Sleuth. Snoop. Spy.

The entire history of Steeles Tavern and the Shenandoah Valley, as well as the Steele family in one really long telling, but with lots of breaks so you can pace yourself. Warning. This is not a tweet.

When Aunt Mildred wrote the Steele’s genealogy for “The Steeles of Steels Tavern and Related Families,” she didn’t have the ease of online access to information. The path toward discovery was more arduous than it is today. She began with a trove of family letters and photographs and that certainly helped kick-start her research, but then she had to get going. She hoofed it to libraries and searched through whatever databases she could find—microfiche and rolodexes and if she was lucky, a big book on local history that she couldn’t check out because there was only one copy. She also read more accessible books about local history—and there are plenty! If she was lucky she found informative newspaper clippings, including those stuffed in-between pages of unread books or inside long forgotten boxes. I know she sifted through baptismal records. Like me, she walked through graveyards, fingering the dates on gravestones to find out the birth and death dates of individuals. She wrote letters to distant family members. She sought out local historians. She also pried, respectfully and with a certain measure of decorum—but she did pry! Let’s speak the truth here. Like me, Aunt Mildred was a snoop. She poked around properties, knocked on doors, and took pictures from the street. Is that a requisite for the job? Must a genealogical researcher be a sleuth, a snoop, and a spy?

After reading the family papers boxed up in my parent’s attic, I searched through libraries and bookstores. As I mentioned, there’s a plethora of material about the history of the Valley, but I was surprised to find several books that dealt directly with my family, who were neither famous nor rich. On the bookshelf at my local library in the suburbs of Chicago, I discovered a book by the Marquis de Chastellux that Aunt Mildred used to describe the revolutionary soldier David Steele who lost part of his skull and lived to tell the tale. Randomly browsing through a bookstore in Richmond, Virginia, I found a collection of ghost stories that retold a poltergeist episode involving a slave who had been cursed by a local witch and was sold south so that her owners, members of my extended family, wouldn’t be bothered by her torment. Another time, I thumbed through a book of Civil War photographs and found a picture of the Civil War soldier, John Smith, whose Southern Cross had trickled down through the generations to my father—and then me. An entire book was dedicated to the story of a brick house belonging to the Robert Steele, David and Janet Steele’s grandson. (Michael S. Shutty’s “An Old House in Greenville, Virginia: A Study of Human Intention in Vernacular Architecture”) Then there were the books that mentioned the small section of land where my family lived for two-hundred years. At times, I became so caught up in my research that I had to remind myself that I was looking for clues to my father, not the entire Shenandoah Valley.

But the Valley and my dad were deeply connected. My dad died over twenty years ago after a short bout with an aggressive cancer. Soon after he passed away, I came upon a description of a typical Scots-Irish Valley man: independent, skeptical of authority, deeply committed to his family, quiet but sociable, and often possessing a wry sense of humor. I was amazed how closely this description fit my dad! I had never before connected my father’s personality to his place of origin. I thought of him as unique, particular, one-of-a-kind. I knew he’d been shaped by his family and his ties to the Valley, but I hadn’t seen him as a representation of Scots-Irish man, or as someone who so closely resembled his immigrant forebears. Why would I? I hadn’t seen him operate within the context of his childhood roots. While I was growing up, we seldom visited his hometown of Steeles Tavern in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. What a pity!

As I dug deeper and continued to read about the cultural history of the Shenandoah Valley, I began to realize, in a way I had never before imagined, that my father’s life-story (and subsequently my own) began long before either of us were born. Indeed, our individual stories have turned out to be an extension of a long and far-reaching family tale. This realization continues to intrigue me. I want to know my inheritances. I need to discover the truth of my roots. Who were these family members of long ago? How did they shape my dad? How have they shaped me? Are there shimmering ghosts of my past that continue to haunt me?

David and Janet Steele, the first immigrants to the Valley, lived on a farm surrounded by fellow Ulster Scots, most likely neighbors and relations from back home. (Scots-Irish, Scotch-Irish and Ulster Scots refer to the same group of Scots who lived in northern Ireland before coming to America.) For generations, the Blue Ridge had been a formidable barrier to colonization. No one in the eastern side of Virginia, wanted to stir up the tribes beyond the Appalachian Mountains, fearing retaliation, and so treaties had been made using the Blue Ridge as a geographical wall. But times changed and settlers began to push the boundaries uninvited. The Tidewater-based colonial powers grew nervous. Skirmishes between the native populations—the original inhabitants—and the new arrivals were bound to happen. In the hopes of preserving control of the Valley, the English government issued land grants to eastern speculators. The entire geographical region would serve as a buffer zone to protect the long-established eastern settlements of Virginia. In short, the Germans and Ulster Scots would be used as human shields.

The Ulster Scots were well-suited to inhabit hostile territories. They had dwelt for hundreds of years on the borderland between Scotland and England, often skirmishing with the English. Think cattle rustling and other wild west behavior. Then these cantankerous Scots found religion and learned how to read—in about one generation! As an equalitarian-minded, individualistic people, they took to Presbyterianism, which focused on an individual’s faith and offered a governing body that wasn’t top-down. Years of confrontations with the English had made the Scottish Presbyterians self-reliant and ornery. Their newfound Protestant faith gave them discipline; and their education gave them power. They were ready to throw off the domination of church and state and create a new and better life for themselves. But where?

Life was tough for a Scottish tenant farmer of the 1600s. When the English needed help subjugating the northern Irish lords, the holdouts of a systematic repression of Ireland, they invited the lowland Scots to immigrate to Ireland, offering them land to rent in Ulster. Many people jumped at the chance of new prospects that would be open to them in a foreign land. Thousands of Scots Presbyterians moved into Catholic territory in the north of Ireland where they continued a long tradition of living in a hostile land. In their adopted country, they kept their religion and didn’t intermarry with the Irish Catholics. They worked hard and prospered. Until things changed for them.

In the 1700s, economic and religious hardship in Ulster—brought on by English landlords raising rents, taxation from the English government, and crop failures—made the difficult Atlantic crossing look promising for these displaced Scots. So they emigrated to the colonies. The Ulster Scots who first penetrated the Valley’s hinterlands, were rugged individualist who placed a high value on religious freedom. They were driven by a strong desire to create a better future. These character traits had been drilled into them long before they called America home.

Over twelve thousand Ulster Scots poured into Pennsylvania annually in the late 1740s. One in three arrived in the colonies as indentured servants. This mass exodus alarmed governing officials. The Presbyterian Scots from Ireland weren’t popular in Pennsylvania. Although, I doubt the Ulster Scots would describe themselves this way, their German neighbors considered them dirty. Let’s concede that they weren’t overly concerned with cleanliness. They built homes adjacent to barns. Small animals were often sheltered inside the homes during the winter. Sharing of beds and eating utensils was commonplace. Baths weren’t. The Germans of Pennsylvania were happy to see the Ulster Scots traveling south. About two thousand of these Scots-Irish immigrants settled in the Valley each year between 1740 to 1750, a considerably large number considering that the total population in the Valley after ten years of settlement was only two-thousand-and-five-hundred. Sixty percent of the Valley became Scots-Irish. The Beverly and Borden tracts, where my family settled, became known as the “Irish tract.”

