Our Clarke
Incorporated in 1798 and known before that as Battletown. It became the county seat when Clarke County separated from Frederick in 1836, and the railroad reached it in 1879.
Shopfronts in downtown Berryville, photographed by Carol M. Highsmith in November 2019.
What this image does and does not showA photograph of the town as it looked in 2019, not in any period described on this page. The photographer's title names no street, building or business, and none is named here.
Photograph by Carol M. Highsmith, November 12, 2019. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Carol M. Highsmith Archive, LC-DIG-highsm-60961. Rights Changes: Shown at the 1,024 by 793 pixels of the Library of Congress reference image, not scaled, and re-encoded as JPEG, with the embedded metadata dropped. Nothing cropped, retouched or added.
Source: Businesses in downtown Berryville, Virginia Open the full image
Incorporated in 1798. County seat when Clarke separated from Frederick in 1836. On the railroad map by 1879.
Before it was Berryville the crossroads was called Battletown1. Which of the two names came first, and why the change, are the subject of a separate story on this site; what matters here is that Battletown WAS the earlier name of the same place. The county history dates the town's incorporation to 17982, roughly ten years after the tavern quarrels associated with the earlier name and thirty-eight years before Clarke County existed.
Clarke County was formed from Frederick County on March 8, 18361, and Berryville became the county seat the same year2. From that day the town had the courthouse, the clerk's office, and the county records — which is why so much of what the collection carries about the county has Berryville addresses on it.
The Norfolk & Western railroad reached Berryville in 18791. Before that arrival the town was a market crossroads two days from Winchester and Richmond by wagon; after it, the town's apples, wheat and dairy could reach Washington, Baltimore, New York, and eventually Boston refrigerated. The trace of that shift is on almost every subsequent story in the collection: what Berryville was as a nineteenth-century seat is not what it was as a twentieth-century apple town.
Five claims across four centuries. The trace of Berryville as an urban record — what it looked like, who lived on which street, which businesses stood on which corners — is the largest continuing research target for this site, and it runs through the Sanborn maps, the Berryville Historic District nomination, and the still-unread city directories.
Berryville was known as Battletown.
DHR recognizes Battletown as the earlier settlement name.
This does not, by itself, explain why that name arose.
Evidence role: supports. Supports the claim at the stated source level; see limits.
Virginia Department of Historic Resources · 2024-09-16 (last update)
Locator: First historical paragraph
Relevant passageBerryville began as a colonial crossroads settlement known as Battletown.
Checked: Page text reviewed. Original image not independently inspected.
Open sourceSource family: dhr-berryville. Multiple passages from one source are not independent witnesses.
AI-assisted source check · 2026-09-08. How this project checks its sources
The county history dates Berryville's incorporation to 1798.
A dated anchor in the county's historical summary.
The original charter has not been inspected in this prototype.
Evidence role: supports. Supports the claim at the stated source level; see limits.
Clarke County government
Locator: Berryville paragraph, beginning "Clarke County's seat"
Relevant passageSettled in 1775 and incorporated in 1798, it was originally called Battletown.
Checked: Page text reviewed. Original image not independently inspected.
Open sourceSource family: county-history. Multiple passages from one source are not independent witnesses.
AI-assisted source check · 2026-09-08. How this project checks its sources
Clarke County was formed from Frederick County on March 8, 1836.
The county government supplies this formation date.
The original act and competing explanations of the split need their own investigation.
Evidence role: supports. Supports the claim at the stated source level; see limits.
Clarke County government
Locator: Opening paragraph: county establishment
Checked: Page text reviewed. Original image not independently inspected.
Open sourceSource family: county-history. Multiple passages from one source are not independent witnesses.
AI-assisted source check · 2026-09-08. How this project checks its sources
DHR says Berryville became the county seat in 1836.
A governmental role for the town is specified in the district account.
This summary is not the original county-seat decision.
Evidence role: supports. Supports the claim at the stated source level; see limits.
Virginia Department of Historic Resources · 2024-09-16 (last update)
Locator: First historical paragraph: county seat and railroad
Checked: Page text reviewed. Original image not independently inspected.
Open sourceSource family: dhr-berryville. Multiple passages from one source are not independent witnesses.
AI-assisted source check · 2026-09-08. How this project checks its sources
DHR dates the railroad's arrival in Berryville to 1879.
A transport-history anchor in the town's register summary.
The underlying railroad records were not inspected.
Evidence role: supports. Supports the claim at the stated source level; see limits.
