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Winchester Tales, Winchester, VA (2025)

11/21/2025

When General Edward Braddock’s army pushed its way across the frontier in 1755, the men hacked a road through the raw wilderness of Frederick County—an artery carved by hand, mile by mile, toward the Monongahela. That road still lingers in the bones of our landscape. It slipped through Brucetown, climbed Apple Pie Ridge, cut across Lake St. Clair, rolled over Hunting Ridge, wound through Gainesboro, then onward to Cross Junction, Redland Road, Whitacre, and Bloomery. Most people don’t realize that Redland Road—the very one leading to Lake Holiday—is not just an old country byway, it is part of the old Braddock Road. If you know where to look, you can still see the ghost of that 1755 trace curling through the woods near Lake St. Clair, skirting Hunting Ridge, and climbing Timber Ridge near Whitacre like a forgotten scar through the woods.

For generations, local lore held that Braddock’s camp near Pughtown (modern-day Gainesboro) had vanished into the mist of time. Many searched. Most gave up. But one determined relic hunter finally found it. And what he pulled from that soil was extraordinary. Inside the camp’s perimeter he recovered two British regimental buttons—small, silent confirmations of Braddock’s presence. But among them lay something far rarer: a piece of British non-commissioned officer weaponry from the year 1755. A fragment of a spontoon—sometimes called a halberd—a long, spear-like staff carried not for battle, but for authority.

Why did British sergeants carry such archaic weapons? Identification. In the confusion of 18th-century warfare, especially on the tangled American frontier, NCOs needed to stand out. The spontoon made them visible…but in a firefight or hand-to-hand struggle, it was about as useful as a broom handle. Which likely explains why this one never marched out of Gainesboro. When the column broke camp, the sergeant who owned it simply left it behind—discarded, forgotten, and swallowed by the earth for nearly 270 years. An iron whisper from Braddock’s doomed march toward his destiny along the Monongahela...

11/20/2025

The Oyster Bay! —
Wi******er, VA
October 26, 1866
On the corner of Rouss Avenue and Loudoun Street—ground that has witnessed shops, taverns, and tradesmen come and go for over two centuries—a new sign swung in the cool autumn breeze of 1866. “Oyster Bay!” it read, its freshly painted letters full of that unmistakable postwar hope. The restaurant’s brief life is preserved only by a small notice printed in the Wi******er Journal on Friday, October 26th, 1866, a simple advertisement that captured a moment when Wi******er was trying—ever so carefully—to return to normal.

Its proprietors, Mr. Baxter and Mr. Van Saun, are little more than names lost in the creases of time. No stones in Mount Hebron. No closing announcement. No hint of where life carried them. Yet for a brief season, they stood in that old corner storefront and tried to coax the weary town back to familiar pleasures: warm soups, fried oysters, and the laughter of patrons settling into a place that felt like the world before the war.

That year was a turning point for the community. The newly consecrated Confederate Cemetery had drawn visitors and grieving families into Wi******er. After leaving the hillside grounds, many wandered downtown to find merchants reopening their doors, clerks unloading goods along the brick walks, and children playing again among the storefronts. Loudoun Street, once defined by the heavy tramp of armies, was slowly finding its heartbeat again.

Into that delicate renewal came Oyster Bay!, offering the indulgence of oysters brought from Baltimore—once a beloved Valley treat before the war cut off such luxuries. Inside, lamplight would have glowed through fogged windows, voices rising in hushed tones as locals shared news, offered prayers, or dreamed of better years ahead. Baxter and Van Saun likely believed they were planting the first seeds of revival.

11/20/2025

As I sat in my car waiting for a doctor’s appointment, I found myself looking out across Amherst Street at the Hexagon House, its familiar shape standing quietly above the traffic. To the right rose the grand home known as Selma—not the original Selma, of course, but its successor. The first house was burned by Union troops during the Civil War because its owner, Senator James Mason, grandson of George Mason, authored the Fugitive Slave Act. The stone from that ruined home was hauled up the hill and used to help build Fort Milroy.

