Rock Hall Farm

When the cabin was first built, how its uses changed, and whether the remembered relocation occurred. Its identification with the overseer’s house named in 1872 remains an interpretation, not a located building record.

Whether the original 1987 sheet of the farm survey, not yet examined, draws the building as the 1994 revised copy does.

Who was sold under the 1859 order, who bought them and what became of them, and whether Warner, Easter, Lewis, John, Sarah, Frances and Charles, named in 1848, were among them.

Whether the 1859 auction produced a sale and whether a complete title chain confirms the estate’s stone dwelling as today’s farmhouse; and whether C. W. Hardesty of the estate papers is the Charles W. Hardesty of the 1935 obituary. The circuit court’s chancery order book for 1858–1860, on Library of Virginia microfilm, has not been examined.

Where the Rock Hall of Jesse Russell’s account stood.

Whether a deed confirms the probable identification of the Clevenger farm of 1932–1933 with this Rock Hall, the succession after Charles E. Clevenger’s 1899 purchase, and when and from whom the Kimballs acquired it.

How the farm passed from the Kimballs to later owners, confirmed from the deeds themselves, and what Alltran, Inc. was.

Clarke Courier, January 12, 1933, page 1

The five Courier notices cited in this section were checked against their page images during the research. The January 5 notice continues in another column: the held text stops before the words placing the couple at their home on the Clevenger farm, which were recovered from the image.

The identification rests on the combination of the Rock Hall name, the Clevenger farm name and the Winchester Pike location about four miles west of Berryville, consistent with later descriptions of the Kimballs’ home. Other properties carried the Rock Hall or Clevenger names; no deed has yet been read to confirm this connection.

The February 1932 advertisement calls the property “the farm of Miss Bertha Clevenger”; that is the newspaper’s description, not a verified ownership instrument. It advertises a sale of Fishpaw’s stock and implements, not a sale of the farm, and does not establish that the auction occurred. The January and October notices establish reported residences at two points, not a continuous January–October tenancy or a move date. No family relationship to the earlier Hardesty estate is asserted.

The year built, 1840, is the county assessment record’s figure; it has not been checked against a deed or a dated building record.

The 1989 survey lists Rock Hall Farm, 21-281, among the vernacular stone buildings (report PDF page 24). It lists the house under its 1830–1860 heading and again among the farms of 1865–1914, a list it says includes older farms rehabilitated in that period, and it says earlier houses appear under the 1830–1860 heading only if substantially changed then. Its period headings classify buildings; they do not date their construction.

The Russell House, 21-285, is a separate entry (report PDF page 19); the state’s database also gives it the historic name Rock Hall Farm, but the two are not merged here.

The June 6, 1872 Courier notice was read from its page image. It names an overseer’s house on the home tract but gives no location, material, dimensions, original date or occupant. The identification with the present cabin draws on that second dwelling, the later mapped building near this site, subsequent imagery and the standing log building. The essential inference is that the 1872 house stood here. Neither housing for enslaved people nor a particular cabin occupant has been established.

The 1938, 1942 and 1965 map editions repeat the 1937–38 USGS survey and count as one source, not three. Its secondary-building symbol is about 20–23 metres west-southwest of the present cabin when measured relative to the farmhouse; that comparison reduces shared positioning error but does not eliminate local distortion or symbol displacement. The 1958 aerial shows a light patch and track, not a clearly resolved roof. The 1964 and 1982 aerials are inconclusive, and a missing symbol in the 1973 map does not establish an empty site. Later maps based on 1977 photography mark a building, and the 1997 aerial shows a roof. Historic Aerials’ comparison snapshots were examined but are not reproduced here.