Virginia Department of Historic Resources · 2024-09-16 (last update)
Locator: First historical paragraph: county seat and railroad
Checked: Page text reviewed. Original image not independently inspected.
Open sourceSource family: dhr-berryville. Multiple passages from one source are not independent witnesses.
AI-assisted source check · 2026-09-08. How this project checks its sources
Berryville was known as Battletown.
Berryville was known as Battletown.
DHR recognizes Battletown as the earlier settlement name.
This does not, by itself, explain why that name arose.
Evidence role: supports. Supports the claim at the stated source level; see limits.
Virginia Department of Historic Resources · 2024-09-16 (last update)
Locator: First historical paragraph
Relevant passageBerryville began as a colonial crossroads settlement known as Battletown.
Checked: Page text reviewed. Original image not independently inspected.
Open sourceSource family: dhr-berryville. Multiple passages from one source are not independent witnesses.
AI-assisted source check · 2026-09-08. How this project checks its sources
The county history dates Berryville's incorporation to 1798.
The county history dates Berryville's incorporation to 1798.
A dated anchor in the county's historical summary.
The original charter has not been inspected in this prototype.
Evidence role: supports. Supports the claim at the stated source level; see limits.
Clarke County government
Locator: Berryville paragraph, beginning "Clarke County's seat"
Relevant passageSettled in 1775 and incorporated in 1798, it was originally called Battletown.
Checked: Page text reviewed. Original image not independently inspected.
Open sourceSource family: county-history. Multiple passages from one source are not independent witnesses.
AI-assisted source check · 2026-09-08. How this project checks its sources
Clarke County was formed from Frederick County on March 8, 1836.
Clarke County was formed from Frederick County on March 8, 1836.
The county government supplies this formation date.
The original act and competing explanations of the split need their own investigation.
Evidence role: supports. Supports the claim at the stated source level; see limits.
Clarke County government
Locator: Opening paragraph: county establishment
Checked: Page text reviewed. Original image not independently inspected.
Open sourceSource family: county-history. Multiple passages from one source are not independent witnesses.
AI-assisted source check · 2026-09-08. How this project checks its sources
DHR dates the railroad's arrival in Berryville to 1879.
DHR dates the railroad's arrival in Berryville to 1879.
A transport-history anchor in the town's register summary.
The underlying railroad records were not inspected.
Evidence role: supports. Supports the claim at the stated source level; see limits.
Virginia Department of Historic Resources · 2024-09-16 (last update)
Locator: First historical paragraph: county seat and railroad
Checked: Page text reviewed. Original image not independently inspected.
Open sourceSource family: dhr-berryville. Multiple passages from one source are not independent witnesses.
AI-assisted source check · 2026-09-08. How this project checks its sources
DHR says Berryville became the county seat in 1836.
DHR says Berryville became the county seat in 1836.
A governmental role for the town is specified in the district account.
This summary is not the original county-seat decision.
Evidence role: supports. Supports the claim at the stated source level; see limits.
Virginia Department of Historic Resources · 2024-09-16 (last update)
Locator: First historical paragraph: county seat and railroad
Checked: Page text reviewed. Original image not independently inspected.
Open sourceSource family: dhr-berryville. Multiple passages from one source are not independent witnesses.
AI-assisted source check · 2026-09-08. How this project checks its sources
Also indexed as: Battletown.
Know something about this place or record? Help fill a gap. It stays private until it is reviewed.
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.
Siz Daingerfield, a Black barkeeper, built a hall on East Main Street and named it for a singer. It hosted performances and community meetings; the Legion recalls the National Guard using its upstairs as an armory from 1922 to 1939. The bank bought the building in 1957 and demolished it in 1962.
What the evidence says Builder, uses and ending documented by two accounts. Building year disputed.
A hospitality name that traveled along West Main Street, and the Federal-period house it settled in for sixty years.
What the evidence says Building documented; name transfer reported; closure reported; earlier site unresolved.
A tavern, a doctor's office, a children's clinic, a dress shop and the county's only public library, in one brick house at Main and Buckmarsh.
What the evidence says Building documented by the 1987 survey; uses reported by a 2017 account and, for 1931 to 1947, by the contemporary newspaper.
A railroad station's four dates, each from a different kind of source, and the one piece of it still on Main Street.
What the evidence says Construction sequence documented contemporaneously; 1987 vacancy from the survey; demolition and reuse retrospective; no opening date.
A first at the fire company, thirty people with brush cutters in a cemetery, eighty-five thousand anonymous dollars for the schools, and a hundred meals put together in a few days.
