Uncommon VernacularThe Early Houses of Je∑erson County, West Virginia · 1735–1835

John C. Allen, Jr.

Preface

View of the Blue Ridge Mountains in southern Je∑erson County

Uncommon Vernacular

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The term “vernacular” means di∑erent things to di∑er ent people.This modifier has caused a great deal of handwringing in the fieldof architectural history, where it is sometimes seen as a vaguecatch-all category for common buildings. Yet I contend that ver-nacular is the best descriptor for the early residential architectureof Je∑er son County, West Virginia. The overwhelming major-ity of historic houses in the county do not adhere to formalarchetypes, so, in that sense, the dwellings are vernacular. Evenmore importantly, though, vernacular can be used to describebuildings specific to an area, as in “the local vernacular.” Neigh-boring counties have some similar building types but the groupof early houses that stand today in Je∑erson County is unique.The specific combinations of materials, construction tech-niques, detailing, and plan assortment that are common here are

absent just a few miles over the county borders. These qualitiesare what make the county’s architecture notable, and they arewhat inspired the seemingly dichotomous title of this book,Uncommon Vernacular.

The landscape of Je∑erson County is just as remarkable as itsbuildings. The undulating countryside, distant mountains, andwinding rivers provide the dramatic setting for the county’s his-toric farms and towns. The poetic siting and graceful forms of thecounty’s oldest farmhouses draw frequent attention, while thehouses of the small towns also resonate with history and beauty.

The county’s historic town houses and farmhouses haveroused the pride and curiosity of generations of residents. Despitetheir veneration, these homes have not been explained withintheir proper historical context. With their designs varied and

Mid-Atlantic region, ca. 1765, showing the path of the Philadelphia Wagon Road and routes over mountain passes

ages uncertain, the buildings appear to many as enigmatic relicsof a murky and bygone era. They are referred to in generalized—sometimes inapt—terms such as “colonial” or “antebellum,” andare often considered without any relation to neighboring houses,as if each were an alien encampment.

This study clarifies and illuminates the history of the county’searly houses by tracing their development and categorizing thebuildings by age and form, establishing patterns of construc-tion, plan, and style. The book presents this work in a format thatmakes sense of the early residential vernacular, the type of con-struction and design particular to the county. Analyzing andplacing these buildings in their historical context contributes toa more complex and rich understanding of the past and the peo-ple of Je∑erson County, West Virginia.

Allstadt House and Ordinary

Second, this book assesses the collected information to pro-vide a better understanding of how local architecture evolved incontext. Discussions of the local history parallel the developmentof varying building practices, siting choices, material selections,ornamentation patterns, and other preferences of the county’seighteenth- and nineteenth-century builders and residents. Pre-sented here is the wealth of cultural information contained in theearly buildings of the small enclave of Je∑erson County, readilyavailable to scholars and other interested individuals.

Third, I hope that this book will inspire people to preservethese historic structures and landscapes. As the county’s popu-lation grows in the twenty-first century, its rich architecturalhistory and agricultural heritage must not be lost in the process.Many communities in this country have successfully protectedtheir historic resources while fostering economic growth. His-toric resources can, in fact, become a foundation for economicvitality. This study is intended to help identify and prioritizeparticular restoration and stabilization projects and aid in thelong-term planning of the county and its municipalities.

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PurposeThis architectural study has three objectives: to document thephysical features of Je∑erson County’s early houses, to accu-rately contextualize and understand the development of thehouse designs and details, and to promote the preservation ofthe county’s historic structures and landscape.

The book is based on exhaustive documentation of two hun-dred and fifty houses and their associated outbuildings, whichallows for in-depth examination of individual buildings as wellas groups of buildings. It is important to record Je∑ersonCounty’s unique architectural history not only for academicpurposes but also because these houses are a finite—and dwin-dling—resource. Each year several of the county’s historic build-ings are lost to fire, neglect, or demolition. During the course ofthis study, six documented houses were reduced to rubble, androughly ten percent of the houses stand unoccupied or in ruins.Documenting these irreplaceable artifacts thus becomes anincreasingly urgent task. This publication catalogs and pre-serves the details of the county’s extant historic houses andprovides a framework for further study.

