|
Name | Montgomery |
Alt names | Fincastle | source: Family History Library Catalog | | Montgomery | source: Getty Vocabulary Program |
Type | County |
Coordinates | 37.167°N 80.383°W |
Located in | Virginia, United States (1777 - ) |
See also | Floyd, Virginia, United States | Child county (source: Source:Population of States and Counties of the United States: 1790-1990) | | Giles, Virginia, United States | Child county (source: Source:Population of States and Counties of the United States: 1790-1990) | | Grayson, Virginia, United States | Child county (source: Source:Population of States and Counties of the United States: 1790-1990) | | Pulaski, Virginia, United States | Child county (source: Source:Population of States and Counties of the United States: 1790-1990) | | Tazewell, Virginia, United States | Child county (source: Source:Population of States and Counties of the United States: 1790-1990) | | Wythe, Virginia, United States | Child county (source: Source:Population of States and Counties of the United States: 1790-1990) |
- source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names
- source: Family History Library Catalog
- the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia
Montgomery County is a county located in the Valley and Ridge area of the U.S. state of Virginia. As population in the area increased, Montgomery County was formed in 1777 from Fincastle County, which in turn had been taken from Botetourt County. As of the 2020 census, the population was 99,721.[1] Its county seat is Christiansburg. Montgomery County is part of the Blacksburg–Christiansburg, VA Metropolitan Statistical Area. It is dominated economically by the presence of Virginia Tech, Virginia's third largest public university, which is the county's largest employer.
Overview
The following discussion is taken from National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places Multiple Property Documentation Form. SEP 2 1989. While the intent of the original discussion was to provide a research framework for the Montgomery County Multiproperty Historic District, it provides a good description of the area in terms of its historical context, and is of use for genealogists in understanding the setting in which their pioneer ancestors (and descendants) found themselves. The material excepted here focuses on the settlement period, but considerably more information is available in the original concerning 19th and 20th century developments and history of the area.
Montgomery County is located in southwestern Virginia between the Blue
Ridge and Appalachian Mountains. The western portion of the county is
drained by the New River and the eastern portion is drained by the headwaters
of the Roanoke River. The eastern continental divide bisects the
county from north to south.
Based on archaeological evidence, the New River Valley was inhabited
by prehistoric Native Americans for a great period of time from approximately
15,000 B.C. to 1580 A.D. Very little is known of these early
dwellers because only a limited amount of archaeological research and
testing has been conducted. The upper reaches of the Roanoke River in
Montgomery County are included with the New River Valley in this narrative.
There are few differences in archaeological remains from the two
river systems. Despite the fact that limited research has been conducted
in the region, we still are able to interpret the past by making comparisons
of local sites with those of other parts of Virginia and nearby
states. These comparisons, along with the local research that has been
conducted, give an increasingly clear picture of past lifeways.
Human occupation of the Montgomery County area has been nearly
continuous since as early as 8000 B.C. Sites may date back to previous
millennia during the Paleoindian period. Permanent settlements may date
as early as 1200 B.C. during the Woodland period. After about 1600 A.D.,
there was increasing contact with Europeans. Near the end of this period
the New River Valley seems to have been largely abandoned, except for
hunting parties passing through. The burning of large portions of the
area to promote an open hunting, planting, and grazing area may have been
practiced. When the early expedition led by Thomas Batts and Robert
Fallam reached the New River Valley they noted extensive clearings and
abandoned cornfields along the river. Batts and Fallam explored the area
in 1671, on an exploratory trip sponsored by the colonial government and
private interests.
The land comprising Montgomery County was claimed by the British Crown
and by Virginia long before white men actually entered it. At the time of
the area's earliest settlement in the early 1740s it was a part of Orange
County. 1 In 1745 Augusta County was formed from Orange, and it included
Montgomery until the formation of Botetourt County from Augusta in 1779.