The Blue Ridge Mountains rise up like a blue-treed wall running along the eastern side of the Valley. The Appalachians, on the other hand, resemble an old quilt tossed over a high pile of laundry spread across an enormous bed. The narrow slip of valley that lies between the two ranges (which are actually part of the same geological range) stretches from Harpers Ferry to Roanoke, a distance of about two hundred miles. The early Scots-Irish and German settlers entered the Valley from Pennsylvania through this valley corridor, saving themselves the trouble of climbing over the steep Blue Ridge. At only twenty-five miles across, a person could walk across the Valley from mountain range to mountain range in a single day. Not myself, mind you, but some hardier folks back in the day.

Farming ruled the Valley as soon as the European settlers arrived. The limestone that runs underneath the Valley floor made the land prime agricultural real estate (by balancing soil acidity, supplying minerals from ancient marine organisms, and improving water penetration). Limestone always reminds me of the Valley. Public buildings are often made of limestone. Stacked stonewalls made of limestone crisscross the landscape, separating fields from the narrow, winding roads. Early settlers used limestone blocks to build houses that could stand as fortifications against the original natives—the Shawnee, Cherokee and Creek.

When selecting farmland, the first European pioneers wanted fresh water and good dirt. The Ulster Scots prioritized water, and the Germans sought land, which is why the Germans ended up occupying the wide, open spaces of the northern Valley, and the Scots Irish settled closer to the rockier Staunton area. Steeles Tavern had plenty of water—a wide creek and a fresh-water spring—and plenty of rocks. The rockier turf reminded my family of Ulster.

David Steele and his brothers and sons owned thousands of acres in the new frontier. I suspect that they were connected to the woolen trade in Ireland since they had financial resources when they arrived in Virginia where they bought land, built homes, and generally invested in the future. The landed Scots-Irish like my family cared about class distinction. As a formerly repressed people, they sought power—economic, political and religious—and intended to hang on to their prestige. In the colony of Virginia, the Steeles became part of a landed class who wouldn’t intermarry with outsiders, which included fellow Ulster Scots who didn’t own land. The Scots-Irish settlers of the New World aspired to be like the Old World—as long as they could remain on top of the social ladder. They arrived in the Valley determined not to be pushed around anymore.

Over time, the Shenandoah Valley became the crucible for the western frontier. Ideas, attitudes, and lifestyles percolated in the Valley before traveling west, which makes the history of the Valley the history of America. The Museum of American Frontier Culture in Staunton—a history sleuth’s paradise—demonstrates this theory through architecture. Buildings reflect lifestyle. The museum has reconstructed farm buildings of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries from Germany, Ireland, and England. Visitors can compare these buildings with a nineteenth century American farm to discover a mixed composite of the three ethic groups in terms of building structures. The American farm became a composite of the English, Irish, and German farms. A new type of American emerged in the Valley, and then moved westward.

Within a few generations after the initial European settlement, the Valley became a blended mix of Germans, Scots-Irish and English, but the personality of the Ulster Scot eventually dominated the Appalachian frontier. This persona would go on to dominate western settlements because the Ulster Scots tended to arrive first among migrating populations, laying down the independent, democratic, self-reliant way of life. After briefly wrestling with other immigrant groups, the Ulster Scots won the culture war, producing the predominating American psyche.

Some Valley settlers were German-born, or the Pennsylvania-born children of Protestant immigrants—Lutheran, Reformed, or Brethren from the Palatinate and areas around the Rhine River. My father’s paternal roots are German. His name was Hawpe—an American adulteration of Haupt. Since our name was German, I thought of my family as German when I was growing up. But by the time my father came along, the Hawpes had intermarried with the English and Scots-Irish of the Valley so often that the German in our ancestry had dwindled considerably. (A recent DNA test revealed that 95% of my genes are from the UK.) The culture of the Valley melded into an Americanized version of German, English, and Scots Irish heritages, but with the Scots-Irish predominating, both culturally and in my case, genetically. Dad might have carried a German surname but his heritage belonged primarily to the Scots-Irish. If I wanted to understand Dad—and my own heritage—I needed to focus on the Ulster Scots. But I also needed to continue my quest by going to the Valley. Snoop. Sleuth. Spy.

(you can stop to rest here)

A short history of the Steeles of Steeles Tavern begins with David and Janet Steele who moved with their family to the Valley in the 1730s. (I told their tale “The Clearing.”) Robert, who inherited his father’s farm in Steeles Tavern, married twice, first to Elizabeth with whom he had four sons, and then to Mary with whom he had three daughters. David Steele, Robert and Elizabeth’s son (named after his grandfather, the original immigrant) lost part of his skull in the Battle of Guildford. David and Polly Steele ran a tavern and mill in Steeles Tavern. (Taking notes?) David and Polly’s son, John Steele, studied for the law but never practiced, coming back to Steeles Tavern to care for his aging parents. John became the first postmaster of Steeles Tavern. John and Eliza Steele raised twelve children in Steeles Tavern. John and Eliza’s son, another David Steele, inherited the brick house that John had built for Eliza. David also ran the Steele’s tavern and mill (during the Civil War). David married Mollie Steele and raised my great-grandmother, Irene, and her brother Frank. Irene and Frank each inherited half of the town of Steeles Tavern. (We're almost fisnished now. Quick quiz to follow.) Irene Steele married the Englishman, Walter Searson. Walter and Irene Steele Searson, whose daughter was my grandmother, Edith, built a big house in Steele Tavern. Edith married her neighbor, Erskine Hawpe. Erskine and Edith Steele Searson Hawpe raised my father, William Kemper Hawpe near his grandmother’s house in Steeles Tavern.

David-Robert-David-John-David-Irene-Edith-Kemp! Try to keep it straight!

Before John Steele became the postmaster, Steeles Tavern was known as Midway, an appropriate name for the town since the town lies halfway between Stanton and Lexington. Halfway Creek runs through the center of town. Like the town, the creek has known other names—Steele’s Run and Marly’s Creek—but Halfway Creek suits it best since the creek straddles the dividing line between Rockbridge and Augusta Counties. The watershed divide (separating the divergent waters flowing to the James and Shenandoah rivers) occurs at Steeles Tavern. When it rains in Steeles Tavern, some water flows north to Harpers Ferry by way of the South Fork of the Shenandoah, and some water flows east to Richmond by way of the James. The original Beverly and Borden tracts divide along Halfway Creek. The land speculator, Borden, camped near the creek and then followed an outlet to the South River, discovering the boundary of his tract.

Lying at a convent midpoint between Staunton and Lexington, Steeles Tavern served as a stagecoach stop where travelers could change horses and have a meal. By 1820 a stagecoach passed through town on the way to Lexington three times a week. The original tavern, built around 1760, was torn down in the 1870s. Other taverns emerged. “The Steeles Tavern Manor” that operates as a fancy Bed and Breakfast in town today was formerly the home of Irene, my great-grandmother.

US Route 11 takes you through town across the small bridge that spans Halfway Creek. Once a colonial trace, and an important roadway during the Civil War, Route 11 has been known as The Great Road, Lee Highway, Lee Jackson Highway, Old Plank Rd, Valley Pike, and the Indian Road. Ancient hunting trails run all through the Valley, following vales and crossing ridges, linked together and sometimes worn deep into the earth. Some were wide enough for wagons to travel. With modifications, settlers adopted these trails, making them into colonial roads that were “straight, steep, narrow and rocky.” Until 1745, there weren’t any real roads, and settlers possessed no wheeled vehicles of any kind, only horses. That certainly cut down on socializing. There were few marriages, or funerals, or sermons in the very early years. For many years afterwards, the Great Road was described as a “bad road,” at least south of Staunton. In the 1750s the area was considered primitive, and well into the 1790s the upper Valley, including Staunton, was thought by outsiders to be a crude, backwoods, pioneer place possessed by uncultivated, rude, illiterate people.