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Harewood interior (Samuel Washington House)

Opposite: Hurston (James Hurst House)

MethodologyFrom 2002 through 2004, I undertook a systematic survey ofthe entire county to identify historic farmhouses. I visited likelysites and searched for standing and ruined buildings; inter-viewed owners regarding occupied, abandoned, or destroyedhouses on their property or on neighboring parcels; and madepreliminary estimates of buildings’ ages by exterior examina-tion. I located two hundred and twenty farmhouses built before1850 during this process.

Documentation of the compiled study group continuedthrough 2010. Originally, I had planned to limit my e∑orts solelyto eighteenth-century farmhouses. But after surveying a numberof early buildings, I settled on 1835 as a more logical end-datefor the study. Both stylistic and programmatic changes to thelocal residential architecture occur around this year, due in partto the arrival of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal in 1834 and theBaltimore and Ohio Railroad in 1836. Roughly one hundred andfifty extant farmhouses were built before the cut-o∑ date. I madeevery e∑ort to include all farmhouses predating 1836 and by theend of the survey had documented 90 percent of them.

After identifying all of the farmhouses, I added town houses.Early extant town houses were less numerous than farmhouses—about one hundred—so this expanded the eligible pool of struc-tures to roughly two hundred and fifty. The more signifi cantremodeling that occurred in towns as residential buildings wereadapted to commercial use left fewer town houses with intactfloor plans and detailing. So I included and documented only halfof the town houses built before 1836: those that retained enoughoriginal material to be conclusively understood.

In addition to the pre-railroad and -canal group, this studyincludes fifty houses from the period 1836 to 1850 in order tomake informed conclusions regarding how local styles changedfollowing the introduction of the new transportation systems.This sampling of later farmhouses and town houses provides asnapshot of how these buildings di∑ered from those that werebuilt before.

If a house plan had been radically altered within the studyperiod, I sometimes placed the structure in two categories forthe sake of statistical inquiry. Each dwelling built before 1836was counted as a single house. However, houses that werealtered before 1836 to another studied plan type were counted astwo separate houses. For example, a 1790 side-hall house thatbecame a center-hall house by addition in 1820 was countedtwice. This example shows the later preference for the center-hall plan, and such statistical analysis reveals clear patterns oflocal building.

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Detail at Piedmont (Dr. John Briscoe House)

Traveler’s Rest interior (General Horatio Gates House)

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Cold Spring (Robert Lucas III House)

FieldworkDuring the first site visit to a property, I examined the houseand any outbuildings, recording my observations about exteriorand interior features as well as the siting and orientation ofeach. I noted construction techniques, building materials andstylistic features, and any changes to the original fabric or planof the house, such as additions and remodeling. I measured eachhouse for floor plan rendering and took 35mm color photo-graphs of the construction and details.

Architectural photographer Walter Smalling accompaniedme on the second site visit. Smalling documented exterior and

interior features using four-by-five-inch black-and-white film.The large-format negatives capture more detail than smallernegatives and were chosen to match the standards of the His-toric American Buildings Survey (HABS) collection at theLibrary of Congress, with which they will ultimately be cata-logued. During the seven years of documentation more than3,000 black-and-white and 14,000 color images were taken. Inaddition to photograph documentation, the second visit wasused to verify previous field measurements.

La Grange (John Hurst IV House)

Illustrations and Floor Plans Property ResearchWhile some houses remained much as they had been created,others had been significantly altered. For the modified houses,illustrator Andrew Lewis created restored drawings from thefield measurements and photographs. These restored viewsremove later alterations and return original features to the ren-dering, giving a clear view of the original appearance of a house.Lewis and I took care to use physical evidence and old photo-graphs to identify missing features and minimize conjecture.We collaborated to develop floor plans for each house. The plansare coded to show the original arrangement in solid black, alter-ations made before 1836 in hatched forms, and original elementsthat have been removed as dashed outlines.

