Page 266 - Family History

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Railway that year--street lamps still used coal oil. Some residents still can recall
little Martha Howell pulling her red wagon, laden with the five-gallon oil cans,
followingher father, Austin, the second lamplighter. As a teenager, Martha took
over the job until electric street lights came on Jan. 1, 1921.

For the further benefit of summer boarders, ordinances were enacted "to restrain
and punish street drunkards, vagrants and street beggars; to prevent vice and
immorality; and to enforce a proper observance of the sabbath." Specifically,

there was to be no congregating anywhere, and "loud or boisterous talking or to
insult or to make rude and obscene remarks."

In 1912, town minutes noted that "Councilman [Landon] Hammerly reported a
man and woman being together who were not married and from previous reports
it was deemed best by the council that they be notified to marry or leave the

Corporation." Subsequent minutes do not record the outcome.

Blacks were not welcome in the corporation, although some ex-slaves had lived
within the new town limits since the 1870s. Indeed, Round Hill's first church was
their Mount Zion, built in 1881. As was the custom in most small Virginia towns,
blacks were to live outside the town limits--but close enough to supply labor to
whites in town.

The Negro section near Round Hill was called The Hook. At its center, Bridge
Street, the first road south, hooked westward. Each Sunday, blacks in their finery
entered town en masse on their way to Mount Zion. Whites entered The Hook
only to gaze upon Mount Zion baptisms, held by the plank-and-truss bridge that
spanned the west branch of North Fork.

Several ordinances were drafted to promote health, suggested by physician James

Edward Copeland, who had come to Round Hill in 1887 after a seven-year practice
in Rectortown in Fauquier County.

Copeland was one of the first area physicians to believe in isolating a patient with
a contagious disease. When Mary Pines caught smallpox in June 1900, she and
seven others who had been in contact with her were ordered to "remain in
quarantine" in her mother's house "until released by proper authorities." A guard,

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