The Sloan–Parker House, also known as the Stone House, Parker Family Residence, or Richard Sloan House, is a late-18th-century stone residence near Junction, in the U.S. state of West Virginia. It was built on land vacated by the Shawnee after the Native American nation had been violently forced to move west to Kansas following their defeat at the Battle of Point Pleasant in 1774. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places on June 5, 1975, becoming Hampshire County's first property to be listed on the register. The Sloan–Parker House has been in the Parker family since 1854. The house and its adjacent farm are located along the Northwestern Turnpike (US 50/WV 28) in the rural Mill Creek valley.
The original fieldstone section of the house was erected in about 1790 for Richard Sloan and his wife Charlotte VanHorn Sloan. Originally from Ireland, Sloan arrived in the United States after the American Revolutionary War and became an indentured servant of David VanHorn. Sloan eloped with VanHorn's daughter Charlotte and they settled in the Mill Creek valley, where they built the original stone portion of the house. The Sloans had ten children, including John and Thomas Sloan, who each (later) represented Hampshire County in the Virginia House of Delegates. Richard Sloan and his family operated a successful weaving business from the stone house and their Sloan counterpanes (woven coverlets with block designs) became well known in the South Branch Valley region.
The Sloan family sold the stone house and to three brothers in the Parker family in 1854. The Parker family operated a stagecoach line on the Moorefield and North Branch Turnpike; the journey included a stop at the stone house, where the family served meals to travelers. During the American Civil War, the stone house was visited by both Union and Confederate forces, and was ransacked by Union troops for goods and supplies. The stone house served as a local polling station, and its use as a stagecoach stop ended after the completion of the Hampshire Southern Railroad in 1910. The Parker family opened the house for tours, and it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.
The Sloan–Parker House consists of the original stone section, which faces toward the Northwestern Turnpike, and a wooden frame addition (built c.1900) adjacent to the original stone section. The stone section's exterior wall is about thick at the basement level and tapers to a thickness of about at the attic level. Most of the stone section's flooring, and the hardware on the doors, are original. Other features of the Sloan–Parker House property include a large barn (built in 1803) and, to the northeast of the house, the Sloan–Ludwick Cemetery.
Geography and setting
The Sloan–Parker House and farm are situated within a rural, agricultural section of the Mill Creek valley in southwestern Hampshire County. Patterson Creek Mountain, a forested anticlinal mountain ridge, rises to the west of the Mill Creek valley, and the forested western rolling foothills of the anticlinal Mill Creek Mountain rise to the valley's east. The South Branch Potomac River is located across Mill Creek Mountain, approximately to the east of the house.
The house and its adjacent farm are located along the Northwestern Turnpike (concurrently US 50 and WV 28) about east of the unincorporated community of Junction (also known as Moorefield Junction). Junction is centered around and named for the intersection of Purgitsville Pike (concurrently US 220 and WV28) with the Northwestern Turnpike (concurrently US50 and US220 westward to Knobly Mountain and concurrently US50 and WV28 eastward to Romney).
The Sloan–Parker House is located atop a hillside just south of the Northwestern Turnpike. Mill Creek flows west to east approximately to the north of the house. An unnamed ephemeral stream that runs just west of the house joins Mill Creek to the north. Mill Creek continues east through the Mechanicsburg Gap in Mill Creek Mountain at Mechanicsburg and joins the South Branch Potomac River.
History
Background
The Mill Creek valley and the land on which the Sloan–Parker House is located were originally part of the Northern Neck Proprietary, a grant of land that the exiled Charles II awarded to seven of his supporters in 1649 during the English Interregnum. With the Restoration in 1660, CharlesII finally ascended to the English throne. He renewed the Northern Neck Proprietary grant in 1662, revised it in 1669, and again renewed the original grant favoring 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, who 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.
As conflicts with Native Americans began to ease, Lord Fairfax sought to entice European settlers to inhabit the sparsely populated western lands of his Northern Neck Proprietary. The Mill Creek valley was one of the first areas of present-day Hampshire County to be settled by Europeans, beginning in the mid-18th century. Early settlers were drawn by the valley's fertility. Job Parker, a direct ancestor of the Parker family that later acquired the Sloan–Parker House, settled in the Mill Creek valley during this period.