After 1772 part of the county was in Botetourt County and part in the
new county of Fincastle. In 1776, due mostly to the agitation of its
westernmost inhabitants, Fincastle County was dissolved and three counties
formed from it: Kentucky, Washington, and Montgomery. Montgomery
stretched from the North Carolina border to the Ohio River. The county
seat was established at Fort Chiswell in present Wythe County and the
first county court convened there on January 7, 1777. The formation of
Wythe County in western Montgomery in 1790 necessitated the removal of the
Montgomery County seat. By 1791 the court was meeting in a new courthouse
in the new town of Christiansburg. 2 During following decades
several counties were formed from Montgomery and by 1839, when Pulaski
County was formed from the western portion of Montgomery and the eastern
portion of Wythe, Montgomery County had assumed roughly its present form.
Two features of Montgomery County that invariably appear on 18th century
maps are the New River and the Alleghany Mountain. The New River
was the great discovery of the Batts and Fallam expedition of 1671 a
river flowing westward to an unknown destination. Even after it was fully
mapped and understood, the New River had a special importance as
Virginia's prime potential water connection to the Ohio River and the Gulf
of Mexico.
The Alleghany Mountain was often portrayed as a sinuous ridge separating
the waters of the New and the Roanoke rivers. It was commonly referred
to in 18th- and 19th-century deeds and persisted on maps as late as the
Blacksburg Railroad Map of ca. 1881. In fact the Alleghany Mountain is
merely the name applied to a series of spurs between the relatively
elevated tablelands which make up the western half of the county and the
valleys drained by the Roanoke River to the east. However, the Alleghany
Mountain was very real to travelers in the early 19th century. After a
series of gaps and gradually ascending valleys, the slope from the Roanoke
River up to Christiansburg or Blacksburg must have been perceived as the
first major obstacle the traveler had to overcome in his progress from the
north.
STUDY UNIT DESCRIPTIONS
The Little River Study Unit (1), located in the southwestern part of
the county, contains mostly rolling farmland punctuated by small hills. A
line of hills including Calfee's Knob and Pilot Mountain occupies its
southern half and separates the more elevated Brush Creek drainage from
the Meadow Creek and upper Elliott Creek drainages. The Little River
Study Unit seems to have been settled somewhat later and more sparsely
than the Toms Creek and Crab Creek units, perhaps because it was more
heavily wooded in the 18th century. Even in 1864 the level area around
Riner was still forested. Today this area is one of the most intensively
cultivated in the county and is in large part made up of agricultural/
forestal districts.
Lead and zinc mining was carried out at Calfee's Knob in the 1870s and
1880s and some sort of mining occurred at the county poorhouse site near
Christiansburg. A small gold rush took place at Brush Creek in 1880.
Brush Creek was later the site of flue-cured tobacco production evidenced
by the survival of several tobacco barns in the area.
The Crab Creek Study Unit (2) is located in the central western part
of the county, in hilly terrain with Barringer Mountain at its center and
Price Mountain as its northern border. The early-settled Crab Creek
Valley stretches almost the full extent of the unit, which also includes
the bottom land along the New River now occupied by the Radford Arsenal.
A high neck of land (the top of the Alleghany or Christiansburg Mountain,
as it was once known) forms that portion of the unit to the east of
Christiansburg.
Settlement in this area took place along the New River and Crab Creek
in the 1740s and somewhat later at Hans Meadows near Christiansburg. The
area is traversed by Southwest Virginia's major transportation routes,
past and present: the Great Road (crossing the New River at Ingles Ferry,
now in Radford) and its successor, the Southwestern Turnpike, the Virginia
and Tennessee Railroad and the Virginian Railroad (both now a part of the
Norfolk Southern system); the Lee Highway (Route 11); and Interstate 81.
The Christiansburg Town Study Unit (3) is located on the headwaters of
Crab Creek at the western end of the Crab Creek Study Unit. In the late
18th century most of the land in the unit was known as Hans Meadows. In
1790 the county court of Montgomery received from James Craig, owner of
much of the land at Hans Meadow, 175 acres on the Great Road as the site
for the county buildings and shortly thereafter a town and public square
were laid out. The town was incorporated as Christiansburg in 1792 and
was from its inception the location of a number of taverns.
The Toms Creek Study Unit (4), in northwestern Montgomery County, is a
rolling plateau extending from the chain of hills (the Alleghany Mountain)
east of Blacksburg to the bluffs and bottoms along the New River, and is
walled in by the parallel ridges of Brush Mountain and Gap Mountain on the
north and Price Mountain on the south. The area is drained by Stroubles
Creek, Toms Creek and its tributary Poverty Creek, and Norris Run.