What the evidence says One year of a county, read from the twelve 2025 issues of its own monthly paper.
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.
Between 1910 and 1927 the People's Journal, a Black newspaper published at Berryville, carried advertisements, church notices and personal items from Josephine City: a grocery, a boarding house, a lunch room, houses being enlarged and repaired, and a congregation meeting on fourth Sundays.
What the evidence says Advertisements and notices, faithfully carried. One account qualified by its own date.
A boundary nobody could locate produced two land offices with opposite instructions. What grew up behind them was a county with two halves, and a century later the people in the eastern half asked to be a county of their own.
What the evidence says A settlement history drawn from one historian, set beside the printed arguments of the people who asked for the county.
On a Wednesday night in September 1869 four people were walking the turnpike between Millwood and Berryville. The Clarke Courier named two of them. One of those two did not reach the end of the road. By the end of October the same paper had reported an indictment against the other, and an attempt to arrest him that failed.
What the evidence says Three inspected newspaper items in two issues. A killing reported, an indictment reported, an arrest attempt that failed, two people never named, and no trial or outcome in any of them.
In the spring of 1881 workmen digging the foundation for the Bank of Clarke County's new building in Berryville came upon the bones of four or five people. The newspaper that reported it offered an explanation, and said plainly that its reason was that nobody knew. Later accounts kept the explanation and dropped the reason.
What the evidence says One inspected newspaper item, five OCR notices, and two later accounts that retell the first.
In early July 1873, according to the Clarke Courier, two of the six Little brothers locked the dining-room door at their father's house and one of them shot a third. The record that follows is a newspaper record: two trials, an appeal, a witness who changed his account, and a pardon refused.
What the evidence says Nine newspaper issues: eight of the Clarke Courier across four years, and one Alexandria Daily State Journal carrying a Baltimore Sun special. Four were read on the page image. One court opinion was also read in full text, though not on a page image, and no other court record was examined.
In March 1886 the Clarke Courier printed a small scene under the heading “An Old Acquaintance”: an old man in a hotel, a stranger off a train, and an unpaid board bill that turns out to be an escape from Libby Prison. It is a good story, and parts of it do not sit easily with the records.
What the evidence says Six sources. The 1886 Clarke Courier item that carries the whole anecdote was read on the page image. The other five bear only on whether its names and dates fit the record. No prison roster or muster record was consulted.
In 1921 a group of Berryville businessmen chartered a company to make fruit containers beside the Norfolk & Western tracks. The Clarke Courier followed it through a death on the log pile, a plant that turned gum logs into baskets for greens and apples, seasons of work and idleness, and its sale in 1938 to a New Jersey package man.
What the evidence says Courier reports of 1921, 1923, 1931, 1934, 1935 and 1938 document the company's charter and plans, a fatal accident at the plant, its production process, its seasonal restarts and its announced sale. They do not show which of the 1921 products were made, or what the plant became after 1938.
In 1909 the Clarke Courier credited forty-one Black men and women with forming the Milton Valley Cemetery Company in 1879 and buying three acres for a burial ground. A 1910 advertisement signed for the company, and a 1926 Cemetery Board notice printed under its heading, show lots offered, a monument raised and a yearly dollar asked of every lot holder, while a committee raised money for a walk in the cemetery. Funeral notices show the dead brought home from Cairo and Detroit, and by the 1930s the cemetery had its own Memorial Day exercises.
What the evidence says The 1909 Courier's account of forty-one founders in 1879, the company's 1910 advertisement and the 1926 board notice, read on the page images, show a Black-run cemetery company with stockholders, a monument and a yearly $1.00 charge on lot holders. Courier notices from 1897 to 1945 record burials there, including people brought home from Illinois and Detroit.
In 1930 Black families in Clarke County dug the foundation of a new building for the Clarke County Training School and pledged $500 a year toward it. Through the 1930s the Clarke Courier followed the school as its League raised money for a bus, its judging teams won honors, and its pageants, games and commencements drew the community in. In 1939 the League was still asking each subscriber for a dollar a year.
What the evidence says Clarke Courier reports of 1930 document the contract, the patrons' digging and the cornerstone, and the Courier of 1936 to 1940 records the League's bus, the judging teams, announced pageants and games, and three commencements. A Rosenwald Fund card and a Slater Fund list add outside records of the building and the school.
In June 1941, six months before Pearl Harbor, the Clarke Courier reported volunteers organizing aircraft observation posts across the county. Over the next two years it recorded tire and gasoline rationing reshaping that watch, schoolhouses serving as registration offices for sugar and gasoline, neighbors building and dedicating posts of their own, and the posts' closing by War Department order in July 1943.