For many years, the Valley remained cut off from the rest of Virginia. A petition from as late as 1880 claimed that the mountain roads were dangerous and obstructed by rocks. The rocky terrain was incredibly hard on wagons. Travelers often had to push the wagons up hill, or fasten ropes to the rear of the wagon to keep it from rolling back down. Every few miles the wagons would fjord a creek. What a wild ride! Years later, the roads were still overgrown with rocks, troubled by ravines, and impassable when muddy. Wagon would often break into pieces, littering the road.

New roads weren’t much of an improvement as they had the special bonus of toll gates. Frequent traffic jams occurred along the roads with herds of sheep, pigs and cattle going to market. This traffic passed through Steeles Tavern, along with a procession of families going to the Tennessee Valley, their wagons loaded with possessions. My family housed and fed many of these travelers at their various taverns over the years. But my line of the family—Dad’s line—didn’t leave the Steeles Tavern for two-hundred years.

Stage coaches were a slight improvement over wagon travel, but the roads remained horrible. Stage coaches traveled the Great Road as early as1804, going from Staunton to Abingdon (the gateway to the West) and passing through Steeles Tavern. To ride in a stagecoach proved torturous. Picture chamber pots underneath your feet, riders squeezed together on backless benches jolted back and forth for hours. Every so often they had to disembark to walk when the grade became too steep or the road overly muddy. When they pulled up to a tavern and spilled out of the stagecoach, almost any kind of hospitality would be well received. My family offered food and some measure of comfort to these weary travelers.

Valley taverns were seldom comfy. Travelers, who were mostly men, slept alongside strangers in cold drafty lofts. Loud and smoky, and usually stocked with liquor (although the Steeles served none), traveling men entertained themselves with cock fights, gambling, fist fights and other tests of physical prowess. Even so, taverns were socially important, providing an important link to the outside world. The locals could be nosey! Everyone wanted to know your “name, quality, the place of your departure, and object of your journey.” Imagine all the juicy gossip my relatives were privy too!

During the eight generations of my family who lived in Steeles Tavern, over two-hundred thousand settlers traveled south along the Valley Pike. Each generation of Steeles added a few family members to the numbers of immigrants heading west. My line of ancestors remained in Steeles Tavern until my father left town. I was among the first generation of Steeles to grow up outside of Steeles Tavern.

My father grew up itching to leave is hometown. He loved going to the movies in Lexington or Staunton, and found the fast-paced, witty world of the big screen enticing. He considered Route 11 his way out. He got his chance to leave during World War II, when he joined the army. He would come home from Japan to marry my mother, Cora, and raise a family in Richmond, Virginia. Although he remained tied to the Valley, he would seldom visit Steeles Tavern again.

Steeles Tavern felt so slow to my dad that on rainy nights he would to sit on his front porch, hoping to see a car slide across the narrow bridge that lay over Halfway Creek and slip headlong into the water. The small bridge lay like bait on a fisherman’s hook, waiting for a bite. Occasionally, somebody from Lexington or Staunton—probably not locals who knew better—would hit the bridge full speed. Maybe they’d had a little too much to drink, or they were talking to the passenger beside them. Wasn’t that a nice picnic at church last Sunday? Do you think beef prices have a chance of rising? Then they would come to the bridge and the steering wheel would answer back, easing the tires sideways to glide the car, like a fat hippo on ice, off the bridge into the creek. A fast car seldom failed to yield high drama. It was almost better than a picture show. On rainy nights when there was no action, my father went to bed disappointed.

This was one of the few stories my dad told me about Steeles Tavern. In fact, my view of his entire childhood was framed by this car-sliding story—along with lesser anecdotal stories about playing baseball with two neighbor boys who constantly argued, and the humorous story of sister, Jayne, running off with his precious drawings of automobiles. (My father drew and dreamt of vehicles of escape.) He also mentioned once that Cousin Cal saved him from drowning underneath a local waterfall, and told me how an aunt taught him dance classes in preparation for entering the bigger, more exciting world beyond the confines of his small town.

(pause: stretch, get coffee or go the bathroom)

Years later, his daughter would return to that small town to try and find him. Sleuth. Snoop. Spy. I’m thinking back to a weekend some years ago when my college-age daughter, Laura, and my eleven-year-old son, Christopher, stayed in the Steeles Tavern Manor, arriving as modern-day prodigals to snoop around town, knock on doors, and occasionally trespass as though we still owned the place. We began by visiting cemeteries where Christopher ran between the rows of gravestones, shouting, “Here’s another dead relative!” Then we moved on to Steeles Tavern. Laura brought a movie camera to film “our” town.

In Steeles Tavern we discover a cluster of buildings standing on either side of the road, and a small bridge crossing a creek. Old trees shade the creek and the narrow road. I take in the gentle panorama surrounding me—the green and rolling hillsides, the birds singing, the old trees, and the blue sky. From the bridge I can look down at the water flowing across the smooth river rocks and envy my dad his picturesque hometown. But Christopher, boy of the suburbs, has a different impression. “Is this it?” he asks, incredulously. “I was expecting a town!”

Let’s be honest. Steeles Tavern is barely a town. If you’re not paying attention as you drive by, you could miss it altogether. Most folks need a healthy imagination to picture how the town once appeared. A century ago, Steeles Tavern was a bustling place.

I picture it as a town from an old Frank Capra movie—full of fun-loving, witty, hard-working people. A town that can make you want to go back in time! Meet your ancestors! Bring your kids along!

The last Steele tavern that Marryatte Steele once ran still stands at the crossroads. The white-and-blue, two-storied building with long shutters and a white-pillared porch harkens back to a more vibrant era of the town. A white picket fence once surrounded the lawn. Today, the tavern looks spent, a sad relic of its former glory days. I decide to explore it later without the kids along. (Because I want to climb past the no trespassing sign and look into the windows.)

Besides a tavern and stagecoach stop, Steeles Tavern once boasted two stores, a cobbler, an undertaker, a wheelwright, a cooper who made barrels, a tan-yard, a distillery for peach brandy, a sawmill, a foundry, a two-room schoolhouse, and two mills. My Scots-Irish ancestors, seeking good water sources, surely had the mills in mind when they settled the land.

Sites for mills were highly valued. A miller held rank in the community as a buyer and seller of goods. With a mill he was able to transform wheat, corn, and timber into flour, meal, and lumber. Since roads were bad and travel remained difficult, farmers wanted mills nearby. Mills played a big part in my family’s continued prosperity, until the railroads arrived, allowing for the delivery of cheaper flour from the Midwest.

One of the Steele’s mills was a flour mill with a cider press attached to the side of the building. Irene’s father, John, sold this mill to his brother, Marryatte Steele in 1884. A second mill was positioned a quarter mile down the creek from Steeles Tavern. One of the oldest in the country, this mill was built around 1760, probably by Robert, the son of David, our first emigrant. The revolutionary soldier, David Steele (grandson of the first David Steele) ran this mill and also the first tavern in Steele’s Tavern. Irene’s husband, Walter Searson, my English-born great-grandfather, eventually owned both these Steele mills. Walter ran the Searson Milling Company, producers of Water Lily Patent Flour. He shipped products from nearby Vesuvius to North Carolina until the Valley’s economy took a nosedive. There’s not a trace of either mill in Steeles Tavern now.