Contained within this study unit is the Patton Tract of 3500 acres
which was selected by James Patton about 1745. A group of German settlers
arrived on Toms Creek at roughly the same time. The Patton Tract, also
known as Drapers Meadow, was the site of the famous Drapers Meadow Indian
massacre in 1755, in which Patton and several others were killed. Later
the Preston family dominated the central section of the study unit and
built Smithfield, probably the county's earliest surviving structure
(1775), and two notable later houses. By the 1850s James R. Kent had
amassed 6,400 acres (nearly two thousand improved acres) at the mouth of
Toms Creek; it was the largest and most valuable farm in the county. The
post-Civil War black community of Wake Forest was settled in part by
Kent's former slaves on the northern edge of his holdings.
The Blacksburg Town Study Unit (5) is located on the headwaters of
Stroubles Creek at the western end of the Toms Creek Study Unit. Most of
the land in the unit originally constituted the eastern end of the Patton
Tract and belonged to the Black family. Blacksburg was planned by William
Black and incorporated in 1798. Despite its close proximity to Christiansburg,
the county seat, Blacksburg managed to prosper, perhaps because it
was located on the Pepper's Ferry branch of the Great Road.
The Upper North Fork Study Unit (6), in the northern corner of the
county, includes the North Fork of the Roanoke River and the headwaters
of Craigs Creek, a tributary of the James River, which flows between Brush
Mountain and Sinking Creek Mountain on the northern edge of the unit.
Paris (Pearis) Mountain defines the southern and eastern sides of a
continuous strip of bottom land along the North Fork. A rolling shelf of
land occurs at the southern base of Brush Mountain roughly five hundred
feet higher than the river elevation. The earliest settlement may have
been in the vicinity of Lusters Gate, a late 19th-century crossroads
community probably named for a turnpike toll gate. A substantial portion
of the study unit is in the North Fork Valley Rural Historic District,
being nominated as part of this submission.
The Lower North Fork Study Unit (7), in the east central part of the
county, includes a good deal of rugged mountain land drained by the North
Fork of the Roanoke River and its tributaries, Wilson Creek and Bradshaw
Creek. Portions of the Peddlar Hills, Paris Mountain, and Fort Lewis
Mountain are within the unit.
The South Fork Study Unit (8), in the southeastern corner of the
county, like the Lower North Fork Unit, is mostly mountainous land, carved
into numerous hollows by the small tributaries of the South Fork of the
Roanoke River and Elliott Creek (itself a tributary of the South Fork).
The county's lowest and highest elevations are in this unit: 1,190 feet
where the Roanoke River flows out of the county and 3,770 feet at the top
of Poor Mountain. Along the southern boundaries of the unit are Pilot
Mountain and Fishers View Mountain. At the headwaters of the South Fork
is Bottom Creek Gorge and Virginia's highest waterfall, Puncheon Run
Falls. Early settlement occurred on the wide bottoms of the lower South
Fork. Near present-day Shawsville stood Fort Vauses, which was destroyed
by Indian attack in 1756.
Historical Overview
Settlement of the region began in the mid-1740s, after the signing of
the Treaty of Lancaster whereby the Six Nations of Indians gave up their
claim to lands in Virginia. Traders and trappers had been familiar with
the region for many decades. The area had been accessible since the 17th
century by the well-traveled Trader's Path, which may have followed the
Little River from the east to its junction with the New River.
Virginia leaders did not encourage settlement beyond the mountains,
but directed their principal interest to the region's fur trade. Settlement
of the Shenandoah Valley in the 1730s by immigrants from Pennsylvania
and Maryland began an era of rapid expansion into the largely uninhabited
areas of the western frontier. By the 1740s these settlers had reached
the Roanoke River and may have penetrated into the eastern portions of
present-day Montgomery County, on the north and south forks of the
Roanoke.
