The Miller's House
This old house was along Indian Trail Road, next to an old mill. I tried to get a picture of the mill, but the angle was bad from the road, and signs suggested the owner was really troubled by photographers who might wander off it, so I won't post any of those. If I had to guess, I would say this house dates back at least to the 1850s, and it might be older than that. It could go back to the very early days of Euro-American settlement in the Shenandoah, back to the 1760s and '70s, when George Washington was getting mad at the British over King George's proclamations telling Virginians they couldn't come into the Shenandoah and steal all the land from the natives.
That's one aspect of George Washington the history books don't talk much about. Washington was very representative of the Virginia planter aristocracy of the late 18th century, in that he was voracious for land, and he loved questionable speculation schemes. He spent his entire life buying up as much of what in those days was thought of as western land as he could, often playing the sketchy kind of speculative real estate games that really stretch the credibility of that "can not tell a lie" story.
One example: In 1770, he got himself appointed to oversee the survey project chopping up the Kanawha Valley down to the confluence with the Ohio into tracts to give to veterans of the French & Indian War. The supposed purpose of this was to fulfill a promise the Virginia Colony had made to get people to sign up for the militia, which seems like a noble goal, but the main reason Washington wanted the job was so he could scope out all the land and stake a claim on the best bits for himself. He also used his position to talk veterans into selling their claims to him at bargain basement prices and eventually assembled more than 30,000 acres of the Kanawha Valley for himself. All that would be illegal today, but Washington sincerely believed that he had the right granted to him by divine Providence. In later years, his speculative instincts would get him into trouble, and he likely would have gotten himself embroiled in a big scandal in Kentucky in 1799 if he hadn't had the decency and foresight to die before it broke.
One of Washington's first bouts of land speculation came right here, in the Shenandoah Valley, which George was sent to survey in 1750 at the age of 18. He spent the next two years buying up about 2,500 acres of prime Shenandoah Valley land, then signed up with a couple of other guys to form a land company seeking a royal charter to grab up the rest and sell it to farmers who would build houses like this. That as much as anything is what convinced Washington the Revolution was a good idea. George III's Proclamation of 1763 prevented colonial settlement west of an arbitrary line that cut Washington's speculative plans off at the knees. Washington had to get rid of George III if he wanted to make money.
The Miller's House
This old house was along Indian Trail Road, next to an old mill. I tried to get a picture of the mill, but the angle was bad from the road, and signs suggested the owner was really troubled by photographers who might wander off it, so I won't post any of those. If I had to guess, I would say this house dates back at least to the 1850s, and it might be older than that. It could go back to the very early days of Euro-American settlement in the Shenandoah, back to the 1760s and '70s, when George Washington was getting mad at the British over King George's proclamations telling Virginians they couldn't come into the Shenandoah and steal all the land from the natives.
That's one aspect of George Washington the history books don't talk much about. Washington was very representative of the Virginia planter aristocracy of the late 18th century, in that he was voracious for land, and he loved questionable speculation schemes. He spent his entire life buying up as much of what in those days was thought of as western land as he could, often playing the sketchy kind of speculative real estate games that really stretch the credibility of that "can not tell a lie" story.
One example: In 1770, he got himself appointed to oversee the survey project chopping up the Kanawha Valley down to the confluence with the Ohio into tracts to give to veterans of the French & Indian War. The supposed purpose of this was to fulfill a promise the Virginia Colony had made to get people to sign up for the militia, which seems like a noble goal, but the main reason Washington wanted the job was so he could scope out all the land and stake a claim on the best bits for himself. He also used his position to talk veterans into selling their claims to him at bargain basement prices and eventually assembled more than 30,000 acres of the Kanawha Valley for himself. All that would be illegal today, but Washington sincerely believed that he had the right granted to him by divine Providence. In later years, his speculative instincts would get him into trouble, and he likely would have gotten himself embroiled in a big scandal in Kentucky in 1799 if he hadn't had the decency and foresight to die before it broke.
One of Washington's first bouts of land speculation came right here, in the Shenandoah Valley, which George was sent to survey in 1750 at the age of 18. He spent the next two years buying up about 2,500 acres of prime Shenandoah Valley land, then signed up with a couple of other guys to form a land company seeking a royal charter to grab up the rest and sell it to farmers who would build houses like this. That as much as anything is what convinced Washington the Revolution was a good idea. George III's Proclamation of 1763 prevented colonial settlement west of an arbitrary line that cut Washington's speculative plans off at the knees. Washington had to get rid of George III if he wanted to make money.