2. The town at the intersection of the Winchester Turnpike and Charlestown Road is part of land first granted by the Crown to Captain Isaac Pennington in 1734. George Washington surveyed the property in October 1750. In 1754 Pennington sold it to Colonel John Hite who operated a tavern at the intersection. By 1765 when Hite sold the tract and the tavern to his son-in-law, Major Charles Smith, the little settlement was called “Battletown,” a sobriquet reflecting the behavior of many of the tavern’s rowdy patrons, one of whom was Daniel Morgan. In 1797 Major Smith’s son John sold twenty acres of the property to Benjamin Berry who divided it into lots for a town. He changed the name of the settlement to “Berryville” the following year. In 1836 Berryville was designated as the county seat of Clarke County.

3. Rev. Jonathan Mayhew, the Congregationalist Pastor of Boston’s Old West Church, first used the phrase “No taxation without representation” in a sermon in 1750. The discourse was subsequently widely printed in the Colonies, London, and Paris.

4. The “tea dumping” in Boston Harbor on the night of 16 December 1773 was not referred to as “The Boston Tea Party” until after the war of 1812.

5. Virginia’s seven representatives to what we now call the “1st Continental Congress” were: Richard Bland; Benjamin Harrison [5th governor of Virginia; father of U.S. President William Henry Harrison and great-grandfather of President Benjamin Harrison]; Patrick Henry [1st elected governor of Virginia after independence]; Richard Henry Lee [drafted and moved the resolution for independence from Britain during 2nd Continental Congress in 1776]; Edmund Pendleton; Peyton Randolph [presided over the 1st Continental Congress]; and George Washington.

Chapter Five: A Call to Arms

CHAPTER FIVE

A CALL TO ARMS

Allason’s Shenandoah Store

Winchester, Virginia

Monday, April 24th, 1775

As we moved into the sunlight, while the others were greeting people in the crowd, Rev. Thruston whispered, “Do you know the three men who were seated at the table with Captain Morgan when we came into this place?”

“Not really, sir. I have seen them at our home for meetings with my father but I have never been introduced.”

He nodded and continued, “The oldest of the three is Isaac Zane. He’s a ‘fighting Quaker’ who is also a Burgess and serves on our Secret Committee of Safety. He built Marlboro Iron Works and works with your father on forging iron used in Mr. Jefferson’s home near Charlottesville. He is a Patriot and we can trust him with our lives. I hope he will someday marry his mistress, Miss Betsey McFarland, so their son won’t be known as a bastard.”

This statement made me wonder how many more of my father’s associates were not married to the women with whom they lived. But I didn’t have time to dwell long on the matter, for Rev. Thruston was intent on continuing his post hoc introductions.