Below the second mill stood a foundry that made plowshares: Vesuvius Plow Works. Aunt Mildred tells the story of her brother pressing his hand into a pile of sand while visiting the foundry on a school trip. A workman poured molten iron into the imprint, making a perfect replica of the lines of his hand. I wonder where that iron hand is now?

Standing on the little bridge that runs through town, we try to picture the old buildings around us humming with action. Honestly, it’s hard to do. Laura walks up and down the road, filming the gas station, the bridge, and the various houses. Christopher suggests we leave town and find someplace a little more lively where we can eat lunch. Laura and I think fried green tomatoes, which they serve to tourists even though no one around here had ever heard of them before the movie came out.

Later that afternoon, we book ourselves into Irene’s old large, white-pillared home, which is now The Steeles Tavern Manor, a lovely, gracious, charming Georgian house with black shutters, white trim, and a graying stucco facade. I stand at the door for a moment before going inside. The porch isn’t big enough for rocking chairs. It’s more like a spacious stoop—with enormous columns! My grandparents were married in this house. I think my father was born here. I know my Dad rode his tricycle on this porch. I pile one small clue upon another.

We make ourselves comfortable in the light-filled living room. The windows are open and the room has remained cool on this warm day. Irene designed the house for cross ventilation. Long windows on every side of the house helped to make the place more livable during the oppressively humid Virginia summers. When necessary, she and Walter could sleep on the outdoor porch upstairs.

It’s strange to be here, strange to be able to sit in the living room and sleep in the house that Irene built, long after the house passed out of our family. Our hosts, Eileen and Bill Hoernlein, tell us that we’re the first Steeles to stay here since they bought the house. Eileen tries to remember if they found anything belonging to the Steeles when they moved in.

Her face lights up. “There’s a bear claw bathtub in the storage room out back!”

Laura and I look at each other and laugh. I try to imagine what my husband, Brian, would say if I shipped a heavy, bear claw bathtub back to our house in Chicago. I guess we could put it outside and fill it with dirt and flowers.

As we go upstairs to our rooms, I peek into the enormous dining room where Irene hosted the grandchildren of Cyrus McCormick Sr and John D. Rockefeller. True story! They’d traveled with their father, Harold McCormick, to Walnut Grove, the McCormick old home. Harold brought along his second wife, Ganna Walska, a famous Polish opera singer who he had married after divorcing Edith Rockefeller. I would’ve liked to have been a spy at that dinner table! What did Irene serve for dinner? Did she hire servants? Were my relatives considered country bumpkins by the citified McCormicks?

Unlike his older brother, Cyrus McCormick, Jr, Harold McCormick hadn’t visited the Valley much. He didn’t know my family. He’d only journeyed to Steeles Tavern this time because Irene had written to Harold’s mother, Nettie McCormick, the inventor’s widow, insisting that Harold make a trek to Steeles Tavern after taking over leadership of the family business. After all, Irene’s son, Rush, had recently assumed the responsibility of running Walnut Grove, taking over from his father, Walter Searson. Harold and Rush needed to meet each other! Were the two families still at ease with one another by the time Harold dined with Irene? What did they talk about? Did Irene show off her house, hoping the scions of the McCormick and Rockefeller families would be impressed? Let’s hope not!

Upstairs later in Irene’s house, now the Steeles Tavern Manor, we unpack and settle into our rooms. Laura curls up with Flannery O’Conner—or is it Jane Austen? Christopher writes in his journal. Is he recording his visit here? Or working on a sci-fi fantasy novel? When he takes a bath, I resist the urge to peek at his binder. There are rules one must follow! I only spy on dead people!

I sit in the fancy armchair and look out the window as the sun drifts toward the skyline. I find myself ambivalent about the relative grandeur of this house. Why on earth did Irene feel compelled to build a house this big? She clearly didn’t need it. Her children were grown. Walter wrote to Nettie McCormick that he was afraid Irene would loose her inheritance, putting too much money into her new house. I tend to agree with him. Why did she sink so much of her inheritance into an enterprise that would offer her no income? What did she expect to live on after Walter retired? Because she didn’t build the house to run as a boarding house! She took in boarders because she needed money. She needed money because she sank her small fortune into a big house just as her husband retired—and then died in a tragic car accident. Irene Steele Searson had the misfortune (and perhaps the lack of foresight) to build an expensive house just as the bottom fell out of the real estate market. What was she thinking?

I leave Laura and Christopher reading in their comfortable rooms at the Steeles Tavern Manor and walk back down the hill again to the crossroads to take a better look at Marryatte Steele’s old tavern. Aunt Jayne still has the bell that once rang to announce the stagecoach’s arrival, prompting the cooks to stir the fire and have food ready for the hungry travelers. After the rough roads they had encountered from Lexington or Staunton, the riders must’ve been grateful for such a lovely place to relax. Aunt Mildred was told that people could step from the stagecoach directly onto the porch of the tavern without muddying their boots.

Although still graceful, Marryatte’s tavern needs some love. Someone has recently bought the building, and I hope they fix it up, because it’s bordering on derelict now. I’m dying to see inside the front room where travelers would’ve gathered. Ignoring the sign advising trespassers to stay off the dilapidated porch, I climb up and peek into the windows. Using a flashlight to fight back the shadows, I see a marvelous paneled room with high ceilings. I’m so impressed! Travelers would have been quite comfortable here! After their arduous and bumpy ride, I imagine them sitting in this room at table (covered with a white linen tablecloth) to have tea or perhaps lunch, or to simply lean against the wide, polished wood bar and order a whiskey to knock the dryness from their mouths. (The Steeles would be serving alcohol by then!) While the tired travelers relaxed and chatted with their (nosey) hosts, the horses would be fed or replaced with another team. Some people might spend the night.

As I’m fantasizing about the stage coach travelers, behind me a dog begins to bark, and I turn to see a man exiting his trailer home, advancing quickly towards me. He boasts a long beard (almost down to his waist) and wears no shoes. The man obviously wants to know what I’m doing snooping around the building. The yapping dog joins him by the gate.

“I’m a Steele!” I shout to the man.

He stops, nods curtly, and then waves his hand dismissively in the air before turning on his heels to go back inside the trailer, the noisy canine following him. I’m torn about his departure since I’d like to ask him a few questions. But then again, it’s growing dark and I’m not so sure about the long beard or the hyper dog. However, now I’ve learned that being a Steele might be my trump card for trespassing. Note to self.

Over the next few trips to Steeles Tavern, I would use this strategy more than once. Sometimes I came alone, but usually I brought family—my husband, Brian, or our children, Laura, Heather, or Christopher, but also my Aunt Jayne, and my brother, Jack.

(another break here)

On the next trip to Steele’s Tavern, Laura brings along her movie camera again. This time, we’re looking for the location of the first tavern. Although long demolished, Aunt Mildred claims the original tavern stood near a big spring, which is covered now. One fresh water spring was located on the northeastern corner of the crossroads in Steeles Tavern. There’s a filling station on that lot now. If I can find follow the original pathway of that spring, I might have a good idea about where David and Janet’s cabin once stood, and maybe their son, Robert’s home, which was probably close to the first tavern that belonged to Robert son, the soldier David Steele.

