March 28, 2024

Richard Sloan House and Creek Mountain

3 min read
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In southwestern Hampshire County, the Sloan–Parker House and farm are located in a rural, agricultural area of the Mill Creek valley. Patterson Creek Mountain, a forested anticlinal mountain ridge, rises to the west of the Mill Creek valley, while the anticlinal Mill Creek Mountain’s forested western rolling foothills rise to the valley’s east. The South Branch Potomac River can be found 4.4 miles (7.1 kilometres) east of the house, over Mill Creek Mountain. The house and its accompanying farm are about 0.75 mile (1.21 km) east of the unincorporated settlement of Junction on the Northwestern Turnpike (also known as US 50 and WV 28). (Also known as Moorefield Junction). Purgitsville Pike (also known as US 220 and WV 28) meets the Northwestern Turnpike at Junction, which is centred around and named for it (concurrently US 50 and US 220 westward to Knobly Mountain and concurrently US 50 and WV 28 eastward to Romney).

The Sloan–Parker House is located immediately south of the Northwestern Turnpike on a hillside. Mill Creek flows 575 feet (175 metres) to the north of the home, flowing west to east. To the north, Mill Creek is joined by an unknown ephemeral stream that runs slightly west of the home. At Mechanicsburg, Mill Creek flows east through the Mechanicsburg Gap in Mill Creek Mountain before joining the South Branch Potomac River. The Mill Creek valley and the land on which the Sloan–Parker House stands were once part of the Northern Neck Proprietary, a grant of land given to seven of Charles II’s followers in 1649 during the English Interregnum by the exiled king. Charles II eventually succeeded to the English throne with the Restoration in 1660.

 In 1662, he renewed the Northern Neck Proprietary grant, altered it in 1669, and in 1672, he renewed it again, this time in favour of original grantees Thomas Colepeper, 2nd Baron Colepeper, and Henry Bennet, 1st Earl of Arlington. Lord Colepeper got a new charter for the complete land grant from James II in 1688, after Bennet sold his portion to him in 1681.

The Northern Neck Proprietary went to Katherine’s son Thomas Fairfax, 6th Lord Fairfax of Cameron, in 1719, following the deaths of Lord Colepeper, his wife Margaret, and their daughter Katherine. Lord Fairfax attempted to persuade European settlers to live the sparsely populated western regions of his Northern Neck Proprietary as tensions with Native Americans began to diminish. Beginning in the mid-eighteenth century, the Mill Creek valley was one of the earliest places of present-day Hampshire County to be colonised by Europeans.

Richard Sloan and his wife Charlotte Van Horn Sloan were the first owners of the original fieldstone section of the Sloan–Parker House, which was built around 1790. Richard Sloan was born in the Irish province of Ulster, in the county of Monaghan. Sloan went from Great Britain to the United States on a passenger ship following the American Revolutionary War.

Despite having paid his passage price in advance of his trip, he was charged again when he arrived. He became an indentured servant of David Van Horn after he was unable to make the second payment. Sloan eloped with David Van Horn’s daughter Charlotte after spending many months with the Van Horn family, and the couple moved to Baltimore for a short time.

They opted to migrate to Old Fields in Hardy County after seeing healthy cattle there. Sloan and his wife arrived in Romney on their way to Old Fields and decided to make their home in Hampshire County. They then relocated to their property in the Mill Creek valley, where the Sloan–Parker House now stands, 7 miles (11 km) southwest of Romney. Sloan and his wife recruited men to quarry the native fieldstone and lay the stonework for the two-story stone residence.

Richard and Charlotte Sloan had 10 children in total (four girls and six boys), and the huge house provided plenty space for the family to nurture them Natural Stone Paving suppliers near me. The valley’s fertility attracted the first residents. During this time, Job Parker, a direct progenitor of the Parker family who eventually purchased the Sloan–Parker House, established himself in the Mill Creek valley.

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