Overview
Valley View is a mid-19th-century Greek Revival residence and farm overlooking the South Branch Potomac River northwest of Romney, West Virginia, United States. The house is atop a promontory where Depot Valley joins the South Branch Potomac River valley. The Valley View property was part of the South Branch Survey of the Northern Neck Proprietary, a large tract that was inherited by Thomas Fairfax, 6th Lord Fairfax of Cameron, in 1719. It was settled by John Collins and his family in 1749, and acquired by the Parsons family before 1772. The Valley View house was built by James Parsons Jr. in 1855. After the Civil War, Parsons' widow sold the farm to Charles Harmison. His wife, Elizabeth Harmison, inspired by her childhood Virginia home, Western View, and the scenic South Branch Potomac River views, named the farm Valley View.
The most recent of a series of owners, the Mayhew family, bought the property in 1979. Valley View's current proprietors, Robert and Kim Mayhew, have restored the historic residence and grounds. The house at Valley View is a two-story brick structure with a rectangular architectural plan. The front entrance is covered by a small portico, topped with a pediment supported by wooden Doric columns. The rear of the house, with a two-story wood porch stretching across it, faces the South Branch Potomac River valley and Mill Creek Mountain. Each of the original eight large rooms of the 1855 structure contains a fireplace framed by a wooden mantelpiece with classical elements. The original windows, wooden trim, and materials in the main section of the house are intact.
The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2012 as a locally significant example of Greek Revival architecture.
Geography and setting
, seen from the South Branch Potomac River south of Valley View Island The Valley View house is about northwest of downtown Romney, atop a promontory (known locally as the Yellow Banks) where Depot Valley joins the South Branch Potomac River valley. Depot Valley runs from West Sioux Lane in Romney to Valley View, and an unnamed tributary of Big Run flows north along its bottom. Depot Valley Road parallels the stream. Depot Valley is named for Romney Depot, located at the end of a former spur of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) South Branch line near the intersection of present-day West Sioux Lane and Depot Valley Road. A post office operated there from 1928 until 1937, when its mail was routed through Romney; it is assumed that Valley View farm used it, since it was south of the house. The island is ringed by forests, with agricultural fields in its center.
Both mountains are covered with Appalachian – Blue Ridge forests of hardwoods and pine.
Royal land grant and Collins family ownership
The land upon which Valley View is located was originally part of the Northern Neck Proprietary, a land grant that the exiled Charles II awarded to seven of his supporters in 1649 during the English Interregnum. Following the Restoration of Charles II to the throne in 1660, he renewed the Northern Neck Proprietary grant in 1662, revised it in 1669, and again renewed the original grant favoring the original grantees Thomas Colepeper, 2nd Baron Colepeper and Henry Bennet, 1st Earl of Arlington in 1672. In 1681, Bennet sold his share to Lord Colepeper, and Lord Colepeper received a new charter for the entire land grant from James II in 1688. Following the deaths of Lord Colepeper, his wife Margaret, and his daughter Katherine, the Northern Neck Proprietary passed to Katherine's son Thomas Fairfax, 6th Lord Fairfax of Cameron in 1719, who selected a portion of it for his manor.
This tract, known as the South Branch Survey of the proprietary, extended from the north end of the Trough to the junction of the North and South Branches of the Potomac River. The lot was Lot Number20 on the South Branch Survey. His son Thomas Collins is thought to have inherited his father's landholdings as an "heir at law", since there is no record of a will by John Collins dispensing of his properties. By 1772, Thomas Collins acquired Lot Number20, where he lived with his wife Elizabeth. One representative from each of Virginia's 25 counties traveled to Romney to cast his vote. Collins and county commissioner William Donaldson certified the convention's election results. In 1817, Thomas Collins sold Lot Number20 to James Gregg Parsons. It is unknown whether the Collinses moved from the tract or continued living on it after the sale.
Thomas Collins died in 1822, and Elizabeth Collins in 1823.
Parsons family
The Parsons family members were among the first English settlers in the Thirteen Colonies in 1635; around 1740, they settled in Hampshire County. James Gregg Parsons, his eldest son, was born in Hampshire County in 1773. In 1795, he married Mary Catherine Casey (1773–1846), whose family owned the adjoining Lot Number 21. James, his eldest son, inherited Lot Number20 (known as the Collins Tract); and his youngest son Isaac inherited Lot Number21 (which included Wappocomo). Parsons family genealogist Virginia Parsons MacCabe wrote the following description of James Parsons Jr. in her book Parsons' Family History and Record (1913): "He was square and honorable in business, and had a large circle of friends; he had the urbanity and the gentility of manner which characterizes the true gentleman". His widow, Elizabeth, lived in the house until after the Civil War.
In 1867 or 1869, she sold the house, the Collins Tract and the remainder of Lot Number20 to Charles Harmison (1823–1896) for $8,500, moving with her remaining children to Missouri (where she died in 1883). The cost of building the house financially strained the Parsons family; historian Catherine Snider Long suggests that Elizabeth Miller Parsons sold the house as a result of further, war-related, financial stress from which the family could not recover.
Harmison family
Charles Harmison was born in Franklin County, Illinois, to Nathaniel and Lydia Harmison, and married Bettie Ann Smith (1827–1903) on May 4, 1854, in Taylor County, West Virginia. Bettie, the daughter of C.C. and Martha W. Smith, By 1867, Harmison and his family were living in Harrison County. He later gave his acquired lands to his children to establish their own homes when they married. The South Branch line bisected the small valley to the immediate east of the house, which became known as Depot Valley. His son George Edward Harmison (1863–1916) inherited Valley View around 1903 and brought his wife, Carrie Belle Fox (1870–1953), there after their marriage on October 4, 1905. George demolished the old log kitchen at Valley View, replacing it with a contemporary one.
