Crockett-Porterfield House

On the morning of July 2, 1861, Federal troops under General Robert Patterson crossed the Potomac River from Maryland and marched toward Martinsburg. Confederate Colonel Thomas J. Jackson's command marched from Camp Stephens, four miles north of town, to block them. General Joseph E. Johnston had directed Jackson to determine whether the Federals were in force and to retire if they were. Outnumbered, Jackson fought a brief delaying action and then fell back toward Martinsburg. Patterson eventually occupied the city but was discharged at the end of the month for his slowness.

This first Civil War engagement in the Shenandoah Valley was fought here on the farm of William Rush Porterfield. Porterfield's wife and their four children fled to the house of a nearby relative. The Fifth Virginia Infantry occupied the house and farm buildings just as the Union troops came into view; Confederate sharpshooters opened fire from the house and barn. Colonel Kenton Harper, Fifth Virginia Infantry, reported that the house and farm buildings were "key to my position." The Federal artillery quickly replied, damaging the house and setting fire to the barn, which burned to the ground.

After Jackson's men withdrew, Union troops immediately established a makeshift hospital in the house to care for the wounded of both sides. Although the engagement lasted for less than an hour, it devastated the property. Porterfield, a Union supporter, remained on his land and rebuilt after the war.

[ Sidebar : ]
David Crocket (as he spelled his surname), the grandfather of Davy Crockett of Alamo fame, constructed the oldest section of the house of logs about 1763. The Crockets lived here less than five years before selling the property and moving to Tennessee. A description of the house written in 1941 for a Work Projects Administration travel guide described the damage that was still visible at that time.

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