What the evidence says Courier reports and notices from June 1941 to August 1945, each read on a Library of Congress page image, document the county's aircraft warning posts, the tire board, the sugar and gasoline registrations, the posts' closing and the Boyce station's sale. They do not corroborate the column's "Red Flash" story, give a final sugar count or show who bought the Boyce station.
In September 1930 Black families in Clarke County dedicated the new brick Clarke County Training School in Josephine City, with state and Rosenwald speakers, a rock pile still uncrushed and $680 owed for chairs. Through the 1930s their League paid toward the building with pageants, festivals and a $500 yearly pledge. By 1941 the school bore the name of Dr. W. T. B. Williams, and its principal, E. T. Johnson, bade farewell to the pageants in 1944 and died in 1945.
What the evidence says Clarke Courier notices and reports from August 1930 to December 1945, each read on a Library of Congress page image, document the dedication and its program, the patrons' costs and debts, the school's first year, the League's pledge and payments through 1939, the school's renaming, the principal's last pageant, his obituary and a letter in his memory. None of them reports the League's bond paid off.
For more than three years the Clarke Courier wrote a weekly "Dear Dan" letter to a man overseas. Its pages from 1943 to 1945 show volunteers stretched thin at the aircraft spotter posts, a harvest brought in by boys, school children, traveling crews, convicts and prisoners of war, the Pope family's long wait for a son held by Japan, and a town that celebrated victory twice.
What the evidence says Clarke Courier columns, editorials, reports and notices from 1943 to 1945, each read on a Library of Congress page image, document the spotter posts' shortage of volunteers, the 1944 harvest labor as the county agent reported it, the Pope family's news of a son held by Japan, and the town's two victory celebrations.
On April 1, 1965, two armed men robbed the Boyce branch of the Bank of Clarke County. A customer's pencil-written license number, relayed to state police, led a trooper to stop the getaway car within the half hour. The account that follows is built entirely from the Winchester Evening Star's contemporary reporting and one conflicting reprint on the money recovered; a fourth defendant's final result is not established in the reports reviewed for this account.
What the evidence says Eight Winchester Evening Star issues from April through September 1965, plus one modern reprint of a ninth, conflicting April 8, 1965 account. None of the nine items was read directly by the editors who wrote this account.
The Clarke Courier and Clarke Times-Courier, 1965–2007, trace an informal daily gathering of Berryville men — the "Coffee Club" — through four ownership changes at the Soda Shop, a 1977 fire, a 1978 merger, and later moves to the Town House, Jane’s Lunch and, once, the Tastee Freez. No address for the Soda Shop is ever given; this story reads what the record says and does not say.
What the evidence says Newspaper mentions across four decades, read for what they confirm and what they leave unresolved.
A single 2000 National Register nomination, the Millwood Colored School form, is the source for nearly everything here: a Black teacher named in an 1868 report, a free school at Millwood in 1869, a teacher appointed in 1873 and the Courier's own comment on it, county school counts for 1871 to 1888, and an 1888 school lot. Each reaches us through the nomination, not the papers, reports and deed it describes.
What the evidence says One 2000 nomination, read for what it quotes and paraphrases from sources this account has not seen.
For more than forty years Clarke kept two days for its soldiers.The Clarke Courier reported Decoration Day at Old Chapel and Green Hill from 1903, a false armistice in 1918, a welcome home for 5,000 in 1919, and Armistice Days of bells, parades and silence under the Legion post. In wartime the days turned to rain, walking and blood drives.
What the evidence says Twenty-seven Clarke Courier reports, notices and editorials from 1903 to 1946, each read on a Library of Congress page image, show Decoration and Memorial Day services at Green Hill and Old Chapel, the false and the real armistice of 1918, the July 4, 1919 welcome home, and the Legion post's Armistice Days.
Berryville sent one infantry company to the Stonewall Brigade. Its story survives less in records than in remembrance: a local historian's column, and the Clarke Courier's notices and comrades' letters as the men died, from "Jim" O'Bannon and "Kate" Shepherd in 1905 to John R. Shipe and "Uncle Bill" Kelly in 1920.
What the evidence says A comrade's letter of 1905, a tribute and a death notice of 1920 and a reprinted notice of 1905, all from the Clarke Courier and read on the Library of Congress page images, with a 1948 local history reprinted by the Clarke County Historical Association, describe the Clarke Rifles from 1859 to 1920.