While hunting for the spring—snooping—and perhaps ready to trespass (but we’ll never know for sure) we meet Carol and Bob Springer, who own one of the oldest homes in the area. We’re standing by their mailbox, poking around in the ditch (because we have no idea how to find the path of a defunct spring) when a SUV pulls up in the driveway, and a friendly middle-aged woman rolls down her window and leans out of the car.

“I’m a Steele!” I tell her.

That’s all it takes. Carol and her husband, Bob, laugh with us. Carol loves that we’re looking for clues about our ancestors. She tells me that one of my cousins is good friends with her daughter. We learn that there’s an excellent chance that Carol and Bob’s house incorporates an early Steele home, maybe even Robert’s house. I am thrilled when she invites us inside! See? Snooping pays off!

They’ve been out all day, and so Bob goes off to attend to some chores while Carol leads us into the house. Laura films the interior.

It’s obvious that Carol loves her home. “The walls in this house are over two feet thick,” she tells us. “The walls keep the place cool in the summer and warm in the winter. But the best thing about the house is the kitchen. No matter how cold it is outside, my toes are always cozy in here.”

She ushers us into a kitchen that boasts an absolutely enormous hearth. Could this fireplace have once belonged to David and Janet, or perhaps their son, Robert? Carol thinks the kitchen was a separate room that was connected to the rest of the house at some point since the added bricks on the outside of the house don’t match up. Since the first tavern that belonging to the Revolutionary soldier, David Steele, was dismantled years ago, who else could’ve lived here if not the first David Steele and his wife, Janet, or perhaps their son, Robert? Could I be standing in David and Janet’s original home? Did Robert build an extension onto the original house? Part of sleuthing is being open to what might’ve been. I can’t go back in time to spy on my ancestors to see if they lived in these very rooms, but I do believe that it’s highly likely this was their home. Score!

Next to the kitchen we discover a parlor room with another fireplace, smaller than the kitchen hearth. Couches surround the fireplace, and next to the TV, steps lead to the upstairs. I don’t ask to snoop around up there. That would be crossing a line. But I love this parlor room—the absolute snugness created by the thick stone walls and the wood floor. Even though the house is situated relatively close to the road, the deep-set windows keep out the traffic noise. When I mention this to Carol, she concurs. “We never hear any noise from the road.”

We tour the property. I look across the southern slope of the lawn toward the creek where tree limbs hang over the water. The fields and woods are much the same as when my ancestors lived here, except the virgin timbers would’ve offered wider trunks than these slim trees. The valley boasted enormous chestnut trees back then, but much of the land remained fields, not dense woods like you might expect in a reputed “wilderness.” Native tribes who hunted in the Valley kept the land clear of trees by burning fields in order to entice the herds of bison, who in turn nibbled the grasses down as they meandered across the Valley making trodden-down trails that they returned to each year. I walk into the field and look all around. No housing developments or shopping centers have been added over the years. Whew! I picture Janet’s fertile garden down by the creek, sprouting squashes, tomatoes, corn, and potatoes (all plants from the Americas) situated in a patch of full sun with easy access to water. Laura, who has inherited the red hair of the Steels, has been working on an organic farm this summer. I picture her standing in the garden with mud up to her calves. It’s not much of stretch for me to imagine her living here like Janet.

We take a look at the corncrib that has recently been renovated, the massive interior beams sanded to expose the original wood. The building makes a cozy one-room cottage now, complete with bed and bath. I stand on the wide-planked floors, made from the huge timbers of an earlier virgin woods, and imagine my ancestors standing among the corn husks. They seem to linger here, their presence palpable to me.

Up on top of the hill cattle are grazing. Cyrus McCormick’s original harvesting device was demonstrated in the Steele’s oat field in 1831. Is that the field? Was the crowd that watched that first harvester operate gathered with John and Eliza Steele up there?

Near neighbors and close relations, the Steeles and McCormick families were entwined for generations. (The families lost touch after Cyrus McCormick Jr died in the 1930s.) The inventor Cyrus McCormick Sr grew up close to the Steele’s on a farm called Walnut Grove—the same farm where my grandmother, Edith, was raised after the McCormick family moved to Chicago and Edith’s English father, Walter Searson, came to Virginia to run the McCormick farm.

The McCormick harvesting device radically altered agriculture all over the world. The last new harvesting device to make such an impact was the scythe! Invented around 500 BC, the scythe appeared in Europe during the 12th century, replacing the sickle. Until Cyrus’s invention, grain was harvested manually by human reapers mowing down standing rows of grain, slicing with a hand-swung scythe. The reapers were followed by binders who gathered and tied the crop into bales that were carted away to be stored in barns. That’s how my family had farmed. You needed a large family and cooperative neighbors to bring in a big harvest. Even wealthy farmers had to limit their crop, growing only what they could reap. Then came Cyrus McCormick’s horse-drawn device that could do the work of six men wielding scythes or twenty-four with sickles.

Cyrus McCormick changed farming forever. He built, field-tested, remodeled, and demonstrated the world's first mechanical reaper to the public, first on his farm and then in a field of oats on the Steele’s farm. He then moved production to Chicago and became wildly successful. Even so, he spent years defending patents in court, and Eliza Steele testified that she had watched the demonstration on her field in 1831. “We thought it was a right smart machine that wouldn’t amount to much.”

Behind us, we hear a plaintive, heart-rending shout and turn to see Bob Springer standing by the open gate to a large vegetable garden. Carol runs toward him. Something awful has happened to the garden. We hurry up the incline. It takes us a few minutes to take in the situation. The plants in the garden are completely mauled. The corn and squash and tomatoes have been uprooted, torn apart, shredded and trampled flat. The wooden sweet pea trellis has been demolished. The metal tomato ladders crushed. Mud is everywhere. Bob looks stricken, speechless and pale. What has happened here?

The cattle! They have pushed through the gate and trampled the garden! Oh, my gosh! Poor man! Those pesky cattle looked so idyllic grazing up on the hill, but they’ve shown their true colors now! Somehow they discovered the gate ajar (or did they push it open?), and destroyed Bob’s work of the entire season. Bob hasn’t said a word since his first shout when he discovered the carnage. Now he turns and tromps back to the house, shoulder’s slumped, obviously despondent.

Carol shakes her head. “He loved that garden,” she tells us. “That’s why we moved here. He wanted to farm for a living, but since that didn’t work out, he has made a hobby of it. Gardening’s his passion!”

We feel like we’re intruding, which of course, we are. So we let Carroll go comfort her husband and head back Steeles Tavern Manor.

I’m thinking about Bob Springer’s sad garden as I try to fall asleep that night. Some things can’t be righted. Bob can’t put those plants back in the ground and expect to produce any vegetables. He’s going to have to cut his losses.

Irene had to cut her losses too. She did the best she could after loosing both her husband and her inheritance. Cousin Dot, whose mother, Fair, grew up in this house (raised by her grandmother, Irene) claimed that Irene wanted to be able to accommodate her seven adult children when they came to visit. She’d grown up in that small, old, brick home that had known three generations. She’d raised a family in the McCormick’s old farmhouse. She wanted a place of her own.