Once the physical documentation, was complete, the historicresource firm Paula Reed and Associates researched the subjectproperty. Most of this work, such as searching estate invento-ries, will records, and tax records, was done by Reed historianEdie Wallace. Wallace compiled a chain of title for each propertyfrom the current owner back to the original purchase. In mostcases, it was possible to identify the owner who commissioned aparticular building by using the documentary record in con-junction with the physical features of each house. Independentresearch by Donald Watts collected specific information for theproject, such as data on the county’s enslaved populations, wheatproduction, and early brickyards.

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Property deed with boundary descriptionHouse plan showing the original section in black, later additions inhatch, and removed features in dashed outline

Peter Burr House, restored view

House Dating and NamingThis book is organized chronologically and thematically,grouping farmhouses and town houses by date ranges andexploring construction techniques, exterior and interior detail-ing, and outbuildings. Dating houses in Je∑erson County can bedi≈cult, especially for vernacular buildings with few dateablefeatures. However elusive, the approximate time of constructionis an essential piece of the historical puzzle. Many of the housesin this survey were commonly believed to have been built ear-lier or later than they actually were. Inaccurate dating causedconfusion about craftsmen, owners, and subsequent occupantsof the house. More importantly, precise dating made accurate

grouping possible, after which the similarities between housesof certain periods shifted sharply into focus.

Tax records were especially helpful in fixing constructiondates, many noting the year of construction and materials used.These specific records along with physical evidence allowed meto date the surveyed houses. The study employs approximatedates when an exact year of construction cannot be pinpointed.In this book, a circa date refers to a bracket of ten years, fiveyears before and five years after the given date.

Since most local houses have had several names over theirlifetimes and because many di∑erent houses share names, it

was necessary to establish a naming convention for the housesin the study group. To avoid confusion, the name of the ownerof the property for whom the dwelling was constructed is alsoused to identify the house. For houses that were altered into adi∑erent plan by a subsequent owner, hyphenated names areused: Bellevue (Swearingen-Shepherd House).

In Je∑erson County, the earliest houses, those built between1735 and 1815, shared more features of plan, scale, and detailingthan those built after that date. The local houses built between1815 and 1835 had great similarities as well, so they have beengrouped in their own separate chapter.

An Open DoorWhy study a group of houses located in Je∑erson County?Because focusing on this limited geographic zone and particularhistorical period provides insights and understanding that moregeneral or broader studies cannot. Limiting the study area to thecounty also allowed us to be more exacting and to documenthumble houses as carefully as grand mansions. With two hun-dred and fifty houses measured, drawn, notated, researched, andphotographed, this thorough documentation reveals patternsof building practices and uses. The study information, as awhole, places each house in context. Though the book includesmany of the county’s historic structures, there are others thathave yet to be examined. Therefore, this study is a startingpoint for further research, a threshold, and the door is open tonew avenues of inquiry into the county’s history and its rolewithin the larger region and our developing nation.

19Bellevue (Swearingen-Shepherd House)

William Hendricks House interior

Chapter One

FromSettlementto RefinementHouses in Context

Detail from “Map of Frederick, Berkeley, & Je∑ersonCounties in the State of Virginia” by Charles Varle, 1809,Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress

Je∑erson CountyThe area now known as Je∑erson County, West Virginia, is nes-tled between Maryland and Virginia and contains stretches ofboth the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers. This verdant landlies in the northern end of the Shenandoah Valley, known as thelower valley. The county encompasses just over two hundredsquare miles, established partly by topography and partly bypolitical districting. Bounded by the Potomac River and BlueRidge Mountains on the north and east, Opequon Creek to thewest, and the West Virginia and Virginia line on the south, Jef-ferson County consists of fertile valley bottom and the steepwestern slope of the Blue Ridge. Part of Virginia at the time ofour study period, the county was formed in 1801 from BerkeleyCounty, which had been separated from Frederick County in1772. It was added to West Virginia after the new state wasformed in 1863.