James Patton, an Ulster ship captain and agent for land developers in
the Shenandoah Valley, arrived with several relatives in Virginia in 1738
and by 1740 had purchased all the shares in a 100,000-acre group of tracts
on the James and Roanoke rivers. He later was active in the government of
Augusta County, serving in the most powerful positions. In 1745 the
colony of Virginia began granting large tracts of land west of the Alleghenies
to selected citizens and groups of speculators to be resold to
settlers at a profit. Among the earliest and most important of these was
the Wood's River Company Grant of 1745, which gave to Patton and his
partners in the Wood's River Company 100,000 acres of land to be selected
in smaller tracts in any location on the waters of the Clinch, Holston,
and New rivers.
Far more important than any of Montgomery County's local turnpikes was
the Southwestern Turnpike, chartered in 1835 to link Salem and points
north and east with Tennessee. The road, when built in the late 1840s,
became one of four major western Virginia turnpikes (the Kanawha, the
Northwestern, the Staunton and Parkersburg, and the Southwestern) that
connected the rapidly expanding frontier with eastern markets. One
historian remarked that their length (approximately two hundred miles
each) and their ambitious purpose would have earned them the title of
"superhighway" in the context of the period.
When the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad was surveyed in 1848, Montgomery
County offered the most practical east-west route for the line.
Mountains blocked the way in counties to the north and south, whereas in
Montgomery County the Alleghany Mountain posed the only obstacle separating
the level valley of the Roanoke River from the chain of valleys leading
along the New River and beyond to the Tennessee line.
The first move towards the building of a railroad into Southwest
Virginia was made in 1831 with the incorporation of the Lynchburg and New
River Railroad Company. The railroad lost out to the James River and
Kanawha Canal in the sectionally motivated funding battles of the era.
The Lynchburg and Tennessee Railroad, chartered in 1836, also had
difficulties. The Panic of 1837 and the ensuing depression did much to
suppress such internal improvement projects as the Lynchburg and Tennessee
Railroad. On May 24, 1848, the Lynchburg and Tennessee Railroad was .
reincorporated. On March 6, 1849, the Lynchburg and Tennessee was renamed
the Virginia and Tennessee, and on August 7, 1849, a convention was held
in Christiansburg to stimulate interest in the railroad. When the
question of exact route was finally settled, the Virginia and Tennessee
began to acquire rights of way and sites for depots, shops, etc. beginning
in 1851. The railroad opened to Christiansburg Depot on April 1,
1854
Tourism was an important aspect of Montgomery County's economy in the
late 1850s, and the railroad helped to further it. The sizable Alleghany
Springs and Montgomery White Sulphur Springs were built in response to the
railroad. The railroad's effect on the economy as a whole was dramatic.
In 1855, 1857, and 1858, a total of 6,641 tons of leather, lumber,
mineral, and agricultural products were shipped out of two of the county's
three depots and only 4,100 tons of goods were imported, indicating a
favorable balance of trade. (As for the volume of trade, Christiansburg
Depot dwarfed Big Spring and Central Depot, with Central Depot being the
least active in trade of any station on the Virginia and Tennessee line).
Montgomery County land values rose from an average of $5.84 an acre in
1850 to $91.30 an acre in 1860 an increase of 1,463% and that by the
beginning of the Civil War, the economic importance of the railroad to the
country "linked Montgomery County to eastern Virginia, whereas western
Virginia, not well served by improvements, split to the north." 23
Patton and his partners began in 1746 to select and survey the best
land in the region. Two tracts had already been surveyed, one of which
was on Stroubles and Crab creeks in present-day Montgomery County. This
tract represents one of the first tracts recorded in the New River lands.
Starting in 1745, settlers had entered the area in anticipation of gaining
title to land.
Drapers Meadow, near present-day Blacksburg, and the Dunkard
(German-Baptist) settlement, on the west side of the New River in
present-day Pulaski County, were both established in about 1745. Patton
entered 7,500 acres in his own name in the meadows east of the New River;
the tract became known as the Patton Tract or Drapers Meadow. The Patton
Tract stretched between the future locations of Blacksburg and Prices Fork
on the east and west, and Toms Creek and Prices Mountain on the north and
south. The land was subdivided using the Indian Road of 1745 (corresponding
to present Prices Fork Road) as a spine to either side of which
smaller tracts stretched down to Stroubles and Toms creeks. Certain
present-day property lines and roads (such as Route 657) may preserve
these early divisions. Several nominated sites are in this area,
including 60-233, 60-235, 60-240, 60-241, 60-243, 60-247, and 60-248.