In 1918 Clarke's churches hung service flags with a star for each of their men. Grace Church in Berryville sent its rector to France as a chaplain and mourned Capt. Lloyd W. Williams, the first Clarke man to die in the war; Christ Church at Millwood received an altar from a mother whose two sons came home. The Clarke Courier reported it week by week, and in 1927 the Virginia War History Commission printed the churches' own lists of their men.
What the evidence says Ten Clarke Courier items of 1918 to 1921, read on the Library of Congress page images, and the Virginia War History Commission's 1927 history of the county, read on the HathiTrust page images, describe the churches of Berryville and Millwood in the First World War.
In 1884 the survivors of the Clarke Cavalry formed an association under the trees in front of R. O. Allen's house, and 32 answered the roll. For thirty-four years they met each summer. They led the county's effort for a monument to its Confederate dead, brought a comrade's remains home from Luray, and called the roll of the living and the dead, as the Clarke Courier reported each year, until four answered in 1918.
What the evidence says Twelve Clarke Courier items of 1884 to 1918, read on the Library of Congress page images, report the founding, the monument effort, the reburial of F. P. Topper and the reunions of the survivors of the Clarke Cavalry.
When five Clarke Confederates died between 1883 and 1924, the Clarke Courier remembered them as boys when they went to war: Isaac Bonham at 16 with the first volunteers, Burwell McGuire "in his 'teens," Charles T. Jones at 17, W. W. Bowles at 16, and William E. Reed "scarcely more than a boy." The ages are the papers' own, written years later.
What the evidence says Five Clarke Courier death notices of 1883 to 1924, read on the Library of Congress page images, each say the man went to war young.
Capt. Lloyd W. Williams of the Marine Corps went to France with the first contingent in 1917 and died of wounds received at Belleau Wood in June 1918, the first son of Clarke killed in France, the Clarke Courier said. Its reports give three dates for his death and several accounts of how he died, and credit him with "Retreat? Hell, no!" in more than one wording.
What the evidence says Clarke Courier items of 1917 to 1923, read on the Library of Congress page images: reports of his going overseas, his promotion, his death, a chaplain's letter, two accounts of his famous reply, his burial and the county's war honors.
Pvt. Fred H. Shackleford of Berryville died in France on August 10, 1944. The Clarke Courier first reported him killed, presumably in action, then accidentally shot by a captured German sub-machine gun held by a companion. Its later columns said both, and the War Department's 1946 list counts him under "Died (Non-battle)."
What the evidence says Clarke Courier items of 1942 to 1948, read on the Library of Congress page images: the reports of his death, the paper's look-back columns, the War Department's 1946 list as the paper printed it, and the report of his return in 1948.
Five Clarke County Confederate soldiers came home wounded, and their death notices in the Clarke Courier still remembered it decades later: a man hit at the first battle of Manassas who never fully recovered, a cavalryman crippled in the arm on the same day, and wounds from Kernstown, Brandy Station and Gettysburg.
What the evidence says Five Clarke Courier death notices of 1899 to 1914, read on the Library of Congress page images, name the battle where each man was wounded and what the wound cost him.
The roll of veterans on this site lists 943 people who served in the Civil War. Berryville's company served four years in the Stonewall Brigade, and the Clarke Cavalry rode in the 6th Virginia. The Clarke Courier printed what the survivors told of battle and of Northern prisons, and followed them to the monument of 1900 and their reunions into 1918.
What the evidence says Clarke Courier items of 1883 to 1923, Gold's 1914 history, Meade's 1948 column and a compiled service record, already published on this site, and the roll of veterans.
The roll of veterans on this site lists 603 people who served in World War II. The Clarke Courier followed them from the county's first aircraft-warning posts in 1941 to the War Department's list of the dead in 1946, with the four Pope brothers of near Berryville, a soldier's death in France reported first as in action and then as an accident, and the night the war ended.
What the evidence says Clarke Courier items of 1941 to 1946, already published on this site and read on the Library of Congress page images, and the roll of veterans.
In September 1833 a meeting at Berryville asked for the eastern end of Frederick County to become a county of its own. The House of Delegates turned the petition down in 1834 and postponed a bill in 1835. A third petition carried in March 1836, after a tied vote that the Speaker broke, and the new county was named Clarke. Its justices first sat at Berryville on March 28, 1836.
What the evidence says Seventy-eight newspaper articles of 1833 to 1837 found on Virginia Chronicle, and the thirty Library of Virginia files of petitions and papers on the division, with the passages quoted here read on the images.