Detail showing present-day Je∑erson County from “Map of the most inhabited part of Virginia containing the whole province of Maryland with part of Pensilvania, New Jersey and North Carolina.”Fry-Je∑erson, 1755, Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress

Early HistoryA growing number of books, articles, and academic papers cat-alog such varied subjects as the rich political and social historyof Je∑erson County. Research continues on the industrial historyof Harpers Ferry, Washington family interests in the area, eventssurrounding John Brown’s Raid, the ethnic characteristics of thearea’s early settlers, and regional military activities of the CivilWar. Yet studies of the county’s architecture are all but absentfrom the record. Where they do exist, they examine individualbuildings. These narrowly defined reports shed little light on a par-ticular building’s place among its contemporaries. Through thesescattered accounts the reader holds little prospect of ascertainingif a building typifies the local architectural vernacular or stands asan aberration. This lack of contextual analysis is puzzling given thenumber of architecturally significant structures in Je∑ersonCounty. Scores of early houses dot the rolling countryside and

crowd its small towns. The number and diversity of these build-ings make for a vibrant and unique architectural landscape. Theobject of this book is to fill this documentary and historical void,allowing informed conclusions to be drawn about the county’searly domestic architecture.

A house, like any other historic artifact, has the ability toconvey meaning. The parts and design of each house haveintended purposes. Some of these elements are obvious, whileothers hide their rationales from the modern eye. Without asense of context, however, the design or function of a particularbuilding and its parts can be distorted or completely obscured.Context is the key to understanding historic buildings, and byextension, the people who built and used them over time. Thischapter outlines the early history of Je∑erson County in orderto provide this crucial historical context.

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Harper’s Ferry by Rembrandt Peale, ca. 1812, courtesy of Maryland Historical Society

Frontier Period: 1720–1762In his book The Planting of New Virginia, historian Warren Hof-stra outlines the events that led to the opening of the ShenandoahValley and its subsequent settlement. Hofstra concludes that inthe first two decades of the eighteenth century, coinciding inter-ests, opportunities, and fears brought about the political will topopulate the valley.⁄ Increasing Native American incursionsinto the Virginia Piedmont heightened tension and uncertaintyin the colony. Anxieties regarding runaway slave enclaves in themountains exacerbated feelings of colonial peril. Meanwhile,the far-reaching goals of the British Empire converged withthese fearful sentiments to compel Virginia’s colonial govern-ment to grant lands on the western side of the Blue RidgeMountains. In 1728, the Virginia Council, along with GovernorWilliam Gooch, granted the first lands in the valley.¤ Before thistime, the colonies forged a tenuous peace with the IroquoisNations, ending the westward movement of Virginia settlers atthe eastern slope of the mountains. Colonial governments dis-couraged European presence in the valley, as it inevitablyresulted in conflicts with Native Americans. These disturbancesin turn brought problems to neighboring colonies, notablyPennsylvania. Governor Gooch, however, understood thebenefits to the colony and the Crown of pushing westward, aswell as the dangers of not doing so.

