Although it appears to have changed ownership numerous times over the years, closer examination reveals that the house remained in the same two families, Chrisman and Shaver, for more than 150 years.
OWNERS OF THE STONE HOUSE, c. 1787 TO PRESENT
c. 1787: Captain George and Hannah (McDowell) Chrisman.
1817: Conrad and Elizabeth (Chrisman) Custer, purchased the house and 345 acres at public auction, in addition to 91 acres on another tract.
APR 06, 1829: George and Hannah (Sites) Shaver, Sr. purchased the house and 130 acres, in addition to 91 acres on another tract.
MAR 29, 1855: Jesse Burkholder purchased the house and 147 acres (Jesse's wife was Catherine Shaver).
OCT 09, 1868: George W. Shaver, Sr. purchased the house and 130 acres, plus an additional 24.5 acres.
MAR 01, 1906: George W. Shaver, Jr. purchased the house and 130 acres, plus an additional 24.5 acres.
SEP 27, 1910: John E. and Jane A. Dovel purchased the house and 130 acres.
SEP 09, 1914: George W. and Lucy V. (Dovel) Shaver purchased the house and 130 acres.
JUN 08, 1948: Homer R. and Goldie M. (Summers) Kline purchased the house and 130 acres.
MAY 18, 1956: Frederick L. and Mary R. Holm purchased the house and 4.51 acres.
DEC 30, 2002: Dan and Susan (Klender) Pinnell purchased the house and 4.51 acres.
CHRISMAN-CUSTER
The original Chrisman homestead was situated on 376 acres of rich, choice land along Linville Creek. The land indenture dated May 20, 1761 is from Jacob and Magdalena (Hite) Chrisman to their son George Chrisman, who was then sixteen years old.
A few years after obtaining the property, George Chrisman married Hannah McDowell, and by 1787 they had seven children - four sons and three daughters. The stone house was built sometime between 1761 and 1787. George and Hannah Chrisman were in their 70s when they died within five months of each other, he in August 1816, and she in January 1817.
In 1817, George and Hannah Chrisman's daughter Elizabeth (b. 1779, d. 1835) and Conrad Custer (b. 1771, d. 1845), whom she had married in 1799, purchased the house and land at public auction. The 1820 Rockingham County, VA census, taken three years after the Custers acquired the stone house, lists Conrad Custer as head of household, with his wife, seven children and ten slaves. In 1829, after twelve years of ownership, Conrad and Elizabeth Custer sold the Chrisman family homestead to the first of three generations of George Shavers.
Below: Tombstone of George Chrisman, Cooks Creek Presbyterian Church, Rockingham, Co., VA. A Revolutionary War Veteran grave marker stands next to the headstone.
The tombstone is inscribed:
"George Chrisman
Son of Jacob
Chrisman a native
of Swabia in
Germany who
emigrated to
Virginia about
1740. He died Aug
29, 1816
Aged 71 years"
A closer view:
THE SHAVER FAMILY AND THE "JOE'S CREEK PLACE"
In 1829 the Shavers purchased the stone house from Conrad and Elizabeth (Chrisman) Custer, and the house remained in the Shaver family until 1948. In the field east of the house are the ruins of an early 19th century limestone gristmill, known as Shaver Mill.
Valuable information has been obtained from documents found in the permanent collections of the Menno Simons Historical Library at EMU. Two letters, dated October 4, 1969 and October 21, 1969, were written by John G. Shaver (Muncie, IN) to Agnes Kline (Harrisonburg, VA) in response to Ms. Kline's inquiries dated October 2, 1969 and October 13, 1969. Mr. Shaver was 60 years old at the time. This documentation is on file as part of Agnes Kline's research material for her 1971 publication, Stone Houses on Linville Creek and Their Communities, Rockingham County, VA. Agnes Kline was related to the Klines who purchased the stone house from the Shavers in 1948.
Although the names of Burkholder and Dovel appear in the list of homeowners, the house remained in the Shaver family from 1829 until 1948, a span of 119 years. In 1831, Jesse Burkholder had married George Shaver's sister Catherine, and the Dovels were Lucy Shaver's parents. John G. Shaver believed that Jesse Burkholder was a brother of his grandmother, Elizabeth J. Burkholder Shaver.
The Dovel's four-year ownership (1910-1914) is explained in the October 21, 1969 Shaver to Kline letter, "The old stone house of the farm which my father sold in (1948) had been in the Shaver family for many years; as I recall, he indicated well over 100 years. There was a short span, he told me, of a few years, when, legally, it was recorded in the name of my maternal grandfather, John E. Dovel. My maternal grandparents came to live with my parents, but my grandfather would not agree to it unless he owned the farm. Thus, a sale was arranged from my father to him with a deed made back which was recorded upon my grandfather's death."
