OVERVIEW
If you’re passionate about the past – or if you just enjoy the occasional history trivia question – living in the Winchester area is invigorating. Any day of the week, you can venture from your home and come face to face with a Civil War reenactor or run smack-dab into the middle of a historic celebration.
Winchester is Virginia’s oldest city west of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The Town of Winchester was founded in 1744 by Colonel James Wood at the site of a Native American Shawnee camping ground. A Shawnee tribe had settled in western Frederick County in the late 1600s at what’s now known as Shawnee Springs. The land was initially granted to Thomas, Lord Fairfax, the sixth Lord Fairfax of Cameron, who settled on his property in Virginia’s Northern Neck in the mid-1700s. He eventually asked young George Washington to survey the immense land tract, which over the years was divided into towns and counties. Lord Fairfax’s burial place is at Christ Episcopal Church in downtown Winchester.
WILLA CATHER
Besides Wood and Fairfax, Winchester claims a diverse family of native sons and daughters. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author Willa Cather was born on a farm on the outskirts of the city in 1873. She lived here with her family for a decade. Among her best known works are One of Ours, Oh Pioneers!, My Antonia, and Death Comes to the Archbishop. Shenandoah University launched the Willa Cather Institute to recognize the writer through programs in American literature, culture, and the fine arts.
PATSY CLINE
Country music legend Patsy Cline also called Winchester home. Famous for such favorites as “Crazy”, “Walkin’ After Midnight,” and “I Fall to Pieces,” Cline was honored as the nation’s top female artist in 1961 and 1962 before her tragic death in an airplane accident in 1963. She was posthumously inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1973.
JOHN KIRBY
Also on Winchester’s music charts was jazz great John Kirby. Kirby was renowned as a double bassist playing with his own band, the Onyx Club Boys. He performed with some of the country’s biggest jazz stars. In 1993, 40 years after his death, Kirby was inducted into the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame.
REAR ADMIRAL RICHARD E. BYRD
Rear Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd, a celebrated aviator and polar explorer, was born on Winchester’s Amherst Street in 1888. A historical marker now stands at the property, and a statue of Byrd welcomes visitors to the city’s downtown judicial complex. Byrd received a Medal of Honor for the first flight over the North Pole and captured many other awards for his pioneering A ntarctic expeditions from 1920 through the 1950s. Winchester’s Handley Regional Library archives includes a collection of Byrd’s correspondence, speeches, photographs, and news articles.
MILITARY HISTORY
Others whose footprints here have left deep impressions are military heroes George Washington, Stonewall Jackson, and Daniel Morgan. Morgan was a savvy Revolutionary War strategist who settled in Winchester in the 1780s. Known for his shrewd war tactics, in 1775 he led “Morgan’s Sharpshooters,” a regimen of 96 riflemen he formed in just 10 days, to support the Siege of Boston. One of Winchester’s middle schools fittingly bears Morgan’s name.
Some experts claim that, during the Civil War, Winchester had the distinction of changing hands between the Union and Confederate armies 72 times. Many battles were fought here and nearby, the most noteworthy of which were the Battles of Kernstown, Cedar Creek, and Middletown. The audacious General Stonewall Jackson chose Winchester for his headquarters during his famous Shenandoah Valley Campaign in the winter of 1861 and 1862. Stonewall Jackson’s Headquarters Museum now stands in the Gothic Revival house on North Braddock Street that served as Jackson’s command post.
JOHN HANDLEY HIGH SCHOOL
One of the best-kept historical secrets of the area is a hidden 670-square-foot underground vault at Winchester’s John Handley High School. The vault once safeguarded masterpieces from the Corcoran Art Gallery in Washington, D.C. – works from such greats as Edgar Degas, Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, and Gilbert Stuart. Later, it was equipped as a communications center for government employees in the event of a nuclear attack. Today, the vault is empty, but some of its past contents are on display in a permanent exhibit at the school.
PRESERVATION WINCHESTER
Much of the magnificent past of the Winchester area still is being uncovered – and safeguarded – by Preservation of Historic Winchester, a local group of history lovers who spearheaded Winchester’s inclusion (all 45 blocks of downtown) as a National Register Historic District. The society is housed in one of the most architecturally unique structures in the area, the Hexagon House. The six-sided home was built between 1871 and 1874 and is one of only two hexagonal buildings on the National Register of Historic Places.
WINCHESTER-FREDERICK COUNTY VISITOR CENTER
Learn more about the history of Winchester & Frederick County by visiting the Visitor Center’s website.