Irene turned out to have a sixth sense about her children needing shelter. During the Depression, Aunt Mildred and her family came back to Steeles Tavern to live in one of Irene’s rental houses. My grandparents, Edith and Erskine Hawpe, moved into another rental house. Cousin Dot moved in with her grandparents, when her mother, Fair, took a job in Richmond. Rush ran Walnut Grove, but another son, Calvert, built a log cabin on family property. Hard times had come to the Steeles.

Irene didn't live long enough to see the housing market recover. Since she died without a will, her son, Rush, sold the house (for a song) to a man who happened to be passing through town. Then he sold off his mother’s possessions. Neighbors who had never been inside the big white-pillared Southern manse, trampled through the rooms on a rainy day, tracking mud through the rooms and purchasing items that had been in the family for generations. Decades after that sad and unfortunate rainy day, my grandmother still puzzled about her brother’s decision to seek off the family’s possessions. “We couldn’t bid on things because we couldn’t afford them,” she said with anguish. To me, it was yet another southern tale of lost money.

I grew up on tales of lost money. Uncle Kemp, my father’s namesake, had his entire estate eaten up by lawyer’s fees after he died. Walter Searson’s prosperous family in Stamford, England, left nothing to their American nieces and nephews, even though there were no Searson offspring left in England. Walter lost his mills. Irene lost her house. In fact, Irene and her brother, Frank, lost the whole town of Steeles Tavern. In my room at the Steele Tavern Manor, I pull the comfortable coverlet up to my chin and can’t help feeling sorry for Irene.

After a sumptuous breakfast the next morning at Steeles Tavern Manor, I wander down the hill alone again (in case I need to do any sleuth/snoop/spying) and take a look at the red brick, two-story house where my great-grandmother, Irene, grew up. I’m keenly interested in this building. When Route 11 widened, the house was moved to this spot. Irene’s brother, Frank, couldn’t bare to tear it down. The place looks forlorn—the bricks seem to want to drip off the building, but its former glory has be hiding in there somewhere, right? I try to picture the house of my grandmother’s childhood as described by Aunt Mildred with a white fence and large trees and copious flowers and grapevines, along with the proverbial hitching post and stile (steps that lead over a fence that people climb but not animals). I can’t muster up the proper image. It just looks sad to me now.

In 1818, John Steele built this house for his wife, Eliza, who wrote joyfully to her sister-in-law Jenny McCormick in Kentucky: “It looks as though I will have my own house in the spring.” Jenny was David Steele’s eldest child, born before David became disabled at the Battle of Guilford. She married Cyrus McCormick’s uncle and moved to Kentucky. As a young man, Cyrus journeyed to Kentucky to see her. Jenny sent a slave back to David, upon his request, to help his aging wife, Polly.

John Steele brought his bride Eliza to Steeles Tavern to live with his parents in 1815. Were they living in Carol and Bob Springer’s house before moving into their new brick home? How gleeful she must’ve been to have a fashionable and modern brick home that she could call her own. Eliza and John raised twelve children in this house. Twelve!

Eliza grew up in Scottsville on the eastern side of the Blue Ridge. John and Eliza probably met while John was studying law there. Scottsville served as a hub of commerce at a time when rivers were the primary means of travel in the colonies, and was far more civilized than Steeles Tavern. The first graded road came through Rockfish Gap, connecting Augusta farmers to the James River in Scottsville, but that was years after John and Eliza married. When Eliza moved to Steeles Tavern, she moved to the backwoods, visiting her family by traveling over difficult and dangerous roads.

Eliza and John’s 1818 brick house is one of the earliest brick homes to be built in the Valley. A similar two-story brick house was built by John’s sister, Polly, in Greenville, who was married to another Robert Steele—not my ancestor, but a grandson of Janet and David Steele. I found out about Robert and Polly’s brick house in Greenville from Michael Shutty’s, “An Old House in Greenville, Virginia: A Study of Human Intention in Vernacular Architecture.” This book led me to Greenville where a branch of the Steeles lived near the Hawpes, my father’s paternal side of the family.

But I’m not ready to visit Greenville yet. I haven’t finished with Steeles Tavern. I circle John and Eliza’s brick house, keeping my distance. I’m not sure I want to intrude on the people that live there now. There’s a sadness for me hanging over this house. John and Eliza’s son, David, and his wife Mollie, raised my great-grandmother Irene and her brother, Frank, in this house—but they also lost three of their children to illnesses here. These children are buried in the cemetery at Mt. Carmel Presbyterian Church just up the road (with many of our Steele and Hawpe family members who lived in the area). As I stood and looked at their graves, I felt sickened. How could any parent survive that? Their father, David, died five years later. In her later years, Irene’s mother Mollie lived as a widow in this house, bedridden with rheumatism. Every day after school, my grandmother and her siblings visited their grandmother in this house. Even though they lived at the McCormick’s farm, Walnut Grove, they chose to attend school in Steeles Tavern so they could see her. Mollie’s housekeeper dutifully kept molasses cookies in a tin box for them.

Michael Shutty’s book about the Robert Steele house in Greenville has opened wide the world of Valley homes for me. Architecture can reveal so much about people. Settlers in the Valley tried to build houses that resembled the ones back home. This was true of the Germans, the English, and the Ulster Scots. As they emigrated to a new land (to get away from the old, repressive environment of their former lives) the early settlers sought to bring their languages, customs, neighbors, churches, extended family—and homes with them. Who wouldn’t? At first settlers threw up crude log cabins. Although they borrowed the idea of building with logs from the Swedes, they used the functional floor plans of their Old World homes. These cabins felt familiar to the people living there. Settlers usually didn’t build their own homes. They hired experienced craftsman who built from memory and knew principles of joinery and design. The style the Ulster Scots were going for resembled the stone cottages from their homeland—with a chimney on the outside, a door on the front of the house off to one side, a single window beside that door, and a chimney on the outside of the house. (German’s built the chimney on the inside wall.) A cabin might have two or three floors, one room to each floor. The cellar on the bottom floor could be built into a bank; the main living space, with a fireplace and table, was where the parents and small children slept; the older children bunked in the attic, sharing space with baskets and blankets and other gear that needed storage.If they had the finances, they might build a second home, perhaps a hall-and-parlor design, which was not an uncommon style for a Scots-Irish home. Hall-and-parlor houses had a front doorway that opened to a large room (called the hall) with a fireplace for cooking on one side, and a stairway at the opposite corner that led upstairs. There was also a parlor with a smaller fireplace next to the hall on the main floor. (This floor plan reminds me of Carol and Bob Springer’s home.) At first all the houses were built of wood or stone. Brick houses arrived around 1820.

Brick houses signaled a transition in Valley architecture. Bricks meant taming the wilderness! Becoming safe! Even a struggling farmer put clapboards over logs. Eliza and John’s house reflected the change of attitudes. (So did the Robert Steele house in Greenville, an English hall-and-parlor design.) Log cabins continued to travel west with each new wave of settlers because they were relatively easy and cheap to build. Back in the Valley people shifted toward a more English style of home-building. Crude log cabins and hall-and-parlor designs gave way to the Georgian’s symmetry and balance, although not without some changes. People tweaked the Georgian floor plans, trying to balance Old World expectations with the emerging new culture of the Valley. People built half-Georgians, a smaller, less symmetrical version of the Georgian. People also changed the floor plan of what might look like a typical Georgian home. The interior of a house shaped a family’s lifestyle, which is why floor patterns show how people actually lived. The hall-and-parlor home reflected a communal lifestyle. People congregated in the large hall room to prepare food and socialize. When architecture shifted away from log cabins and hall-and-parlor designs, people built houses to look Georgian on the outside, but kept the function of a hall-and-parlor design. In other words, they kept the outside of the Georgian house looking English, but they wanted the interior to remind them of home!