The actual 1972 and 1977 aerial scans were downloaded from USGS EarthExplorer and inspected in September 2026: frames 1VCZM00050005 and 1VEHO00010066. The farm was located using Route 7, Moose Road, the field boundaries and the main-house group. The present owner identified the cabin’s driveway and its endpoint in both photographs. Small features at that location are consistent with a structure; their graininess prevents a crisp roof identification. The statement that the photographs appear to show the cabin is a combined visual and site-based interpretation, not a precise surveyed identification or proof of the age of its logs. The two photographs are separate sources; multiple readings of either are not.

The 1972 frame is dated April 17, 1972. EarthExplorer lists the 1977 frame as March 22, but its film edge appears to read “3-2-77”; the exact March date remains unresolved. The comparison used unsharpened crops of the original scans, with no AI-generated detail. No new aerial images are reproduced on this page.

The cabin’s remembered retreat use and the separate West Virginia relocation story come from prior owners and neighbors, reported by the present owner. The description of an original historic cabin believed to date to the mid-1800s reflects the owner’s assessment of the hand-hewn log building; it is an estimated age, not a documented construction date or a scientific dating of the logs. “Original” describes the historic cabin, not a claim that every component remains unchanged. Its renovations and modern systems do not have a complete dated construction history. The cabin recollections are distinct from the oral history of the farm as a lawyer’s retreat. The relocation remains undated and unverified; continuity at the site is the working interpretation, not proof that no move ever occurred.

The farm survey is a boundary survey by Louis J. Matacia, L.S., dated December 18, 1987; revised August 1, 1994; recorded August 22, 1994, Clarke County Deed Book 246, page 348. The copy examined is a clerk’s printout of the recorded, revised survey, kept in a county environmental-health file; the original 1987 sheet has not been compared with it. The building’s legible lettering reads “2 story” and “log”; a word after “log” and a third line are illegible. The survey does not name the building. The present owner identifies it as the cabin, and the T-shaped building as the farmhouse, and regards the survey as confirmation that the cabin was there in 1987. “2 story” is the surveyor’s description; the county records one and a half stories. The survey dates neither the logs nor any move, and it is not reproduced here.

The Madisons’ application, signed November 18, 1995, calls the building existing. A December 29 letter explicitly describes a proposed renovation for living room, study, kitchen and bathroom use. The February 5, 1996 permit concerns sewage, not the cabin’s structure. These records do not date the foundation, first electrical connection or completed structural modernization. A Health Department letter of May 7, 2002 on the proposed subdivision refers to “the existing cabin on the proposed Lot 3.” Private county files are not linked or reproduced here.

The county’s current assessment card gives 1996 as the year built for each part of the cabin: the log section, the porch and the patio. The same system repeats 1840 on every part of the farmhouse, including a modern garage. What 1996 originally recorded is unknown. The assessment year of 1996 is not evidence of original construction or relocation, or that the cabin was renovated that year.

The state’s 1987–89 architectural survey photographed the farmhouse. Its public database entry lists a barn and a shed as outbuildings. The full survey form has not been examined, and the database entry does not show whether the surveyor saw the cabin.

The Hardesty homestead is identified with this farm in a family account shared with the project in September 2026, accompanied by a family tree tracing the contributor’s descent from William Mason Hardesty (1858–1935). The 1935 obituary is the Courier notice of October 17, 1935, cited in the Hardesty chapter.

Library of Virginia, Chancery Records Index, Clarke County cause 043-1886-025, read from its 88 page images: the clerk’s copy of the 1843 will (images 23–24), the decree of May 13, 1859 (images 18–19), the 1860 rent bonds (image 29), Adrian D. Hardesty’s sworn bill of September 26, 1865 and the injunction that followed (images 5–6), the heirs’ bill filed in July 1866 (images 2–4) and Adrian’s deposition of 1872 (image 21). The 1886 in the case number is the year the dormant case was struck from the docket (image 86); it is not the date of any of these papers. The file holds no report of either sale. No newspaper notice of the sale of the people has turned up in the digitized Winchester papers searched.

