Long Meadow

House at Long Meadow Farm

NPS

Quick Facts

Location:

Warren County, Virginia

Significance:

Part of Cedar Creek and Belle Grove National Historical Park

Designation:

National Register of Historic Places

OPEN TO PUBLIC:

No

MANAGED BY:

Private

Long Meadow is a microcosm of the history of the entire Shenandoah Valley, being a campground for the American Indian peoples that passed through, and having ties to the first white settlers. The house at the base of the Massanutten Mountain range in Warren County, Virginia, was completed in 1848, but its story began in the early 1700's when the Valley was still the great frontier. 

Long Meadow is not open to the public. 

Native Americans

Before Europeans arrived, Native Americans used the Valley as a thoroughfare. Some eventually developed an agrarian society and grew indigenous crops of squash, corn, and beans. By the early 1700s most Native Americans were gone from the Shenandoah Valley, leaving it for the European immigrants.

The Hites & Traveler's Hall

In 1737, when Isaac Hite was 16, his father Jost gave him about 900 acres (part of Jost Hite’s 40,000-acre grant) along the North Fork of the Shenandoah, at the base of the northern end of Massanutten. Known as the Long Meadow Tract, the property was named for its lovely, fertile meadows. It extended from the river toward the land where Belle Grove Plantation now stands.

The Hites built a great log house named "Traveler's Hall" on the property in 1738. The building was a mile downstream from the Shenandoah River's juncture with Cedar Creek and about two miles east of the Valley's main thoroughfare, the Great Wagon Road. Because of its location near the river, it also had water access for the transportation of goods.

A cemetery, now containing the bodies of many Hite descendants, was begun on the property in 1739 when Jost Hite's wife, Anna Maria, was buried there.
Isaac Hite married Alida Eleanor Eltinge in 1745 and by all accounts lived a comfortable life on the Long Meadow Tract. The author of Some Prominent Virginia Families, published in 1907, recalled:

“Isaac spent his entire life upon this fine estate and enjoyed the rural life of a country gentleman. His skill as a planter, his close application to the development and improvement of this celebrated homestead, resulted in comfort and elegance to the owner and his large family, and from his caste of intellect and well-disciplined life, his offspring imbibed the principles and traits of character that distinguished many of his descendants as prominent in social and public life, whose influence was left throughout Virginia and even beyond her borders.”

Isaac Hite, Sr., died in 1795. He left his vast estate primarily to his son, Isaac Hite, Jr., who was an up-and-coming planter and entrepreneur in the Shenandoah Valley. He received his father's land and divided the tract into five separate lots. Belle Grove Plantation was built on one of those lots.

After Belle Grove was completed in the early 1800's, the fertile flood plain around Traveler's Hall was used to grow wheat, apples, and corn. A road that at that time crossed the Valley Turnpike between Traveler's Hall and Belle Grove was used for the transfer of goods between the two places. Now named Long Meadow Road, it is split by Interstates 81 and 66, and no longer directly connects the two houses

When Isaac Hite, Jr. died in 1836, he left Traveler's Hall to his daughter, Matilda M. Hite Davison. She sold the land four years later, in 1840, to Col. George W. Bowman and his brother, Isaac Bowman, great-grandsons of Jost Hite.

Long Meadow Farm

Sometime between 1840 and 1848 Traveler's Hall was destroyed. In 1848 Col. Bowman erected the brick house that stands today. It was built over the wet basement foundation of Traveler's Hall at a cost of about $1,000. The house is Greek revival style with pillars on either side of the raised front staircase to reinforce the symmetry that is that style's hallmark.

Bowman was listed in the 1850 census as a farmer with $20,000 worth of land and 22 slaves, 10 males and 12 females. The small number of male field workers reflects the fact that wheat, the main Valley crop, was not as labor intensive as tobacco, so Valley farmers were not as dependent on slave labor as Virginians east of the Blue Ridge.

The 1860 census lists Bowman as owning $30,000 in real estate and $35,720 in personal property. That net worth would be approximately $1.5 million today. Bowman owned 32 slaves at the time, but 21 of those were under the age of 14. The international slave trade had been abolished by then, so most of Bowman's slaves had probably been born at Long Meadow.

Battle of Cedar Creek

From Signal Knob, Confederate General John Gordon saw Long Meadow and figured the army could turn left at the house and use Long Meadow Road as a direct route to the Union left, held by the 8th Corps. The Confederates crossed the North Fork of the Shenandoah River early in the morning of October 19, 1864. Divisions under generals Stephen Ramseur and John Pegram met Gordon and his division at Long Meadow and marched quietly along the road to their attack positions. 

Long Meadow Today

Col. Bowman died after the Civil War and left his property to his son, George H. Bowman, who sold it to Andrew J. Brumback in 1888. Brumback added numerous outbuildings to the farm, including a barn and utility shed (built in 1891), which are still standing. A rear kitchen wing was added to the house that same year.

The present owners, Virginia (Ginger) and George Pasquet, moved to Long Meadow in the mid-1980s. Ginger is Brumback's granddaughter. The couple said they "have been carefully restoring the house since 1991."