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By Eugene Scheel
Sunday, June 4, 2000; Page V03

A hundred Junes ago, the newly elected Round Hill Town Council and its mayor, George T. Ford, met for the first time to draft a set of ordinances that were the strictest I've seen.

A crisis had arisen in the business community, for in 1899 the Southern Railway began extending its tracks westward to Snickersville, just four miles distant, at the base of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The railroad's terminus since 1875 had been the village of Round Hill, and its boarding houses, merchants and livery stables had profited from the summertime dollars of well-to-do Washingtonians and diplomats, many of whom spent their summers in Loudoun to escape the heat, humidity and threat of disease.

The first train into Snickersville arrived on schedule July 4, 1900, and Southern Railway began lobbying Loudoun officials to change the town's locally revered name, in use since 1830, to a more alluring "Bluemont."

A main reason for Southern's extension was the construction in 1893 of the Blue Ridge Inn, atop the ridge near a scenic rock outcrop called Bear's Den, overlooking the Shenandoah Valley. The inn's chef, Jules DeMonet, had been chef at the White House. By 1900, the inn was fast becoming the area's premier summer vacation spot. The half-hour wagon ride up the scenic mountain from Bluemont--as Snickersville became in September of that year--was far better than the five-mile, 1 1/2-hour jaunt from the Round Hill station because, often, the flats along the old Snickers Gap Turnpike (now Route 7) were soggy or flooded, and wagons got mired.

So Round Hill officials incorporated in January 1900 to spruce up the town's image and try to retain its summer clientele as well as its decades-old position as Loudoun's leading town of the far west.

Some Round Hill residents recalled that another transportation improvement, the Snickers Gap Turnpike, had given their village its start--and had begun the demise of Woodgrove, 1 1/2 miles north of Round Hill, on the older main road west.

Woodgrove had been the main far western village in Loudoun, but in 1833 the turnpike from Leesburg to Snickersville changed traffic patterns and nurtured a village at the present Loudoun and Main streets. At the northwest corner, sometime before 1858, Guilford C. Gregg opened a store and in March 1858 became first postmaster of a village he named Round Hill.

The name went back to Colonial times, after the original Round Hill, a 912-foot knob, also known as Round Top, two miles southwest of the present town.

The June 1900 ordinances were enacted to ensure that Round Hill would not become another Woodgrove and began by prohibiting residents from removing "dirt, sand or rock" from town streets and alleys. They also mandated the removal of all "obstructions" from public ways, especially "hitched horses so as to obstruct sidewalks." The main sidewalk, a wooden boardwalk, ran along the north side of the turnpike, named Loudoun Street in 1901.

Here the summer people paraded, especially on Sundays, watched by locals who wanted to see the latest in Washington finery. Predictably, the town's three churches for whites arose by the boardwalk: the Methodist Church in 1889 (it had moved from Woodgrove), Mount Calvary Episcopal in 1892 and the Baptist Church in 1905.

The main boarding houses also were along the boardwalk or across the street: Henrietta Lodge's, at the west end of town where the boardwalk began; Madeline and Annie Kuhlmann's across the street; and Flora Katherine Hammerly's at the northeast corner of Locust. At the Kuhlmann House, summer guest Lloyd C. Douglas wrote his best-selling biblical novel, "The Robe." The typical rate was $7 a week room and board, plus $1.50 for Sunday dinner. The guests' favorite sport was lawn croquet. At Bridge Street, the boardwalk ended.

Safety was another concern, and one of the ordinances prohibited "any attempt at trial of speed between two or more horses or mules" on any street. Addie Purcell told me the story of her Uncle Ep--Eppa Hunton--who would drive his two-horse vehicle down from Woodgrove. When he saw Walter Howell, town sergeant, Ep would lay the whip on his horses, and they'd race through town, taking the turn into the pike on two wheels. Before Howell could mount his horse, Ep was beyond the town limits.

Howell later went out on his own and in 1909 replaced the boardwalk and board sidewalks with cement walks. At the end of each walk, he inscribed his name and the year. You still can see the writing.

About that time, automobile drivers began to venture into the hinterlands, and in July 1915, the Town Council decreed that the speed limit should be 12 miles an hour. Violators were subject to the steepest town fines, $25, or three days in jail. Previously, fines had ranged from $1 to $20--and those were days when the average person made $1 a day.

Two townsmen at that time owned autos. The first was a Ford runabout bought by physician Ed Copeland about 1910. Jimmy Carruthers bought the second, an E-M-F, a few years later. Named for its manufacturer, Edward M. Flanders, the E-M-F was a popular early auto in Piedmont Virginia. It had two nicknames, "Every Mechanical Fault" and "Every Morning Fix."

To make summer folk feel at home in the evening, the town had six street lights, lit with coal oil (a primitive kerosene) by lamplighter S.E. Hindman. Though businesses and homes had electric lights by late 1912--courtesy of the newly electrified Washington & Old Dominion Railroad, the successor to the Southern 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, following her 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 & 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 propper authorities." A guard, paid $1 a day, saw to it that no one entered or left. Then, 11 property owners were "ordered at once to clean and disinfect all privies, hog pens and premises generally."

Cholera, influenza and typhoid fever also prompted quarantines. Typhoid, caused by contaminated drinking water, was rampant during those years, and Round Hill relied on a strong spring with pure water. Its stone base still can be seen, a few hundred yards west of the town limits, by the old railway right of way.

But with a population that grew from 318 in 1900 to 379 in 1910, a stronger water source was needed, and by the summer of 1913, potable water was supplied by iron pipes from a spring-fed reservoir on Scotland Hill.

Other health ordinances prohibited horses, hogs and female dogs "while in heat" from running loose. Cows could stray about between 6 a.m. and 7 p.m. but were to be penned at night.

Mayor Ford was responsible for carrying out the town ordinances. He came to Round Hill from Page County in 1877 when he was 24, and the store he opened is now the town office. In 1901, he ran for the state Senate and served two terms representing Loudoun and Fauquier.

"Honest George Ford," was his sobriquet, as illustrated by the time young Albert Purcell brought some aged chickens into Ford's store for resale. The clerk gave him the correct price for older chickens, not the price for young fryers. But when Ford sold them in Washington, he got the fryer price and handed Albert the extra change.

Ford became ill in 1910, and his son, Charles, a civil engineer who was surveying railroad lines in Oregon, returned to take over the business, running it until he retired in 1953.

Among four other stores, the Round Hill Grocery, built in 1913 as a combined store and pharmacy, also survived into modern times. George and Mordecai Throckmorton ran it from 1946 to 1983. They knew how to select and cut steak, as did Bob McLean in Lovettsville and Dick James in Waterford. James, however, would sell only to regular customers, and Lovettsville was out of the way for most, so beef lovers always came to the Throckmortons. In 1983, Frances and Robert Milligan took over from the Throckmortons, and they still supply the wants of many of Round Hill's 515 residents.

Eugene Scheel is a Waterford historian and mapmaker.

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