From the October 4, 1969 letter: "D B (Deed Book) 3, p. 157 - Jesse Burkholder and wife sell to Geo. W. Shafer, Oct. 1, 1868, for 12,000 ($) land on headwaters of Linville Creek...a tract on which Jesse and Catherine live now, adjoining land of Henry Moyers estate, late Chas. Spears estate, Breneman, and others...130 acres more or less, being part of the land conveyed to Jesse Burkholder, by George Shafer and Hannah, his wife, March 29, 1855, and embraces tracts which were conveyed to said George Shafer by Conrad Custer and wife by their deed of April 6, 1829 and by Chas. C. Spears and wife by their deed of June 8, 1833, "reserving the same privilege to C. C. Spears of making a dam and conveying water in pipes which was granted Spears by Shafer in his deed of 1833...also a tract on Green Hill. Jesse reserves for himself the use of the dwelling in which he now lives together with outbuildings attached to same until May 1869, also use of upper meadow, two lots, one in front and one in rear of the house, the orchard and hill field together with the mill and mill yard until March 1, 1869..."
John Shaver recalled in his 1969 letters, "My two sisters and I were born on the Joe's Creek place, and my memory is that my father was also." George Shaver was born April 30, 1873, and John and his sisters were born between 1909 and 1913. He also remembered Breneman-Turner Mill, which is less than 2 miles away: "I recall going by that mill many times when my father took wheat and exchanged it for flour. This would have been 1916 to 1922, or thereabouts."
Research suggests that the home was most likely abandoned sometime between 1915 and 1920. The federal census taken on April 27, 1910 lists George and Lucy Shaver living in Linville with their six month old son John, and we know that the Shaver family shared the home in Linville with Lucy's parents, John and Jane Dovel, until John Dovel's death on August 17, 1914. On September 9, 1914 the stone house was deeded back to George and Lucy Shaver, but by January 14, 1920 when they participated in the next census, the Shavers were residing in Harrisonburg city, in a home they owned on Franklin Street, with their son John (age 10) and two daughters, Mary (age 8) and Jania (age 6).
At the time of the 1948 Shaver to Kline transfer, the house had been vacant for many years and was in desperate need of repair. It would be more than a decade before the house would once again serve as a family residence.
SHAVER FAMILY OWNERSHIP (1829-1948)
1829-1855: George Shaver (b. 1783, d.1866) and Hannah Sites Shaver (b. 1788, d. 1873)
1855-1868: Jesse Burkholder (b. 1811, d. 1898) and Catherine Shaver (b. 1809, d. 1907)
1868-1906: George W. Shaver, Sr. (b. 1832, d. 1906) and Elizabeth J. Burkholder Shaver (b. 1832, d. 1920)
1906-1910: George W. Shaver, Jr. (b. 1873, d. 1959) and Lucy V. Dovel Shaver (b. 1880, d. 1964)
1910-1914: Colonel John E. Dovel (b. 1826, d. 1914) and Jane A. Dovel (b. 1841, d. 1915) Lucy Dovel Shaver's parents
1914-1948: George W. Shaver, Jr. (b. 1873, d. 1959) and Lucy Dovel Shaver (b. 1880, d. 1964)
According to the second of John G. Shaver's 1969 letters, his grandfather's older brother Peter Shaver (b. 1816, d. 1884), spent most of his life in Roanoke County, VA, but after his father died in 1866, Peter moved back home to care for his 78 year-old mother. After Hannah Sites Shaver died in 1873, Peter moved to Botetourt County, VA.
Above: Tombstone of the first George Shaver to own the stone house. Antioch United Church of Christ Cemetery, Rockingham Co., VA. Wife Hannah is buried there also (no photo). The tombstone indicates that when he died on July 30, 1866, George Shaver had lived for 83 years, 6 months and 13 days. This would put his birthdate at mid January 1783.
Above: Tombstone of Jesse Burkholder and Catherine Shaver Burkholder. Antioch United Church of Christ Cemetery, Rockingham Co., VA
Above: Tombstone of the second George Shaver to own the house, and his wife Elizabeth Burkholder Shaver. Antioch United Church of Christ Cemetery, Rockingham Co., VA.
According to the U. S. Civil War Soldiers Records and Profiles available through ancestry.com, George Washington Shaver enlisted as a private on June 3, 1862 at age 29. He stood 6' 4" tall, was of light complexion and had gray eyes and gray hair. George W. Shaver served with:
Co. H, VA 7th Cavalry Regiment (March 6, 1862 to January 26, 1863)
Co. C, VA Cavalry Battalion (January 26, 1863 to February 5, 1863)
Co. C., VA Cavalry Regiment (February 5, 1863 to December 5, 1863)
Above: Tombstone of the third (and last) George Shaver to own the house, and his wife Lucy Dovel Shaver. Woodbine Cemetery, Rockingham Co., VA
Above: Tombstone of Lucy Dovel Shaver's parents, John and Jane Dovel, the "technical" owners of the home from 1910-1914. Woodbine Cemetery, Rockingham Co, VA
CIVIL WAR PERIOD
No information has been found to date in regard to activity at the home during the Civil War (1861-1865) when the Burkholders owned the home, or what occurred on or to the property during Union General Philip H. Sheridan's devastating march on the Shenandoah Valley in the fall of 1864. Thousands of homes, barns and mills were burned by troops acting on Sheridan's orders in an effort to destroy what was considered the "Breadbasket of the Confederacy." No barn exists on the property today, but undoubtedly all of the 18th and 19th century owners of the property would have required a barn, as well as other outbuildings.
Above: New owners as of December 30, 2002. We finally moved in the following summer. One of the first things we did was pull out the overgrown boxwoods from the front of the house.
Two photos below: February 2010, blanketed by two feet of snow.
