The Bushong Farm

On June 22, 1791, Henry Bushong patented a 260-acre tract in Shenandoah County that became home for several generations of his descendants. His son Jacob married Sarah Strickler in 1818, and they lived first in a four-room log house while raising a family of four boys and two girls. In 1825 Jacob Bushong built a vernacular Federal-style home, and an 1852 expansion added double porches on the north end to create more room for the growing family. The Bushongs raised wheat, oats, cattle, hogs, and horses, and wheelwright and blacksmith shops supplied farm implements for them and other local families. The family worked alongside three enslaved African Americans on the property: an unmarried man, a woman named Mary, and a young boy, Israel. On May 15, 1864, as the Battle of New Market raged across the farm, seven family members sheltered in the cellar and watched VMI cadets pass on both sides of the house as they marched to join the Confederate line. After the battle, the house and barn, like many buildings in and around New Market, were used as a hospital. In the early 1940s the Bushong family sold the farm to Mr. and Mrs. Everette Croxton, who sold it in 1944 to George Randall Collins, VMI Class of 1911. When Collins died in 1964, he left the farm and a $3 million operating endowment to VMI as a trust to perpetuate and maintain it as a memorial of the Battle of New Market.

New Market, Virginia · United States