oy the Great Valley of
Virginia. Berryville

Long before the County of Clarke was ordered to be carved from
Frederick, a town was established called Battletown. This was so called,
says tradition, because of the rough and-tumble fights of the gang who
met there to drink their ale.

Daniel Morgan, a picturesque character of the Valley, thought he had the
right to stop such fights and so he frequently got into the fray. Old
records show that Morgan sometimes had to pay a fine "for misbehavior."
But no doubt it was here that he won his strength and learned to
out-match the toughs of the neighborhood. Certainly he won a reputation
for his prowess, and as a general he won distinction.

The town changed its name in 1798 when it was granted a charter and
became Berryville. It was named for its founder Benjamin Berry, who
donated the land and when Clark County was formed in 1836, Berryville
was chosen as the county seat.

Tradition tells us that George Washington boarded with Captain Charles
Smith when he was in the Valley surveying for Lord Fairfax. This home
was about a half mile from the present Berryville. His office while in
the Valley was a small log building which was used as a spring house for
"Soldier's Rest." A cold spring of water flows under the floor of the
first room, which is about twelve feet square. George used the room
upstairs for his sleeping quarters. It was there he kept his instruments
and carefully recorded in his diary his experiences. It was there he
made out his reports for Lord Fairfax. Howe, an early historian, tells
us about that youth of sixteen. Quoting Bancroft, he writes: "The woods
of Virginia sheltered the youthful George Washington, the son of a
widow. Born by the side of the Potomac, beneath the roof of a
Westmoreland farmer, almost from infancy his lot had been the lot of an
orphan. No academy had welcomed him to its shade, no college crowned him
with its honors, to read, to write, to cipher--these had been his
degrees of knowledge. And now at sixteen years, in quest of an honest
maintainance, encountering intolerable toil, cheered onward by being
able to write to a boyhood friend, 'Dear Richard, a doubloon is my
constant gain every day, and sometimes six pistoles.' He was his own
cook, having no spit but a forked stick, no plate but a large chip;
roaming over the spurs of the Alleghanies and along the banks of the
Shenandoah, alive to nature, among skin-clad savages, with their scalps