Page 260 - Family History

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occupation government, on Sept. 29, 1866. But on Jan. 16, 1868, in the twilight of
Andrew Johnson's presidency, there again was a Round Hill postmark, and a less
controversial postmaster in the person of
William B. Chamblin. History of the Name
The Railroad
The name goes back to the days
The town received its first shot in the arm in Loudoun was a part of Fairfax County,
May 1875, when the Washington & Ohio or even earlier. The earliest of the
railroad came. But dampening the festivities was Loudoun County circuit courts, meeting
the loss of a man, killed under an engine turning in the spring of 1757, ordered
around on the end-of-the-line roundtable. No surveyors to mark the best way from
longer did the Winchester and Capon Springs Leesburg to the Blue Ridge, and they
stages, that had been running since 1841, at decided its eastern stretches should
least, ply the dusty pike. With the building of the stay to the south "of the round hill."

old Blue Ridge Inn by Bear's Den, south of The hill itself is a 910-foot high knob
Snicker's Gap, impromptu stage wagons began two miles southwest of town. In pre-
the run into Snickersville by the mid-1890's, and 1722 years its summit was a camping
the success of the inn prompted the boarding- place for Indians traversing the "plain
house craze in Round Hill and the other Loudoun path" - as the Indians called their trails
towns along the railroad. - from the Shenandoah Valley to their
main north-south migration route
With two or three stores, the proverbial
along today's Route 15. The 1722
blacksmith and wheelwright shops and livery
Treaty of Albany forbade the Indians to
stables, Round Hill came into its own in 1900,
migrate east of the Blue Ridge, and
just after the Southern Railroad took over the
thereafter the gentle slopes and
line.
summit of the Round Hill became
Round Hill Incorporated farmland, once again to become a

camping and listening place during the
The Southern added trains on weekends, more
Civil War. Shortly, the hill again took its
boarders came, and on Feb. 5, 1900, Virginia's
present appearance as farmland, and
General Assembly incorporated the town of
by the early 20th century it was also
Round Hill, appointing Johnson Taylor, Troy C.
called Round Top - to distinguish it
Ballenger, and William R. Jones the town
from the newly-established town.
commissioners.

Finances, streets, and sanitation were the three main concerns, and each

councilman was on two of those committees. Indeed, the first sentence of the
Assembly's act creating the town ordered the council to "secure the inhabitants

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