Patton also selected land on Crab Creek southwest of Christiansburg.
Several German settlers had taken up residence on New River bottom
land, including a group of previously mentioned Dunkards in what is now
Pulaski County. Individual settlers included Adam Harmon on the east side
of the river and Jacob Harmon on the opposite side, across from the mouth
of Toms Creek. The New River region was a popular destination for German
settlers from the Shenandoah Valley for twenty years following 1743. Many
of the settlers were of Moravian or Dunkard background, and tended to
travel and settle in family and extended family groups. John Michael
Preis (Price), Adam Wall, Philip Harlas (Harless), and Casper Berger
(Barger) were among the early settlers of German descent. Harmon was
living in Strasburg, Virginia, in the lower Shenandoah Valley, in 1736;
the others arrived together at Philadelphia on the ship Winter Galley in
1738. They settled on Toms Creek and on the higher land just to the south
in the Patton Tract.
James Patton reportedly wished to encourage Scotch-Irish and English
settlement in particular. By August 1746 George Draper had settled on the
Patton Tract and he and other settlers by 1755 constituted a rural
community known as Drapers Meadow.
The earliest route used by white men through Montgomery County was the
Trader's Path, which connected Montgomery with the areas to the east
beyond the Blue Ridge. It crossed the Blue Ridge between Franklin and
Floyd counties and may have followed the Little River to a ford of the New
River at or near Ingles Ferry. Batts and Fallam very likely followed this
path on their exploration to the New River in 1671. In the mid-18th
century, however, access to the region from the north was more important
than a connection with Tidewater Virginia. By the terms of the 1745
Treaty of Lancaster, to which James Patton was a signatory, the road then
extending as far as present-day Staunton was to be extended south for the
benefit of the Indians, who expressed a desire for a road and safe passage
on it as one of their terms. It was one of the few substantive gains won
by the tribes in the settlement. Soon thereafter the Orange County Court
ordered James Patton and John Buchanan to view the way from the Frederick
County line through the upper Shenandoah Valley and beyond. They shortly
thereafter reported that they had viewed the road as far as Adam Harmon's
farm on the New River and had "blazed and laid [sic] with two notches and
a cross."
Patton stood to gain far more than the Indians from any road to the
New River because the road passed through his own settlement on the James
River at Pattonsburg. In the following month the court ordered the road
(referred to often as the Indian Road) to be cleared and direction posts
erected, and the route was to be divided into sections with individual
overseers and workgangs of tithables.
German, Ulster, and English settlers from Pennsylvania, the Valley of
Virginia, and the east streamed into the region and settled on land in the
hope of eventually securing title. By the mid-1750s the best tracts of
land in the county had been claimed. John Elswick (and later his widow)
grazed horses on Crab Creek. William Ingles, near Ellett, Tobias Bright,
near Lusters Gate, and Person:Francis Cyphers (1) were the principal inhabitants of
the upper North Fork of the Roanoke River. The rich bottom lands along
New River (where Batts and Fallam observed old Indian cornfields in 1671)
attracted numerous settlers, among them Frederick Stern, Jacob Snell, Adam
Wall, John Stroud (near present-day Radford), and Henry Bingamin. The
South Fork of the Roanoke may have been settled early by Ephraim Vause
(near Shawsville), James Calhoun, William Bones, and John Brieniger. The
southwestern portion of the county appears to have been largely unsettled
until the American Revolution, with the exception of Reuben Radcliff at
the mouth of Brush Creek on the Little River. In spite of the likely
penetration of the area in the earliest days of exploration by the
Trader's Path, the land was not seen as desirable by the first settlers,
who generally preferred river and bottom land to higher elevations.
Between 1753 and 1755 there was a marked increase in confrontations
between the Indians and the British on the frontier. These confrontations
were in part a result of French and British tension on the Ohio River and
its tributaries. On July 30 and 31, 1755, a party of Shawnee Indians
surprised a number of families at Drapers Meadow, killing James Patton,
who was visiting the settlement, and making off with Mary Draper Ingles to
the Ohio River. This incident and others like it caused an exodus of
settlers from the area. Many settlers gathered at first in makeshift
forts, but soon left the area never to return. A renewed wave of
settlement followed the cessation of hostilities. The immigrants ignored
the Proclamation of 1763, which prohibited settlement on the Indians' land
west of the mountains.