By the time Europeans explored the Shenandoah Valley, theforces of “disease, warfare, and migrations” pushed the nativeinhabitants from the area.‹ While few native peoples lived in theShenandoah Valley at this time, it was frequently used as anorth-south transportation route by the Iroquois, Cherokee,Catawba, Tuscarora, Shawnee, and Delaware Indians.› Peacewith the native inhabitants was precious to those most vulner-able to attack: settlers in the sparsely populated fringes of thecolony. The aid of native tribes against the French was also nec-essary to keep England’s ancient enemy from encroaching on thevast Virginia wilderness.fi The new strategy of peopling the val-ley adopted by the government in Williamsburg made largeland grants available to speculators, who in turn sold smallerparcels to migrating families. Title to these lands required theybe improved within two years. Thus, cheap lands would be thebait to lure immigrants to the unprotected backcountry of Vir-ginia. If successful, these new communities would form thebu∑er that the colonial government desired as protection fromFrench-orchestrated attacks toward the Virginia Piedmont. TheFrench and Native Americans would be dissuaded from ventur-ing east by a valley thickly settled with the small farms ofProtestant families. And such settlement would advance thecolonial supply line to the west, aiding Virginia’s progresstoward the Mississippi River.

The demand for a∑ordable lands grew as the coastal regionsof Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, and Pennsylvania became

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Map of Je∑erson County showing farmhouses surveyed

increasingly populated in the early eighteenth century. Whileeastern populations rose, so did the cost of nearby agriculturallands. By the second decade of the eighteenth century, forexample, little if any farmland was available near Philadelphia.flMeanwhile, the tradition of primogeniture inheritance, espe-cially in places like the Virginia Tidewater, further compoundedthe need for new lands. When the colonial government o≈ciallyopened the valley for settlement, this reservoir of pent-updemand was released. A wave of people from all over the east-ern seaboard, Europe, and Africa would eventually populatethis empty, fertile land. By the 1730s, the first European settlerscarved their homesteads into the Virginia backcountry. One ofthe first of these was a German immigrant named Jost Hite,who brought sixteen families into the valley in 1731. Hite andhis companions crossed the Potomac near present dayShepherdstown and traveled south along what is now FlowingSprings Road, crossing the uninhabited valley bottom. Afterforging across the Opequon, this band of travelers headed west

to settle near Winchester, Virginia. The path that Hite’s wag-ons cut through the wilderness is still used today by those whotravel through Je∑erson County.

No known buildings exist in Je∑erson County from the firstdecades of settlement. However, the archaeological remains of asmall earthfast dwelling—a house built on wooden pilings—datingto the frontier period has recently been discovered. The William

Green House site is located in the northern part of the countynear the Potomac River. William Green migrated to the areawith his family from coastal Maryland, where earthfast housingwas common in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.Unlike later houses in the area that utilized limestone founda-tions, the Green House was built on a series of wooden supportsdriven into the ground. The modest structure could have beenerected quickly to provide immediate shelter for the family.Archaeological evidence dates this house to the 1740s, earlierthan any other standing structure in the county. This unique siteis important because it gives a rare glimpse into the humble

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William Green earthfast house, restored perspective view

William Green House, first-floor plan from archaeological evidence

frontier life in the valley. The remains also reveal a direct archi-tectural link to coastal forms of housing. Further archaeologicalresearch may shed more light on this formative period.‡

The area that now composes Je∑erson County was the gatewayto the lower Shenandoah Valley. Immigration took place across themountain passes and river fords. Peace with the Iroquois Leaguein 1744 resolved the disputes over colonial occupation of the val-ley, which increased the flow of travelers in search of availablelands. The valley, in turn, served as an important portal to set-tlement in the south and west during the colonial era and laterinto the nineteenth century. Immigrants passed through the val-ley on their way to emerging transmontane communities in Ohio,Kentucky, Tennessee, and North Carolina. Some of these earlysettlers first made their homes in the lower valley, in present-dayJe∑erson County. Because of its strategic location and the qual-ity of its land, Je∑erson County was among the earliest settled

areas in the valley.° Diverse peoples were drawn to the areabeginning in the 1730s: English Quakers from New Jersey, Penn-sylvania Germans, Tidewater English, Protestant Marylandersfrom Prince George’s County, and newly immigrated Scots-Irish.These groups brought their distinct cultures and building prac-tices with them to the frontier.

