Frank Truby helped make that possible. While his daughter wrote about a quiet stop in Wi******er in 1968, he was part of the effort that carried a crew around the Moon and back home.

On a clear afternoon in the early 1950s, the glass windows of the old Kern Motor Co. caught the light just right, reflec...
04/22/2026

On a clear afternoon in the early 1950s, the glass windows of the old Kern Motor Co. caught the light just right, reflecting South Loudoun Street back onto itself. Out front, salesman Ivan Rankin stood beside a new Hudson Hornet, one hand resting on the door handle as if it were something alive. On the driver's door, a simple sign told the story plain enough—Winner! Daytona Beach Stock Car Race - The New Hudson Hornet - Kern Motor Co. Folks paused as they passed, reading it twice. Rankin didn’t rush them. He let the car do the talking first, then added a quiet word about how it held the road better than anything else out there, how it sat low and steady, built different from the ground up.

He would lean in just a bit when the conversation turned, lowering his voice the way men did when speaking of things not written in advertisements. He whispered...."Out beyond town, on back roads that twisted through the hills, the Hudson Hornet had already earned a reputation. This car could carry a heavy load of shine and still outrun the police, hugging curves where others lost their nerve". That same design—low to the frame, quick through a turn, powered by a straight-six that pulled harder than it looked—had made it a champion on the sands of Daytona and just as dependable on the back roads from Gore to Wardensville...the Hudson Hornet was a beast! And if you were a man in the middle of a mid-life crisis, the Hudson Hornet had a way of calling your name.

No worries....salesman Ivan Rankin would be there, pen in hand, ready to guide you to the dotted line for only $2,568—Ivan would finally ask..."What color would you like your Hornet...Boston Ivory, Gulf Green, or Broadway Blue?"

The line had already formed when the 15th West Virginia Union Infantry moved forward near Halltown on August 24, 1864. E...
04/22/2026

The line had already formed when the 15th West Virginia Union Infantry moved forward near Halltown on August 24, 1864. Eight hundred yards out, they met Confederate skirmishers and pressed them back under heavy fire. In that advance was sixteen-year-old William Frederick Kump of North River Mills, slight in years but steady in step, moving with the men of his regiment as they closed on the entrenchments. He had lied about his age in Paw Paw to join them, leaving behind his father, Frederick, who had begged him to stay. When the line surged forward again, William went with it—and there, in that hard push against the works, he fell. He was sixteen and a half years old.

Months earlier, his father had stood along the old dirt path that would become Cold Stream Road, hat in his hands, watching his son disappear from view. Frederick was a southern man, and the war had already taken enough. He asked his boy to remain, but the decision had been made before the words were spoken. Six months later, young William’s body was found on the battlefield and carried to Wi******er, laid to rest in the National Cemetery. Back home, no clear word ever came. Records were scattered, letters lost, and the truth never fully reached that quiet road in Hampshire County. A father was left with the memory of a final glance, and the weight of a son who never returned…

04/21/2026

I had requests to put this one back out...hope you enjoy it!

Iris Dement
“Our Town”

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