But my thoughts drifted somewhere else entirely—to a football game played in 1912 on the very ground where my car now idled. The Shenandoah Valley Academy faced Randolph-Macon Academy that day, with Shenandoah winning 6–0. In an old photograph of the moment, the hills behind the Hexagon House are bare, just as they were when soldiers moved between Selma and Milroy’s fortifications in 1862 and 1863. It’s remarkable how one small patch of pavement holds so many layers of Wi******er’s story, all settling quietly beneath an ordinary afternoon errand…

11/20/2025

In the early 1800s, when Wi******er was still a young and growing town, the Slagle Brewery stood at the busy corner of Braddock and Boscawen Streets. Inside its brick walls, the air was thick with the smell of grain and wood smoke, and men worked long, steady days tending the vats. Among them was John Slagle, a familiar figure locals came to know well—a brewery hand who arrived before sunrise to check the fires, stir the mash, and make sure every barrel was just right. He wasn’t famous, but his work mattered. People counted on him for the beer that found its way into taverns, homes, and gatherings all across town.

The Slagle Brewery would operate for nearly a century under three generations of the same family, surviving fires, rebuilding, and serving a community that grew up around it. When the great fire of 1893 finally brought its run to a close, the old brewery’s story might have ended there—yet it didn’t. In 1895, as workers dug the foundation for the new Rouss Fire Hall, they uncovered two massive brewery vats, silent reminders of the men who once worked there and the town that enjoyed what they made. Those buried foundations tell us that long before Wi******er knew big industry or modern factories, it had people like John Slagle — with steady hands, early mornings, and a quiet pride in a craft that helped shape a community.

11/20/2025

During the 1930s, the United States faced one of its hardest periods: the Great Depression. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs were created to bring relief and stability, but they also needed public understanding and support. To help tell that story, the government sent photographers across the country to record the realities of daily life. Their work produced some of the most enduring images in American history—quiet, honest glimpses of ordinary people facing difficult days.

Two photographs taken on Boscawen Street capture that spirit. In one, a Wi******er resident walks slowly west toward what is now the Walking Mall. Only minutes later, from nearly the same spot, another man strides eastward. Behind them once stood the old Orndorff Marble Works, which is behind the Water Street Kitchen today. The expression on the first man’s face reflects the uncertainty of the times—an ordinary moment preserved from an extraordinary decade.

11/20/2025

The home at 302–304 South Kent Street, once called “Stony Point,” has stood along this dirt stretch of Wi******er since the 1770s. Built by John Lewis and later owned by Continental Army drummer John Everly, the house sat beside the same limestone outcroppings that can still be seen along Kent Street today. With renewed interest in the Revolutionary era brought on by Ken Burns’ new series The American Revolution, it’s worth pausing to remember that men like Everly were more than background figures—his drumbeats helped carry the rhythm of an army fighting for its survival. In those early years, neighbors walking past his home would have heard the steady practice of those drum calls drifting from the yard.

Everly’s sons, Jack and Fowler, grew up with that sound and eventually served as drummers themselves during the War of 1812. At a time when the drum guided soldiers through maneuvers, announced orders, and structured daily life in camp, the role required precision and trust. These skills were learned at home, long before any muster or march. Along that old dirt road on Kent Street, beside the familiar stone ledges, the Everlys passed down a tradition of service that linked their family to two defining conflicts of the young nation.

11/18/2025

In the late autumn of 1803, a young printer named Peter Isler arrived in Wi******er with little more than a journeyman’s toolkit, ink-blackened hands, and the stubborn belief that a frontier town deserved a strong voice of its own. He walked down South Loudoun Street— crowded with wagons, drovers, and the smell of woodsmoke—and stopped at the northeast corner of Loudoun and Cork streets. He noticed an aging, broken-down press sitting idle in the window of a small print shop. The old “Triumph of Liberty” newspaper had gone silent, its press neglected after George Trisler stepped away, but Isler saw promise in its rusted levers and warped platen. He scraped together what money he had, bought the machinery, and spent cold December nights repairing gears by candlelight. Passersby could hear him working long after the old Red Lion Tavern closed, the rhythmic creak of the rejuvenated press slowly returning to life. By early 1804, the young man who had arrived as a stranger stood proudly at that corner, ink-stained and smiling, as the first sheets of his own paper rolled off the newly restored press.

Wi******er was alive with politics in those years—Jeffersonian Republicans and Federalists sparring over the Louisiana Purchase, the shape of the young nation, and the meaning of liberty in a country barely twenty years old. Isler sensed opportunity. With every edition of his new paper—the “Independent Register”, he offered Wi******er a bold Republican voice. Isler championed Jefferson’s expanding vision of the West while giving locals a forum to debate the issues swirling across the young republic. From that little shop on Loudoun Street, Peter Isler’s press helped shape the political heartbeat of early Wi******er—proof that even a worn-out machine and an ambitious young printer could change the conversation of an entire town.