But why did people build an English-looking exterior? Weren’t they hostile to the Crown? Political power and land ownership had long resided with the English. The Germans tended to cooperate with the English, and the Ulster Scots had long resented the Crown, but both ethnicities knew they needed to get along with the English in order to thrive in the New World. Over time, the German, Scots-Irish and English cultures melded, creating a common American tradition (as reflected in the architecture of the Frontier Culture Museum in Staunton). But landowners still wanted to emulate the English social structure, placing themselves firmly on top. In the early Virginia colony, the English were the people in power, the landed aristocracy, the educated, the way up and out of the second-class citizen status everyone was trying to escape. The Steeles certainly had such upwardly aspirations. They built one of the first brick houses, two mills and several taverns, and of course, Irene’s fancy home that so embodies the fulfillment of an immigrant’s dream that its as if Irene built the house to put to rest the ghostly longings of our ancestors.

(pause again: stretch, maybe look at the window)

I’m spying on the brick house now from the shadows of the trees across the street. I just don’t feel like snooping around this house anymore. I don’t intend to creep closer, or slightly lean into the yard in the hopes that someone will ask me what I want. I see a middle-aged woman in the house, and when she passes in front of the open door, I step back, suddenly shy. Perhaps it’s the weariness in which moves and hangs her head while sweeping off the stoop, but I don’t want to pry. There are toys scattered in the lawn. Laundry draped across a folding chair. I imagine her as a working mother. This might be her day off and she has much to do. I can’t bring myself to bother her.

Maybe it’s not just the woman that I don’t want to disturb. It’s the memories of bygone days that I want to stay fixed in my mind. If I glance inside the door, I’m likely to see that the interior of the house breaths a perpetual sigh. The paint might be peeling. The wood floors desperate for a good sanding to renew that old shine. Someday the house might be fixed up, like the author Michael Shutty fixed up the Robert Steele brick house in Greenville. Then I’ll come back and knock on the door and tell the occupants that I’m a Steele. But for now, I’d rather imagine Eliza’s joy over her new digs, and my grandmother, Edith, and her siblings, loaded with books and lunch pails, stumbling through the front door after school to munch on molasses cookies.

Let’s return to the first immigrant, David Steele, who died when his wife, Janet, was expecting their infant son, Thomas. David Steele died about ten years after settling in the Valley, but as I mentioned, he left a legal will, dictating his specific expectations about how his family should proceed without him, and how he wanted his material goods to be distributed after he died.

We can learn a great deal about David and Janet Steele from David’s last will and testament. In addition to a huge spread of land that he left to his son, my ancestor, Robert Steele, David also left behind at least four horses, three cows, and some iron tools that included a plough, tackle, and hand saw. That he farmed with iron tools set him apart from the more superstition farmers who shared a low opinion of iron, preferring wooden tools that would not defile the soil. Perhaps this alone marks him as an educated man, more willing to adopt the latest technology, or maybe he’d just never farmed before and didn’t know any better! But the iron tools, animals, and land show him to be a man of some means and property.

He gives his son, Robert, the farm, knowing he wasn’t old enough to run it alone. He didn’t mention his son, Samuel, probably because Samuel had already been given his inheritance since he owned a farm nearby. Nathaniel received a horse and half of the iron tools, but he, too, already owned his own land. A teenage Robert received the farm and was to keep the rest of the tools, including the iron plough and tackle and the hand saw. Two of David’s married daughters were remembered in the will. This was not always the case for female offspring. David gave his married daughters, Martha Teas and Isabella McClure, each five shillings. He cared about the education of his children, including the girls. Since his wife, Janet, was to oversee their children’s education (along with their son, Nathaniel), she was probably educated herself, which meant that she could read and write. David also made allowances for Janet to remarry. He instructed his family that she was to remain on the farm as long as she and her new husband don’t abuse the place. He did not, however, leave Janet the farm.

The non-family names on the will can tell us a lot about David Steele. Sam Doak and Robert Ramsey, both well-respected men in the community, were supposed to watch over the family. (Janet would take them to court to make herself solely responsible for her young children.) William W. Steele, George Breckenridge, and Robert Alexander signed the will. The Breckenridge and Alexander families originated from Ulster where their families could’ve been neighbors or kin. A little digging into these five men and I gather more information on David Steele’s life—who he associated with and how he was connected to a larger community.

The college-educated Presbyterian minister Robert Alexander founded the classical grammar school, Augusta Academy, for the sons of landowners in the Valley. The Scots-Irish placed high value on education. George Breckenridge and Samuel Doak, both mentioned in David’s will, sent sons to this prestigious school. (Augusta Academy became Liberty Hall Academy and then Washington and Lee University.)

The Breckenridge family was to become a famous American political family. George Breckenridge’s great-nephew, John Breckinridge, became Attorney General of the United States under Thomas Jefferson. John C. Breckinridge, a vice president of the United States, ran for president against Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas on a pro-slavery platform. (John C. Breckenridge’s great-grandson was the American actor, and drag queen Bunny Breckinridge, played by

Bill Murray in Tim Burton's 1994 biopic Ed Wood.)

(As I write about David’s neighbors and friends, I begin to run through my mind all the various neighbors I’ve claimed as my own, or not claimed, and all the friends and family members that might come up on a quick Internet search. Oh, my! Talk about sleuth, snoop and spying. In the future, we will be laid bare for all to see!)

Samuel Doak raised five sons and two daughters in the Valley. The old Doak stone house was built to be used as a fort. Samuel’s son, Rev. Samuel Doak, became a famous cleric and educator, delivering a rousing sermon before the Battle of Kings Mountain that some credit as changing the direction of the Revolutionary War.

“Brave men, you are not unacquainted with battle. Your hands have already been taught to war and your fingers to fight. You have wrested these beautiful valleys of the Holston and Watauga from the savage hand. Will you tarry now until the other enemy carries fire and sword to your very doors? No, it shall not be.”

Later in life, Doak freed his own slaves and advocated for the immediate abolition of slavery in the new country. People are complicated.

After David’s death, Janet married the land-owner and farmer, William Smith. Who was this William Smith? A deed dated 1742 indicates that the Smith family obtained a land grant from the English Crown on the outskirts of what would become Greenville. Smith also purchased acreage on the head branch of the South River, originally part of Beverly’s grant. In his will dated 1756, William Smith left his “plantation” to his stepsons, Robert and Thomas Steele. Thomas would later purchase the land that became Greenville.

Janet moved six miles north to her new husband’s farm onto land that included the parcel that would become the town of Greenville. She brought along her teenage son, Robert, my ancestor, and the new baby, Thomas, born after David died. As a young man, Robert lived in a wigwam near his mother’s cabin and raised horses (before moving back to his father’s land to raise even more horses). Janet also brought two of her younger daughters with her to Greenville, Janet and Isabella, although Rachel decided to remain with her older brother, Andrew, who adopted her. Janet successfully reared eight children, four of them in Smith’s small cabin. Some of her fifty-two grandchildren helped to fill the Valley, while other grandchildren and great-grandchildren spread out across America, joining successive waves of immigrants from the Valley.