The 1848 inventory is known only from Duncan’s abstract; it is not in the case file. Duncan’s index lists the 1843 will under “Hardesty, Richard Sr.” and the inventory under “Hardesty, Richard”; reading them as one estate rests on the matching name and on the inventory’s court order of February 28, 1848, the same day the will came before the court; the inventory abstract itself names only its appraisers. Nothing in the papers names anyone who was sold or connects the people listed in 1848 with those sold after 1859. The $881.35 share covers the enslaved people and all the other personal property together; it is not a price for the people.

The 1859 notice put the land “four and a fourth miles from Berryville” and set the auction for noon on Thursday, November 10, on the premises. In 1860 John P. and Peter McMurray and a third man gave a bond of $502 “for the rent of a farm belonging to the estate,” and John Ritter a bond of $350 for farm rent. Adrian D. Hardesty testified that “Charles Hardesty got 33 bus. of wheat at the same time” as his own seventy. The heirs’ 1866 bill adds that, as they had been advised, a commissioner found $881.35 due to each child “for & on a/c of sales of slaves & all other personalty together.” Adrian had been one of the guarantors of William’s bond as commissioner. In September 1865 he swore that William was offering the land at private sale by an advertisement signed in his own name, not as commissioner; the judge’s injunction forbade William to sell it in any way except as the 1859 order directed, and an order at the October term ended it.

The October 7, 1859 notice and the September 26, 1866 notice were checked against the page images. The 1859 notice ran weekly through November 4; those later printings were read from the digitized text only. Each figure on this page belongs to its own notice. The two notices give different acreages and distances for the farms, and only the 1866 notice counts the stone dwelling’s rooms; an undated advertisement filed in the case, which gives other figures again, is not used here. The differences are unexplained. The notices describe the Hardesty farms but do not name Rock Hall, and no deed yet connects them with the present farmhouse; the family account is the basis for placing the homestead here.

The 1939 historical society list was read from the digitized text of the June 22, 1939 Courier. It names a Rock Hall in Longmarsh District as the Hardestys’ but does not locate it, and the list called itself tentative.

The later home-tract conveyances are documented separately in Clarke chancery cause 043-1879-002, images 6–8 and deed exhibit 92, checked against the page images during the research. The case identifies the Hardesty Home farm, conveyed to S. J. C. Moore as trustee for Hannah C. Page on April 7, 1868 (Deed Book H, page 342), and sold to John W. Stewart on June 12, 1872. The 1872 notice matches the trustee, deed date, beneficiary and five-acre exception for George Deck. The resulting tract was 199 acres, 3 roods and 17 poles; those five acres must not be subtracted again. This places the overseer’s-house notice on the home tract but does not locate that building within it.

An 1815 deed records Richard Hardesty, then of Jefferson County, buying 201¼ acres in Frederick County from Thomas and Mary Neil of Alexandria. The tract began in “the great road leading from Winchester to Battle Town,” and the deed was recorded on July 31, 1815. This may be an earlier acquisition of the later Rock Hall property, but the tract connection is not established: the deed names no adjoining owner or stream, and no later record read so far refers back to it.

In 1832 Hardesty bought 48 acres 3 roods 9 poles adjoining land he already owned. That parcel, too, is not linked to Rock Hall. Neither deed describes a building. Both were read from the page images; the volume numbers of the two deed books were not seen on the pages read.

Frederick County deed of April 1, 1815, pages 233–236 (FamilySearch image of pages 234–235)
Frederick County deed of August 27, 1832, pages 238–239 (FamilySearch)

The June 12, 1872 deed is Clarke Deed Book K, pages 245–246. John William Stewart’s will, dated August 5, 1876 and proved September 29, is in Berkeley County, West Virginia, Will Book 23, pages 38–42. Both were checked against their page images. The will describes the home tract and an adjoining Bard parcel of between thirty and forty acres. The later court bill states the Bard parcel as thirty-three acres. These are source-specific descriptions, not an exact modern survey.

