Our Clarke
Clarke County separated from Frederick County on March 8, 1836, by the county history's date.
The March 8, 1836 date on which Clarke County was set off from Frederick County as its own jurisdiction. Ninety years before some of the county's institutions the site records — Audley (1749 Fairfax grant), Burwell-Morgan Mill (eighteenth-century) — already existed on the same land under a different county's name.
Clarke County was formed from Frederick County on March 8, 18361. The date is the corpus's founding jurisdictional fact: the county as a political entity begins here. What already stood on the land — Battletown's tavern licensed in 1798, the Audley grant of 1749, the Burwell-Morgan Mill from the eighteenth century — did so under Frederick County's jurisdiction, and only after 1836 under Clarke's.
One claim establishes the county's own founding date. Missing from this record specifically: the underlying act of the Virginia General Assembly that carved off the county, the boundary description that act used, and the identities of the first officeholders. The Journal of the House of Delegates for 1835-36 and the earliest Clarke County court records are the natural next targets.
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
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
See a related record at the Clarke County Historical Association
Also indexed as: 1836.
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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.
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.
The House of Delegates named the new county Clarke in March 1836, "in honor of Gen. George R. Clarke," the Revolutionary War general usually written George Rogers Clark. The act itself, in the session laws, reads "Clarke county," with the e, though one report that week spelled it Clark. The House journal says only that a blank in the bill "was filled." Clark was born near Charlottesville, grew up in Caroline County and died in Kentucky in 1818.
What the evidence says Newspaper reports of March 1836 read on the page images, the act and the House journal of the session read on HathiTrust's scans, the county government's history and Encyclopedia Virginia's entry on Clark.