Greenville wasn’t a town when Janet moved there. But the trustees of the town recognized its suitability. They were prosperous men with large holdings in livestock, personal property, and slaves. (These men included my father’s paternal German ancestors, the Hawpes.) Transporting goods and livestock over poor roads proved costly. The prosperous trustees wanted a local marketplace. Flanked by hills with a river flowing right through town, Greenville proved a prized location

Adam Hawpe established a tannery in Greenville (and sold it in 1805). I try to picture a small town with a tannery—the burnt odor of smoking vats, with a wood pile on one end of the yard and the work sheds on the other end; fire pits close to a river full of debris. (The tannery had Steeles Tavern would’ve been much the same.) Add a creaking mill with the roar of water pouring over the wheel. Droves of cattle and horses coming through town. The streets either muddy or dusty with hard, deep ruts. When possible, everyone built their homes on the street for convenience, adding no paint, and not bothering much about upkeep but living with broken windows, warped doors, leaky roofs, dust flying indoors and of course, swarms of flies. Few houses had grass or shrubs or even trees for shade. Cinders from fires, smoke seeping into clothes and hair. Normally folks kept domestic animals like hogs and chickens in their yards that would also be littered with wood chips, food scrapes and animals dung. It wasn’t until the 1850s that concerns like cleanliness and beauty around houses became fashionable, and people began to dig garbage pits, fence in their yard, and whitewash houses. This is the picture in my mind as we head toward modern-day Greenville.

I’m determined to find Janet’s cabin! My older brother, Jack, and my dad’s sister, Aunt Jayne, have come to the Valley with me. We’re gong to spend the night at the old Hawpe farm, which is now an equestrian stay-over that offers horse owners a motel when traveling with a horse. We take Rt 11 six miles north from Steeles Tavern. When we reach Greenville, we hang a right and see a large, two-story house on our left near a river. This is the old Smith house, which served as a tavern and post office over two hundred years ago—the last coach stop before Steeles Tavern. Next door to the big house is a one room log cabin.

“That’s got to be it!” Jack shouts

The tidy, picturesque cabin looks in great shape. From Shutty’s book I know that the cabin was constructed in the Irish style: a door on the left front of the house with two windows to the right and a chimney on the outside wall. It’s reputed to be the oldest building in Augusta County.

I jump out of the car and eagerly trespass onto someone else’s property, feeling entitled because the house once belonged to my family two-hundred years ago. Aunt Jayne eyes me warily from the road. Neither she or my brother, Jack, join me in the yard.

The cabin is crammed full of old furniture—desks and chest-of-drawers and lots of chairs, all pilled on top of each other. There would be no place to turn around if I was to go inside, which I’m itching to do. But I hesitate. I’m snooping around the back of the cabin when the owner appears.

“Can I help you?” she asks me.

Kathleen, an attractive, no-nonsense woman in her forties with long, thick, red hair swept on top of her head, finds me standing in the tall weeds, peering up the ramshackle ladder into the cabin’s open back door. I have to say that she’s not exactly surprised to find a complete stranger straining to look through her cabin window. She nods to my brother and aunt, whose presence at the edge of the yard adds some slight respectability to my trespass.

“This is Janet Steele’s cabin, isn’t it?” I ask her, without even trying to make introductions.

The woman shifts gears seamlessly. “She married William Smith, I believe. This was their home, yes.”

“We found it!” I call to Jack. Aunt Jayne nods, satisfied, and Jack slowly makes his way toward Kathleen and the cabin.

We introduce ourselves and explain our business there. Kathleen nods as if it’s perfectly natural to find a Steele descendant trespassing on her property, hunting for Janet’s cabin.

“Well, I guess you found it,” she says, and invites us into the big house for tea.

Kathleen’s partner, David, a lanky, bearded man, joins us in the kitchen, a cozy room full of usable antiques either painted or stripped of paint and in varying conditions. Most of the furniture is pushed back against the walls or crowded into corners, except for the enormous kitchen table that occupies the center floor. A chain of old keys dangles above a 1950 GE stove. An old Maytag wringer washer sits by the back door. I stir my tea and then run my fingers across the thick oaken boards of the table, worn and cracked with age.

We talk history. David shows me a square-headed nail as proof that the house was built before 1830, closer to 1800 he thinks, when the cabin no longer served the needs of the family. I ask David about the curious little room off the kitchen, circling the outside wall of the chimney, stuck like a closet onto the porch. He explains how neighbors used to come to the tavern to collect their mail. Mounted on horseback, they’d ride up to the window of the little room and slip money into the lockbox before picking up their letters. He still has the lockbox in the basement. The activity of the postal room was kept separate from the rest of the house, but the heat of the chimney bricks assured that the small room remained warm. Kathleen rises from the table, remembering something she wants to show me, and tells me that a number of people researching the Smith family have stopped over the years. She reaches into a drawer of the desk by the wall and offers names and addresses. Then she pulls out a massive green book with twelve-thousand-plus pages entitled, “The History of Greenville, Virginia” by John Brake.

“If you want to know about your family,” she says, sliding into the chair again. “You should go see the author of this book. John Brake knows everything that ever happened in Greenville.”

Back in the equestrian motel on the old Hawpe family farm where we are staying, I remember where I’d heard John Brake’s name before. Near the end of his life, my father had grown interested in genealogy. After Dad died, I discovered a cordial and rather informative letter from John Brake among Dad’s papers. I had wondered about John Brake. How did he know so much about my ancestors? I decided that I needed to meet him to find out. Time for more snooping!

I should add here that I have snooped around in many places since I started researching my relatives. When I was living in the Chicago area, I talked myself into a private library to see some McCormick papers. I also toured a lovely and expensive restaurant—during business hours when the kitchen was hopping—because the building had once been a McCormick home. I gained access to these places by showing up, and then explaining that I was doing some research on a writing project. No one asked me any more questions. On a business trip with my husband, we once caught a commuter train from London to Stamford, England where my great-grandfather, Walter Searson’s family had lived. The taxi driver knew the Searson house and introduced us to the present owners. The young mother, who had just returned from an operation at the hospital, insisted we come inside and graciously gave us a tour of the spacious beautiful farmhouse—far nicer than Irene’s white-pollard home in the Valley. The taxi driver then informed me that a cousin-by-marriage lived nearby. He rang another door, shouting, “You have an American cousin in my car!” Soon my husband and I were sitting at this elderly gentleman’s dining room table looking at family pictures.He kissed me on the check when we left.

So I didn’t mind knocking on John Brake’s door. But Aunt Jayne and my brother, Jack, hadn’t signed on for days and days of snooping and sleuthing and spying on unsuspecting people. It was time to take them home. I decided to call Brake and see if I could set up another time to come see him. “Sure!” he shouted over the phone. “We’d love to have you! The more the merrier!”

So I brought Laura and her camera along when I returned to Greenville. I had learned that Brake has a reputation for knowing everyone whose ever lived in Greenville. He’s a walking genealogical encyclopedia! A local historian par excellence! The Yoda of sleuthing! Genealogy snoops knocked on his door all the time. They came to sit at his feet and learn the secrets of spying on the dead. So when we arrived, John Brake and and his wife, Mary Ellen, warmly invited us into their comfortable home to “sit for a bit.” We ended up staying four days.

Contact me: barbarahawpelewis@gmail.com

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