Though local houses reflected the broad diversity of the immi-grating peoples, the manner of their residential construction wasdictated by the availability of local materials and craftsmen. Lime-stone and timber, the most plentiful building materials, were usedwidely. One early immigrant to the valley, Samuel Washington,built his home of native limestone, a material unfamiliar to thebuilders of his native Tidewater Virginia. Most of the new resi-dents, however, put up small log and frame houses.· Very fewmid-eighteenth-century structures have survived, and those thathave are generally built of more durable masonry materials.

Harewood (Samuel Washington House), Historic American Buildings Survey photograph, 1937

Pre-Revolutionary Period: 1763–1775In the years leading up to the Revolutionary War, the popula-tion in the lower valley continued to grow. The end of theFrench and Indian War in 1763 brought stability and increasedeconomic possibility to the valley. The three dominant culturesof the area began to intermingle through marriage, proximity,and commerce. Je∑erson County’s Germanic settlers, Virginiansof English background, and Scots-Irish each represented abouta third of its population in the eighteenth century.⁄‚ The equalproportions of these parts made for unique cultural character-istics, and their assimilation over the intervening generationscan be seen clearly in the local architecture. Africans, broughtforcibly to the area, likely contributed their labor and talents tothe erecting of buildings, further blending disparate buildingtraditions into a rich vernacular.

The struggles of the frontier period gradually gave way toincreased economic prosperity in the backcountry. Towns suchas Winchester and Shepherdstown became commercial cen-ters, trading with the eastern ports. Unlike the Tidewater areasof Virginia and Maryland with their dependence on tobacco,farmers in the lower valley produced a wide range of items forsale or trade. Wheat brought significant material wealth to thearea. The climate and soils in the valley were ideal for wheatproduction, while the spring-fed streams and sloping terrain

lent themselves to milling. The rich limestone soils were capa-ble of producing enormous quantities of wheat, which, afterbeing milled locally, were transported to towns like Alexandria,Fredericksburg, and Philadelphia in the form of flour.

By the latter half of the eighteenth century, the demand forShenandoah Valley flour was trans-Atlantic. Due in part toGreat Britain’s population explosion in the eighteenth century,London and other cities imported substantial amounts of flourfrom the valley. Local flour also found markets in the WestIndies and Southern Europe.⁄⁄ Visitors to the valley wrote dra-matic reports of the lush and fertile land. While passingthrough the area in 1774, English farmer Nicholas Cresswellwrote that the place had “some of the finest land I ever saweither for the plough or pasture.”⁄¤ The commercial success ofthe flour trade drove more immigration to the valley andopened new markets. During the second half of the eighteenthcentury, both Alexandria and Philadelphia developed as pri-mary exporters of valley flour. After inspecting the producefrom the Virginia backcountry, Cresswell added that there was“as good Wheat as ever I saw in England.”⁄‹ Je∑erson County’sparent jurisdiction, Berkeley County, produced a million poundsof flour in 1775.⁄› Much of its surplus made its way to thecoastal cities and then across the ocean.

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Professional soldier Horatio Gates movedto the county before the Revolutionary Warto pursue farming, author’s collection

Prato Rio (General Charles Lee House), ca. 1760 and 1775, Historic American Buildings Survey photograph, 1937

Close of the Eighteenth CenturyThe war with England brought economic hardship to thecolonies. The naval blockades and restricted foreign marketsstymied growth in the Shenandoah Valley. A survey of housesand barns on local farms made in 1786 by Jonathan Clark cap-tures the humble state of the homes of the county’s yeomanfarmers. Most buildings were described by Clark as “worn” or“old.”⁄fi The vast majority of these were log and frame struc-tures. After the Revolution, however, the local economy slowlyregained its footing. By the eighteenth century’s last decade,wheat exports flushed the area with new wealth. The cessationof hostilities with Britain reopened European markets to valleyflour. Population increases on the European continent and theFrench wars of this period further expanded demand.⁄fl Many of

Je∑erson County’s early houses were built with wealth derivedfrom the period’s steadily increasing wheat production andexportation. These fine homes stand as monuments to the pros-perity of the period.

