The Huntsberry Farm

The Huntsberry Farm stood north and south of Red Bud Run and covered 400 acres by 1860, when it was co-owned by Jacob and Augustine Huntsberry. The Huntsberry family had emigrated from Germany in the early 1700's, first settled in Pennsylvania, and later moved to the Shenandoah Valley as part of a broader migration of German and Scots-Irish families seeking opportunity in the mid-late 18th Century. Seventeen people lived on the farm, including nine family members and eight enslaved African-Americans. Its production included 1,500 bushels of oats, 250 bushels of wheat, 150 bushels of Irish potatoes, 120 bushels of rye, 100 pounds of wool, 624 pounds of butter, 35 tons of hay, 2 pounds of hops, 10 pounds of beeswax, and 100 pounds of honey, and its livestock included 10 horses, 18 head of cattle, 37 sheep, and 30 swine. Besides the main house, the farmstead included orchards, a small domestic complex, agricultural outbuildings, slave quarters, and several structures south of the main house, including the Hoffman tenant house. Fighting in the Third Battle of Winchester raged across the farm, though no accounts of the family's experiences have been found. The property remained in the family until 2009, when the Shenandoah Valley Battlefields purchased it. Jacob Augustine Huntsberry, born there in 1844 as Augustine Huntsberry's third son, enlisted in the Confederate army in 1861 at age 17 and served in the 12th Virginia Cavalry, which served as General Robert E. Lee's personal cavalry command.

Virginia · United States