Our Clarke
Explore the people, places, photographs, films, and evidence that shaped Clarke County, Virginia.
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A roll of Clarke County veterans who have died, built from Confederate rolls, cemetery registers, memorial books and this site's own research, with more added war by war. Search it for a name, read the soldiers whose records support a full page, or tell us about someone who is missing. Living veterans appear only at their own request.
The crossroads settlement that became Berryville was called Battletown. Three accounts explain the name, they do not agree, and the town kept answering to it anyway.
Fact or Fable? Name documented. Origin unconfirmed.
In 1870, twenty-four formerly enslaved African Americans purchased the land that became Josephine City. Their community went on to build a school through local contributions of labor and money.
What the evidence says Founding documented. Naming account qualified.
The Clarke Courier called it the County League of Negro schools. The People's Journal called it the Clarke County School League. It had $28 when it started and $1,265.95 eleven months later.
What the evidence says Two independent newspapers. Four identifications, each marked as ours.
In 1877 a turnpike company called its stockholders to meet at John Sprint's Hotel in Millwood, and by 1882 J. W. Sprint & Son was advertising phosphates at Boyce. A will B. F. Humston signed in 1902 provided the Bellview farm to his daughter, Mamie R. Sprint, for life; it was admitted to record in 1904. Her son J. Ashby Sprint acquired orchard property, exported apples and leased land under a packing house at White Post. The records trace Mamie's family and Ashby's trade, while leaving the hotel's John Sprint and the firm's partners incompletely identified.
What the evidence says Humston's recorded will gives Mamie R. Sprint the Bellview farm for life. Courier notices place a Sprint packing house at Boyce and a leased packing-house site at White Post, but none names who ran the Boyce house, and the 1936 sale was advertised, not shown to be completed.
In 1864, according to her later claim, Union forces took horses, livestock and grain from Mary F. Lewis's farm near Boyce. The record follows her claim to a court valuation and an 1899 appropriation. Whether the money was paid has not been found.
What the evidence says Three federal records for the claim, the valuation and the appropriation; a family essay for the rest. No payment record.
In 1942 a six-year-old sold watermelons from a wagon at Route 7 and Chilly Hollow Road. He ran the stand that grew out of it for more than forty-five years, and told the story himself in 2013.
What the evidence says Wagon, stand and greenhouses documented from one attributed interview. Land history not established.
Two Clovis points at site 44CK26 place human presence in what is now Clarke County at least 12,000 years ago. When English settlers first wrote about this region in the 1600s, the northern Shenandoah Valley was a populated, cultivated, and used landscape connected to the Potomac, Piedmont, and Susquehanna nations. Living Native nations remain, with their own governments, and this page names them.
Buildings, farms, streets and the people attached to them. Start with somewhere you already drive past.
Follow the county from its earliest released record to living memory, with what each date actually dates made plain.
Ordinary life in Clarke County, one decade at a time, read from the paper and the released record.
Cemetery, marriage and death lists, photographs, recordings, recipes and the sources behind this site, grouped by what you came to do.
Send me somewhere in Clarke I was not looking for.
Read the 1920sDashboard: every decadeBrowse the recordingsBrowse photographs and mapsVeterans of Clarke CountyChurches of Clarke County
Every story shows what we know, what remains uncertain, and where you can explore the original sources.
Everything on this site comes from somewhere, and we say where. Open the drawer under any statement and you get the source, what it supports, and — the part most local history leaves out — what it does not establish.
Some of what you will read is documented. Some of it is what people remember, or what they have always said about a place. Both belong here, as long as we are clear which is which.
53 stories · 690 people and places · 764 sources · 82 chronology records, 81 of them dated. Sources and methods.
