Back in Paris

After Part I and Part II comes Part III, the continuation of the saga of Paris, VA. For background, click on the links above. Onto Paris...

...Thus, Thomas arrived at the end of his life, on December 12, 1781, less than 2 months after the surrender at Yorktown, with at least a clear title to the Manor of Leeds, including the current village of Paris, Virginia.

It was a veteran of the Revolutionary War, Peter Glascock, who gave Paris its name. During the revolution, Glascock met and became an admirer of the Marquis de Lafayette, the French nobleman who embraced the ideal of liberty and cast his fate with the American rebels. After the revolution, Glascock acquired sixty acres of land just east of Ashby’s Bent, or Ashby’s Gap as it was now becoming known. In 1790, Glascock divided his land into half-acre lots, and founded a village, known at the time as Punkinville (not an official name, but the early 18th century equivalent of Hooterville).

The earliest documented structures were erected around 1794. The main section of my house went up in 1810, the year Paris was chartered by the Virginia Assembly. The name Paris dates from 1801, when the second oldest post office in Virginia was established here. Glascock named his town Paris to honor his friend the Marquis. He even offered the Marquis several lots in the new town, which Lafayette graciously declined, replying, “My dear sir, in order to hold you in memory, I shall, upon my return home, have a street in the town of LaGrange (his ancestral seat) named Glascock”. To reciprocate, Glascock named his own house, standing on a height overlooking the village, LaGrange.

Paris is situated at the confluence of two major thoroughfares, linking Winchester, the leading city of the Shenandoah Valley, with Alexandria and Yorktown, the principal Chesapeake ports. Sometime around the turn of the 19th century, Peter Rust built a tavern at the crossroads. Thomson Ashby, a descendant of Thomas, bought the tavern in 1820, and it became known thereafter as Ashby’s Tavern. The Marquis de Lafayette toured the United States between July 1824 and September 1825. One of his stops was the Ashby Tavern in Paris, where he was no doubt feted as a hero of the infant United States, than approaching the 50th anniversary of its independence.

To be continued…

And there the story of Paris will remain until Uncle George can continue his Homeric description of this glorious region. Stay posted for more on the heart of horse country.