11/17/2025

Here’s another really cool metal detecting find from yesterday. This was dug at a colonial house site in Wi******er. I can only imagine how many hands touched this handle when opening the old interior door.

11/17/2025

Today I picked up an extraordinary piece of our local history. An officer from the 36th Ohio Infantry, Company C, sat down after the Third Battle of Wi******er and carefully wrote a list of his men—those killed, wounded, captured, or left on the field. If you look closely, you can see where one name was first marked as killed, then crossed out and corrected to “wounded.” Another man is noted as wounded and left behind…and one more taken prisoner.

But the most heartbreaking part is on the right side of the back page, where the officer recorded the belongings of the dead—items he personally “sent home by me.”

It’s a rare and intimate glimpse into an officer’s duty and the burden he carried for his men in the immediate aftermath of battle. An incredible document.

11/17/2025

While metal detecting, I’ve stumbled upon plenty of interesting things over the years, but nothing compares to finding something that carries a person’s name—an echo of a life once lived. Yesterday, I uncovered a small brass plate with a name engraved backward, almost like a little puzzle left in the ground. After cleaning it carefully and flipping the image, the name Miss Louisa Morrow Crawford appeared.

A bit of research revealed a remarkable woman: born in 1894, passing in 1986—just one day shy of her 93rd birthday—and resting now at Mount Hebron Cemetery. Louisa attended the Fort Loudoun Seminary, and this brass plate may very well have been used for her personal stationery. I even found a photograph of her from her school days.

What made this discovery even more meaningful was locating her niece, her last living relative, who now resides at a retirement community here in Wi******er. We spoke on the phone, and she told me she has nothing left from her beloved aunt. Next week, I’ll be meeting her to return this relic to the family. Her excitement was contagious… and I can’t wait to meet you in person, Liz.

Every relic carries a story—and sometimes, if we’re lucky, that story finds its way home.

11/13/2025

THE LAST SHOT OF
THE CIVIL WAR (…Sort Of)

Christmas of 1997, I flew home from Los Angeles and crashed for the week at my parents’ place in Brookneil, not far from Stonebrook. This was long before I knew a thing about relic hunting — before I could tell a Minnie ball from a marble — but my nephews had just unwrapped a brand-new Radio Shack metal detector, and of course Uncle Mike had to take them out for a test run.

We wandered to the old soccer field in front of the Stonebrook Swim & Racquet Club. The boys ran around like they were on a treasure hunt, and after a few minutes I got my first solid hit. I dug down, pulled something heavy and iron from the dirt, and stared at it. I had no clue what I was holding — all I knew was that it looked like an artillery shell.

So naturally, I tossed it in the trunk and drove it home.

I set it on the kitchen counter like some proud fisherman showing off a trophy. My dad took one look and said, “Get that thing out of my house!” So, I walked it outside and set it in the middle of our six-acre yard like I was planting a garden ornament.

Here’s the funny part: it was a Hotchkiss shell — fused, inert, and perfectly safe unless you throw it into a fire. But none of us knew that then. My dad, convinced his son had brought an unexploded Civil War bomb into the suburbs, called the police.

Then they started to arrive. Three sheriff’s cars. A state police cruiser. A fire truck. An ambulance. And finally, the Virginia State Police bomb squad rolling up with a concussion drum bouncing behind them on a trailer.

They wrapped our yard in yellow caution tape like it was a crime scene. After thirty minutes of huddled debate, the bomb squad commander walked up to the door and told my dad:

“We’ve never dealt with one of these before. We’ve decided to blow it up in place. You might want to call The Wi******er Star. Technically, this will be the last shot of the Civil War — fired in your front yard.”

A reporter arrived. The detonators were set. Everyone backed way up.

Then BOOM.

The explosion shook the house, rattled the windows, and left a crater big enough to lose a lawnmower in. The bomb techs were proud. My nephews thought I was a hero. My dad…not so much.

Looking back, I know that poor shell could’ve been safely drilled and saved — I’ve found five live artillery pieces since, and had every one preserved properly. But for one wild day in 1997, before I ever knew what relic hunting even was, I accidentally helped fire the “final” shot of the Civil War right there in Brookneil. I never found one piece of that shell.

The article ran in the Chicago Tribune, LA Times, USA Today, and the New York Times...and honestly…it was pretty cool.

11/13/2025

Here's a never-before-seen aerial photo of Wi******er over Handley High School in around 1925. I put in some present-day reference points to help. Amazing how much has changed in 100 years! The clear area at the top of the picture (top of Washington St.) is the old fairgrounds.

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