After the American Revolution, a further period of settlement resulted
in the claiming of most of the remaining land and the resale and purchase
of many earlier patents. Many settlers on the New River left their claims
in Virginia for the cheaper land of Kentucky and Tennessee. A process of
consolidation began in which some sections of the best lands were concentrated
in the hands of a few wealthy men, although the majority of landholders
were and remained yeomen farmers. This process lasted into the
second quarter of the 19th century. In the last decade of the 18th
century, Montgomery County's first towns were formed. Christiansburg was
laid out in 1790 and incorporated in 1792 and Blacksburg was incorporated
in 1798.
As the New River Valley filled up the region could be traversed by two
routes, each a branch of the Great Road. The northerly route, which
passed through Blacksburg and corresponded to Patton's Indian Road, was
known as the Pepper's Ferry Road, and the southern road, which climbed the
Alleghany ridge at Christiansburg, was called the 'Ingles or English's
Ferry Road'. Each road was named after a crossing on the New River. The
southerly Ingles Ferry Road was supposedly the best, according to several
contemporary sources.
The Ingles Ferry Road' became the great corridor of migration known as
the 'Wilderness Road' after the American Revolution, when thousands of immigrants
poured through the New River Valley on their way to the newly
opened territories in Kentucky and Tennessee. Previously the overwhelming
majority of settlers moving south up the Shenandoah Valley had stopped at
the spurs of the Alleghany Ridge and passed through the Blue Ridge
Mountains and on into the Carolina Piedmont.
As the region west of the Blue Ridge became more extensively settled,
Virginia leaders and merchants were anxious to secure trade generated by
the region through the development of roads and canals. Much of the
surplus produce of the area was being siphoned off to Baltimore and
Philadelphia along the Great Road. 5 It became evident by the 1770s that
the county road system then in force could not support the movement of
goods and products through the mountainous West. The eastern counties
were more densely settled, and capital available for roads which traversed
much shorter distances was greater, while the western counties were
characterized by a smaller tax base and great distances between settlements.
While toll roads and publicly supported turnpikes were commissioned for the West by the commonwealth in the late 18th century,
the roads of Montgomery County remained the responsibility of gangs of
county tithables until the early 19th century.
Wikipedia Entry
- the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia
Montgomery County was established on December 31, 1776, made from parts of Fincastle County, which was disbanded at this time and split into Montgomery, Washington, and Kentucky counties. Later, Montgomery lost land to form counties which now border it, including some counties which later formed West Virginia.
The county is named for Richard Montgomery, an American Revolutionary War general killed in 1775 while attempting to capture Quebec City, Canada.
Timeline
Date | Event | Source
|
1750 | Court records recorded | Source:Red Book: American State, County, and Town Sources
|
1750 | Land records recorded | Source:Red Book: American State, County, and Town Sources
|
1773 | Marriage records recorded | Source:Red Book: American State, County, and Town Sources
|
1773 | Probate records recorded | Source:Red Book: American State, County, and Town Sources
|
1777 | County formed | Source:Red Book: American State, County, and Town Sources
|
1790 | First census | Source:Population of States and Counties of the United States: 1790-1990
|
1853 | Birth records recorded | Source:Red Book: American State, County, and Town Sources
|
1990 | No significant boundary changes after this year | Source:Population of States and Counties of the United States: 1790-1990
|
Population History
- source: Source:Population of States and Counties of the United States: 1790-1990
Census Year | Population
|
1790 | 13,228
|
1800 | 9,044
|
1810 | 8,409
|
1820 | 8,733
|
1830 | 12,306
|
1840 | 7,405
|
1850 | 8,359
|
1860 | 10,617
|
1870 | 12,556
|
1880 | 16,693
|
1890 | 17,742
|
1900 | 15,852
|
1910 | 17,268
|
1920 | 18,595
|
1930 | 19,605
|
1940 | 21,206
|
1950 | 29,780
|
1960 | 32,923
|
1970 | 47,157
|
1980 | 63,516
|
1990 | 73,913
|
Note: Wythe was reported in 1790 as part of Montgomery and Botetourt. See also note C31.
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