In October 1909, the first train on the Hampshire Southern line passed over Harmison's bottomlands and crossed the river on an unfinished trestle across the South Branch Potomac River. By 1910, the line from the Romney spur terminus at Valley View to McNeill was in operation. The Hampshire Southern Railroad Company operated this line until 1911, when it was purchased by the Moorefield and Virginia Railroad Company. Harmison died in 1916, and Carrie continued to live at Valley View until her death on February 8, 1953. Harmison's nephew, Paul Cresap Harmison (1893–1972, a grandson of Charles Harmison's brother Jonathan Harmison), and his wife Nancy Parker Harmison (1896–1981) had moved to Valley View to live with her. After Carrie's death, Paul and Nancy Parker Harmison inherited the house and farm.
Valley View remained in the Harmison family until 1963, when it was sold to Philip Newell and his wife Martha.
Mayhew family
During its changes in ownership, the original Lot Number 20 of the South Branch Survey was repeatedly partitioned and sold. By 1976, the original property was divided into five farms and other parcels, including the Valley View Addition. The county received funding from the State Historic Preservation Office of the West Virginia Division of Culture and History to survey and document the structure's architecture and history.
Architecture
The house at Valley View is significant for its Greek Revival architectural elements. Valley View was added to the NRHP as a locally significant example of Greek Revival architecture. Valley View's house consists of the original 1855 brick section and a board-and-batten 1961–1962 kitchen addition. The bricks from which the house was built were fired in the immediate vicinity (along the banks of the South Branch Potomac River), and the brick walls were reinforced with hand-wrought structural iron angles. The nails used in its construction were fabricated by a local blacksmith, and the wooden sills and joists were sawn by hand.
Exterior
Valley View's house is a two-story brick structure with a rectangular architectural plan and exterior dimensions measuring about . The front porch is flanked by modest wooden handrails and balusters on its left and right sides. The rear façade of the house faces northeast, across the South Branch Potomac River valley toward Mill Creek Mountain. A two-story (double) wooden porch about deep extends across the rear of the house, topped by a shed roof extending from the main gabled roof at a shallower pitch. The first-story porch supports are brown wooden turned posts with no handrail or balusters, and the porch's second story has white painted square wood posts and vertical railings. Like the front façade, the rear façade is five bays wide; access to the double porch is through a door in the central bay on both levels.
The other four bays have nine-over-six double-hung wooden sash windows on the first story and six-over-six double-hung wooden sash windows on the second story. The northwestern and southeastern sides of the house have one small square window at attic level, between each pair of inside chimneys.
Interior
The interior of the Valley View house has a two-room-deep, central-hallway floor plan. Its wide central hallway contains a staircase from the first floor to the attic, with a wooden handrail supported with square balusters and a modest wooden turned newel post. The ceilings are high. Although the house's foundation is low, the height of the interior walls and the full-sized attic make the house appear tall from the outside. The original house has eight large rooms, each with a fireplace framed by a wooden geometric trabeated mantelpiece with classical elements. The four large rooms on the first floor open from either side of the center hallway. They contain simple wide wood trim, including skirting boards and door frame moldings with "subtly demarcated corners". The house's living and dining rooms have wide, wooden dado rails.
Most of the wooden decorative trim is painted white, and the walls are plaster. The lone exception is the room serving as an office and den, which has dark stained wooden trim and interior brick structural walls (exposed by the removal of its plaster during the 1960s). All rooms have the original wide plank wooden floors. The second floor has four bedrooms, with closets on either side of a fireplace and simple wood skirting boards and door frames. Parsons family members painted signatures and graffiti in the attic around 1856, which remain visible on the stairwell wall.
Kitchen addition
A one-story kitchen addition, built in 1961–1962 and measuring about , extends from the northwest side of the original 1855 house. The addition has a gabled standing seam metal roof, and its exterior is covered in white-painted board-and-batten siding. It has a vinyl bay window on the southwest side, a one-over-one double-hung vinyl window on the northeast side and a door (adjoining the wall of the 1855 house) on the southeast side. An enclosed board-and-batten porch, measuring about , and a shed roof extend from the front (southwest) of the kitchen addition. The original basement under the 1855 house is accessible through this porch extension. A ghost building outline on the northwest side of the 1855 house indicates an earlier structure where the present kitchen addition stands.
Ancillary structures
There are several ancillary structures near the house at Valley View, including a smokehouse and a water well, and the foundations of an ice house and a summer kitchen. Although the smokehouse, the summer kitchen and the ice house are believed to have been built by the Collinses before Big Jim Parsons built Valley View, the dates of construction are uncertain. The smokehouse, measuring about , is adjacent to the kitchen addition. It is set into a hillside, allowing at-grade entry to its two levels. Built of square-cut logs with white chinking atop a rubble masonry foundation, the smokehouse is topped with a standing seam metal gabled roof. South of the smokehouse is the brick foundation of an ice house measuring about and topped by modern wooden pergola and patio structures.
The brick foundation of Valley View's summer kitchen is north of the smokehouse and topped by a contemporary wooden pavilion with a gabled roof. In the rear yard of the house is a water well, enclosed by a brick building about in area and in height. In the center of the well cap is a metal hand pump. Although the well cap's bricks are similar to those used in the construction of the main house, the well may date from an earlier residence on the site.
See also
* List of historic sites in Hampshire County, West Virginia * List of plantations in West Virginia * National Register of Historic Places listings in Hampshire County, West Virginia
Bibliography
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