The Clevenger deed is Clarke Deed Book Y, pages 458–460, dated February 7, 1899 and recorded April 1; an April 3 marginal note concerns delivery. Its tract identity rests on the prior-title recital, not merely the Clevenger name. The purchase is distinct from the unresolved later succession to Bertha and the Kimballs.

Clarke chancery cause 043-1899-011 contains the court-sale papers. All sixty-four images were inventoried and sixteen were closely read, some in part. The February 3, 1896 decree calls the land 230 acres; the later deed conveys 233½. The February 10, 1899 decree confirms the private bid subject to Robert H. Stewart’s heirs joining the conveyance. The commissioner’s receipts total $6,187.75, equal to 233½ acres at $26.50. The deed’s February 7 date and the decree’s February 10 date are retained separately.

Carlisle’s tenancy and Rutherford’s recollection of Payne come from the January 1896 depositions, images 39–41. Brotherton’s growing-crop reservation is in image 26. None locates an occupant in the cabin. The catalog and the packet overview disclosed no plat, and the closely read testimony mentions buildings without describing them.

The inherited and separately purchased interests followed different routes. The 1878 sheriff’s deed conveys a one-tenth interest, while the 1899 deed calls Robert’s purchased interest one fifth and also recites an unexamined R. T. Barton conveyance. That difference remains unresolved. The court’s later distribution was not six unchanged equal holdings, and the ages stated for the original beneficiaries should not be presented as their ages at the later filing.

Clarke County chancery cause 043-1899-011
Clevenger deed, pages 458–459
Recording certificate, page 460

Patricia B. Duncan, Clarke County, Virginia Will Book Abstracts (Heritage Books), printed page 183: the 1839 will (1A:013), the 1842 agreement (1A:079) and the 1848 inventory (1A:015). These readings come from the printed abstracts, not from the original will books.

The sale in 1857 is reported in Jesse Russell’s later account. The estate accounting abstract of that year (1A:088) describes hire income, payments and a balance; it names no purchasers and does not identify sale proceeds.

The March 18, 1948 notice (page 9), checked against the page image, describes General Neill Kimball “of Washington” spending the weekend with Mrs. Kimball at Rock Hall Farm, “their home in Clarke.” The March 25 issue (page 6), also image-checked, identifies his Veterans of Foreign Wars public-relations post. The notice documents one Washington-to-country-home visit; its issue date is not the date of the visit. It establishes no move date, motive, regular commuting schedule or connection to the later lawyer.

Notices through 1948 were read from the Library of Congress’s digitized pages; the 1950–1963 notices from Virginia Chronicle, whose online run of the Courier ends in 1963. The May 23, 1963 issue announced General Kimball’s address for Sunday, May 26; the May 30 issue reported that he spoke on Sunday and printed the words quoted here. The quotation and the announcement’s date line were checked against the page images. The quotation begins within a longer sentence, with its first word capitalized for display, and retains the speaker’s explanation of whom he meant by “the living.”

The Fine Arts report (March 22, 1962), the painting awards (March 21, 1963), the January 19, 1950 notice of Anne Hafen’s research and the November 8, 1962 poetry notice were checked against the page images; the Courier prints her name as Anne and the book’s subject as “Meriweather Lewis.” The other Hafen visits (1948, 1955, 1957, 1960) are read from the digitized text. The notices place the Hafens’ research in Washington and elsewhere, not at the farm.

The 1963 picnic names the Sunderlins as co-hosts, not necessarily residents that year. The February 27, 1958 notice names Mrs. Glen Sunderlin as General Kimball’s sister. The Courier spells the general’s name Neil, Niel and Neill; the narration follows the 1952 deeds, which also give Mrs. Kimball’s name as Jean.

The census of 1950 writes the Sunderlins’ name as Sunderland; it does not name the farm, and places the Kimball household on a farm in rural Long Marsh district. The December 2, 1948 notice announced the door-decoration demonstration; no report that it took place was found.

