Amherst Street Winchester VA ---is a timeline of Americana
Amherst Street Winchester VA ---is a timeline of Americana --- a timeline of American history.
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The name itself. Jeffery Amherst has quite a story. Pitt, picked him over senior officers to make success in "reducing" Fortress Louisbourg. And he did, one year after Lord Loudoun failed at it.
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McGuire home. Their story from the Rev War to the civil war.
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Gods And Generals. There was a scene taken at the corner of Washington and Amherst.
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Contrad house. If anything, Handley Library should be renamed the Handly-Conrad Library. A man who argued before the Supreme Court, and a personal friend of President McKinley, and the family was instrument in shepherding the money from Handley to build that library. His brother built this house for their sister, Kate Contrad.
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Winchester' Medical College. Alleged to have had the bones of the sons of John Brown after his insurrection in Harpers Ferry Federal armory.
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Ambler Hill. A prolific and famous writer John Esten Cooke was born there. He knew personally the horror of the "civil" war but wrote instead of the ardor and motivation of those who fought it. This intrigued his northern audiences. He once lived in Daniel Morgan's house, Saratoga. He lived through the politics of secession of Clarke Co from Frederick County, foreshadowing the Confederate secession. He was with the Federal Troops taking down John Brown at Harper's Ferry. His. son, Robert Powel Page Cooke, a physician, participated in Walter Reed‘s experiments to determine the cause of yellow fever."
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Daniel Morgan daughter's'house. Daniel Morgan died there upstairs. As an odd, aside, there used to be a tree that grew out of the wall and brick pavement now long gone, but symbolized the facebook page of the late and interesting local liberal, Larry Yates who wrote much on the Lost Cause. I wish i kept a copy of that photo and hopes someone has it.
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The Family Dollar. It used to be Walgreens. But it is also the site of Admiral Byrd's boyhood home. His Movie, ALONE, was a huge national success. He is the only one to ever have 3 ticker tape parades to honor him in NYC. Airplanes to both poles. And a wooden ship to south pole. BTW, when Walgreens was on that site, they had funded Byrd's trip to the south pole. To this day there is a 1000 mile coast of Antarctica named the Walgreen Coast.
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Selma. This place is possibly bigger than any civil war battle. The owner who lived on this site, was abducted off a British neutral ship in clear violation of international maritime law, pushing the British to arm up on the Canadian border threatening invasion during the Civil War. The owner, a former US Senator had his house destroyed for firewood by Yankee general Milroy because he was known for writing the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. His grandfather? The author of Virginia's Bill of Rights on which our national Bill of Right followed. George Washington's lawyer friend John Mercer raised George Mason, author of those Bill of Rights. For that reason, Mason University has a library named the Mercer Library. This story on Selma goes on and one.
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Glen Burnie. James Wood's home. Founder of Winchester. Savvy enough not to fight Lord Fairfax, so James Wood paid twice of this place. The home of the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley. Much more can be said what happened here, and continues to happen.
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The Town Spring. You've seen that place.
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The Octagonal House. Home of the Winchester Frederick Co Historical Society. One of two in Winchester.
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Then go all the way out to Hayfield. White's Fort and Jeremiah Smith's forted home, a stop and depot on the road to Fort Edwards during the French and Indian War for Colonel George Washington's Virginia Regiment.
Compiled by Jim Moyer 3/24/2025, research 10 years ago.
Sources
Conrad family
Holmes Conrad tree
Holmes Conrad brother Robert Young Conrad Jr. tree
Their sister Katherine Brooke Powell Conrad
Daniel Morgan dies where?
James M Mason
Admiral Byrd and Walgreens
Dr Hunter M McGuire
Larry Yates
Notes on Cooke
This is the birthplace of John Esten Cooke. He had a northern audience for his stories of Virginia.
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HIS " . . . one daughter and two sons included Robert Powel Page Cooke, a physician who participated in Walter Reed‘s experiments to determine the cause of yellow fever."
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He lived through the politics that led to Clarke County's secession from Frederick County, wonderfully documented by local historian, Warren Hofstra.
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.,”. . . he told an interviewer after the Civil War: .....
Gold lace on my coat always made me feel as if I were a child tricked out in red and yellow calico with turkey-feathers in my headgear to add to the gorgeousness. There is nothing intellectual about fighting. It is fit work for brutes and brutish men. And in modern war, where men are organized in masses and converted into insensate machines, there is really nothing heroic or romantic in any way calculated to appeal to the imagination!"
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"Cooke’s books, it seems, were an attempt to refashion modern war in the romantic, intellectual image of Cooke himself. This transformation served an important purpose. Cooke’s tales “resisted Reconstruction and glorified the Confederacy while at the same time slowly fueling the spirit of reunion,” the historian David W. Blight has written. “Cooke demonstrated how easily for some the horrible memory of combat and campaigning could be converted into purposeful nostalgia.”
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