Life on the Huntsberry Farm

After emigrating from Germany in the early 1700's, the Huntsberry family first settled in Pennsylvania before relocating to the Shenandoah Valley as part of a wave of Germans and Scots-Irish immigrant families seeking opportunity in the mid-late 18th Century. By 1860, the Huntsberry Farm, co-owned by Jacob and Augustine Huntsberry, covered 400 acres north and south of Red Bud Run. Seventeen people lived on the farm, including nine family members and eight enslaved African-Americans. The farm produced 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. In addition to 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. During the Third Battle of Winchester, fighting raged across the farm, though no accounts of the family's experiences have been found. The farm remained in the family until 2009, when it was purchased by the Shenandoah Valley Battlefields. Jacob Augustine Huntsberry, the third son of Augustine Huntsberry, was born here in 1844, 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