The West family connection comes from the Golden History Museum & Park catalog, whose c. 1905 photograph of George and Eliza West is inscribed with their grandchildren “Neil West Kimball” and “Leslie Kimball,” and which catalogs Leslie under the married name Sunderlin; and from Colorado Community Media’s 2021 history of the Transcript, which dates George West’s paper to 1866. The museum’s photographs are not reproduced here.

The letter of July 17, 1958, signed “Jean and Neil” and addressed to the Goetzes, was read from the museum’s digitized images of both sides of the sheet. It is part of Golden History Museum & Park’s Letters written to Irene Goetze, FIC2025.32. The images are not reproduced here.

The letter does not name Rock Hall as its place of writing. That identification is an interpretation, resting chiefly on the February 1958 Courier notice of the Kimballs reopening their home after New Mexico and the letter’s reference to their long trip the previous winter. Its distance to Leslie and Glen is the writers’ description, not a mapped address. The herdsman’s dairy experience is stated; the letter is not quoted as explicitly identifying a dairy herd. The opening capital in “We both miss” begins an excerpt from a longer sentence.

Golden History Museum & Park, Letters written to Irene Goetze, FIC2025.32

The 1952 conveyances to Herman Sisk (Deed Book 42, page 263) and Eddie Sisk (page 265) were read from copies in a county environmental-health file; page 264 is not in the file. They name Jean E. Kimball as Neill’s wife.

The 1962 map is known from the Courier’s notice of June 21, 1962; the notice date is not necessarily the date the map was approved or recorded, and the original plat has not been examined. The 1999 and 2004 sales are from the county’s real estate record for 420, which lists sellers only. The 2003 subdivision approval (Deed Book 380, page 139) and the 2005 sale of the cabin lot come from county files that are not linked from this page, and the original 2003 plat has not been examined.

The 1963 lot and the Kimballs’ surrounding land come from the recorded survey at Deed Book 69, page 116 and the recital in Deed Book 70, page 476. Alltran’s ownership by 1974 comes from the neighboring survey at Deed Book 105, page 285. The 1972 and 1988 conveyances (Deed Book 97, page 119; Deed Book 183, page 661) are known only from county staff notes and survey references, and neither deed has been read. This is a supported working chronology, not a verified chain of title; a company’s ownership does not show who lived on the farm. The farm survey at Deed Book 246, page 348 was examined only in its 1994 revised and recorded form. The 1994 granting page (page 344), the 1999 deed (Deed Book 308, page 189) and the missing 1952 page (Deed Book 42, page 264) were not found through the routes tested. The copies were seen in county environmental-health files and are cited without a link.

The 1987 county file gives the owner as Alltran, Inc., with Frank B. Hand Jr. as its agent; one form in it enters Hand himself as owner. It does not say what Alltran was or what part Hand had in it.

The memory of the farm as a Washington lawyer’s country retreat is oral history. Frank B. Hand Jr. is a plausible candidate for that lawyer, not an established identification. This interpretation concerns use of the farm; it does not identify Hand as the person who commissioned or moved the cabin.

The identification of that agent with the 1978 representative and the art donor rests on the matching name; the Berryville mailing address in the 1978 Federal Register notice; the National Gallery’s provenance, which gives the donor’s dates as 1914–1992 and his homes as Herndon and Washington; GW Magazine’s description of the donor as a graduate of the university’s college and law school; and college newspaper notices of 1977, read from digitized text only, that call a Frank B. Hand both a Berryville lawyer and a Herndon resident. No single record names the donor as the farm’s owner, and nothing found connects him with the cabin.

“Norton Wins,” a 1916 oil, went to the Corcoran Gallery of Art and is now in the National Gallery of Art. George Washington University’s magazine later remembered the donor as “a frequenter of Greenwich Village art galleries.” In 1978 a Frank B. Hand Jr., listing a Berryville mailing address, was the representative on a motor carrier’s application to federal regulators.