Sloan family ownership
The original fieldstone section of the Sloan–Parker House was erected around 1790 for Richard Sloan and his wife Charlotte VanHorn Sloan. Richard Sloan was originally from County Monaghan, Ulster, Ireland. Following the American Revolutionary War, Sloan sailed on a passenger ship from Great Britain to the United States. Despite paying his passage fare prior to his voyage, he was charged again upon his arrival. Unable to make this second payment, he became an indentured servant of David VanHorn. After several months with the VanHorn family, Sloan eloped with David VanHorn's daughter Charlotte, and the couple went to Baltimore, where they stayed briefly. After observing healthy cattle from Old Fields in Hardy County, they decided to relocate there. On their journey to Old Fields, Sloan and his wife arrived in Romney and chose to settle in Hampshire County instead. They later moved southwest of Romney to their property in the Mill Creek valley, where the Sloan–Parker House stands today.
To construct the two-story stone house, Sloan and his wife hired laborers to quarry the native fieldstone and lay the stonework. Richard and Charlotte Sloan had ten children together (four girls and six boys), and the large house afforded the couple sufficient room to raise them. The house also provided the family with the necessary space to engage in the manufacture of woven goods. Sloan was a fabric weaver by trade, and he and his family developed a thriving weaving industry on their lands in the Mill Creek valley. Their entire production process was initially accomplished inside the house until Sloan erected a separate loom house. There, he and his sons built and operated six looms. On their farm, Sloan and his family raised their own sheep and grew flax; they also sourced flax and raw wool from local residents. The majority of the Sloan family's woven products were sold locally, and their Sloan counterpanes became well known in the South Branch Valley region. The family's trade in woolen goods and linens thrived until the middle of the 19thcentury. The present Parker family occupants of the Sloan–Parker House retain several woven coverlets produced by the Sloans.
According to Sloan family tradition, Richard and Charlotte Sloan used a method of casting lots to decide which of their ten children should marry. Their youngest son James won a contest in drawing straws, and was the only one of their ten children to marry when he wed Magdaline Arnold on January 6, 1834. James and Magdaline operated the Sloan household while the other members attended to their family's weaving business.
Two of Richard and Charlotte Sloan's sons, John and Thomas, were active in the military and in local and state politics. John Sloan served in the War of 1812 and was later appointed Major General of the 3rdDivision, Virginia Militia, by the Virginia General Assembly in 1842. He also served as a county justice from 1824 until 1828, a county surveyor in 1827, a county sheriff in 1839, and a member of the Virginia House of Delegates representing Hampshire County from 1825 to 1827. Thomas Sloan represented Hampshire County in the Virginia House of Delegates from 1832 to 1834 and again from 1835 to 1837. He also served as a delegate to the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1850, representing a district comprising Frederick, Hampshire, and Morgan counties.
Parker family ownership
The Sloan family sold the stone house and of surrounding land to brothers John Peyton Parker, Benjamin Parker, and William Parker on December 29, 1854, for $4,000. Following its acquisition by the Parker brothers, the stone house continued as the center of a large farm.
Because of its convenient location along the Northwestern Turnpike, the house served as a regional stagecoach stop and local polling place. From the early 19thcentury until the completion of the Hampshire Southern Railroad to Petersburg in 1910, this stretch of the Northwestern Turnpike between Romney and Junction was part of a major north–south transportation route connecting Cumberland and Romney with Moorefield and Petersburg to the south. By 1845 the Moorefield and North Branch Turnpike stage line connected the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) Main Line at Green Spring with the north–south route in Springfield, allowing stagecoach transportation between Green Spring and Moorefield. The route of present-day WV28 aligns with this north–south route from the Maryland state line at Wiley Ford to Petersburg, and is concurrent with the Northwestern Turnpike (US50) from Romney to Junction and US220 from Junction to Petersburg.
The Parker family operated their own stagecoach line along the Moorefield and North Branch Turnpike between the B&O Main Line at Green Spring and Moorefield until 1884, when the B&O South Branch Line was completed to Romney Depot. The Parkers' stagecoach line transported passengers down present-day Green Spring Road (CR1), Cumberland Road (WV28), and the Northwestern Turnpike (US50/WV28) to the stone house, where the stagecoaches would stop to allow passengers to have meals before continuing the journey to Moorefield via present-day US220/WV28. When a stagecoach arrived at the stone house, a loud horn would sound to announce its arrival, and then meals were provided to the travelers in the basement kitchen and dining areas (or "keeping rooms"). Travelers' horses and other stock were watered and fed outside the basement door. As well as their stagecoach line, the Parker family operated a toll house on the Northwestern Turnpike on the west side of its crossing of the South Branch Potomac River, approximately northeast of the house.