At the close of the eighteenth century, families that had firstsettled in the area were now three generations into the experi-ence. With the economic strains of the frontier period and theRevolution behind them, and with transportation routes to urbanmarkets improving, many residents of Je∑erson County pros-pered. The houses built during this time reflect this increasedprosperity, as well as the local population’s acculturation. As inmuch of the United States during the early republic, agricultureserved as the economic engine of the Shenandoah Valley.

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Elmwood slave quarter, Historic American Buildings Survey photograph, 1937

Opposite: The Rocks (Ferdinando Fairfax House), ca. 1795, Historic American Buildings Survey photograph, 1937

Je∑erson County’s Eighteenth-Century HousesFrom the earliest settlement to the end of the eighteenth cen-tury, the houses of Je∑erson County evolved from singular,vernacular expressions into repeated and accepted types. Thecultural assimilation that began during the settlement periodslowly shaped the local building vernacular. Builders increas-ingly favored a common palette of details and plans over thosefrom settlers’ ancestral homelands, so that after a number ofgenerations in backcountry Virginia homes built by families ofGermanic ancestry di∑ered little from those of their neighborswho descended from the Tidewater English or Scots-Irish. Assucceeding generations populated the valley, their culturalidentities became less European. In this way, house design

gave physical form to the idea of assimilation. Through famil-iar building designs, neighbors signaled their similarities toone another.

Still, some cultural products continued to celebrate ethnic orreligious diversity. For example, the German Reformed Churchof Shepherdstown continued to keep records in German intothe nineteenth century, long after Germanic influ ences on thelocal architecture had disappeared.⁄‡ Patterns for accepted andpreferred buildings had developed by the turn of the nineteenthcentury. Many of these would remain popular for more than ahundred years, giving Je∑erson County a remarkably consistentand consolidated building language.

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Piedmont (Dr. John Briscoe House), ca. 1790, Historic American Buildings Survey, photograph 1937

Opposite: Decorative escutcheon plate engraved in German, 1795, St. Peter’s Lutheran Church, Shepherdstown

Early Nineteenth-Century HousesWith each successive generation, the people of Je∑erson Countydeveloped a more distinctive and unified culture. The materialproducts of the inhabitants reflected the unique mixture of tastesand preferences in this corner of the valley. Changes in the formsand designs of buildings during the first quarter of the nine-teenth century were gradual and restrained. House plans initiallyfavored by the first settlers had evolved over intervening decades

to fit specific social and functional needs. Several early housetypes nevertheless remained popular throughout the county untilthe mid-nineteenth century. The urge to assimilate, togetherwith the rural nature of the community, seems to have limited theassortment of building types. Thus, a strong local building tra-dition had developed by 1800 and remained with limited variationuntil the arrival of the railroad and canal.

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Wheatland (Baylor-Turner House), Historic American Buildings Survey photograph, 1937

Houses of the Railroad and Canal Era, 1836–1850The dawning of the industrial era had a dramatic impact onJe∑erson County. Both the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad andthe Chesapeake and Ohio Canal reached Harpers Ferry in themid-1830s and brought with them great changes.⁄° Theseadvancements in transportation compressed the travel timebetween the valley and its urban markets, especially Baltimore.They likewise made available the consumer goods and trends ofAmerican and European cities. No longer would local builders

work in isolation from their urban counterparts. The lateststyles and building materials from the coastal cities were lessthan a day’s travel away. It is no coincidence that the GreekRevival style became ascendant in Je∑erson County with theintroduction of the railroad and canal. The year 1835, therefore,stands as the close of the period of a distinctly local architecturalvernacular in Je∑erson County, and marks the beginning of aregionalized style.

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Scene of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad and Chesapeake & Ohio Canal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, by George Harvey, ca. 1836, courtesy of Godel & Co. Fine Art, New York