Port Republic Road Historic District

The Port Republic Road African American community began to coalesce shortly after the Civil War, but the neighborhood as a subdivision of lots and streets took form earlier in the nineteenth century. In the 1810s prosperous mill owner Frederick Imboden had over twenty lots of approximately quarter-acre size laid out on and near the road leading from the northern outskirts of Waynesboro to the town of Port Republic, located approximately fifteen miles to the north. The hillside subdivision overlooked Imboden's industrial complex on the South River, which in 1815 consisted of a merchant mill and dam, a carding machine, and a distillery (and was soon joined by the tilt hammer blacksmith shop of Jacob Bowman). An early plat of Imboden's subdivision has not been located but a portion of the area was depicted in a plat attached to an 1877 deed.'

Imboden may have conceived his subdivision as a way to attract mechanics to his various industrial enterprises. Among the neighborhood's first residents was a Pennsylvania-born blacksmith named John Crouse (1785-1854), who purchased from Imboden several parcels between the quarter-acre lots and the river on January 4, 1817. Waynesboro historians Tom Elliott and Alice Wood have commented on the significance of the timing of this sale to Crouse, which occurred the same day that Imboden recorded the sale of a slave blacksmith named Waxey. It is possible, Wood and Elliott speculate, "that John Crouse replaced Waxey at Waxey's forge and anvil that day." In 1818 Crouse occupied a brick house which stands today at 368 Riverside Drive in the district. Crouse may have built the original one-story, one-room section of the two-story brick house in 1817-18, or he may have acquired it from Imboden (a dwelling not specified as brick stood on the parcel in 1815).’

Little is known about the history of the Port Republic Road neighborhood between the 1810s and the Civil War. There appears to have been continuity of ownership for some parcels. John Crouse and his descendants, for example, retained ownership of their river tract for most of the period up to the Civil War and beyond (to 1944, in fact), and Elijah Churchman, who purchased lots 20 and 21 in 1817, was

still listed as their owner in 1877. In the late 1840s and 1850s John Crouse’s son William operated a mill known as the "Little Mill," believed to be the same as Imboden's mill (or located at the same seat). The Little Mill no longer existed by the mid-1880s. Free or enslaved blacks may have lived in the district prior to the end of the Civil War but positive information is sketchy. It is possible that a free black named Isaac Crawford lived on the east side of Port Republic Road before 1865; Crawford lived there in 1873 and a black man named Washington Crawford occupied the same general location in 1884.°

Port Republic Road's African American community began to take form after the Civil War. The locale offered a number of attractions to blacks. Port Republic Road adjoined Waynesboro's postbellum industrial section and the tracks and depots of the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad, which was built between the district and downtown Waynesboro in 1854. From census schedules it is known that the tailroad was a source of employment for Waynesboro blacks during the postbellum period, and presumably the large merchant mill, tanyard and cooper shop located nearby also employed blacks. In the 1880s blacks occupied and owned properties along Arch Street and the 300 block of West Main Street in the downtown, areas located immediately across the railroad tracks from the Port Republic Road neighborhood, which therefore may be considered an extension of the downtown black community. (No above-ground resources associated with the in-town black community apparently survive.) Underlying these local factors in the community's development is the deeper one of the profound social and economic changes that resulted from the Civil War.*

Two maps dated 1866 and 1873 provide insights into the community's early development. Both were prepared under the supervision of U. S. Army Col. G. L. Gillespie to illustrate official reports on the Battle of Waynesboro (March 2, 1865). The 1866 map, which is more schematic, shows no development in the district. This may have been in part due to oversight or lack of a need to depict the area rather than a true reflection of conditions, since the antebellum John Crouse House 1s not depicted. The more informative 1873 map shows six dwellings along Port Republic Road in the district and identifies their occupants. Several were African American, including J. Willis, Joshua Hill, the aforementioned Isaac Crawford, and probably also R. Harvey.°

A clear indication of the beginnings of what quickly developed as Waynesboro's principal African American community is the construction of churches in the neighborhood in the early 1870s. Pleasant View United Methodist Church was organized in 1867 and met first in a schoolhouse located outside the neighborhood. The congregation's first church was built in 1870 at 312 Port Republic Road (on the site of the present building, built in 1980). In March 1880 a second building--"a handsome new church edifice"--neared completion under the direction of the Rev. John Reed. The Shiloh Baptist congregation formed at about the same time as its Methodist counterpart and like it is said to have met first in borrowed quarters, a log building that still stands near the intersection of Ohio and Florence streets (outside the district) and that served as a white Baptist church in the 1880s and 1890s. In 1872 the Shiloh congregation acquired its present site where it erected a temporary log meetinghouse followed several years later by a frame church. An 1891 aerial perspective shows the weatherboarded frame churches of the Methodists and Baptists, both substantial buildings crowned with ornamental belfries.°

The Port Republic Road churches apparently attracted additional black settlement to the neighborhood during the 1870s and 1880s, just as churches were seminal in the development of post-bellum African American neighborhoods in such Virginia communities as Salem and Covington. In addition to the several blacks referenced on the 1873 Battle of Waynesboro map, early residents or lot purchasers included Isaac Newton, who appears to have been in the mercantile business with his brother John and who was involved in the formation of the Greenville African Methodist Episcopal Church, located in surrounding Augusta County. The trustees of the Shiloh Baptist Church in 1872 included Benjamin Lias, Samuel Pickle, Henry Pitman and Alexander Davis, some of whom probably lived in the district. Samuel Pickle, however, lived directly across the C&O line from the district. The 1880 census records

6 Clark et al, "Waynesboro's Black Community," 67-69; Souvenir Booklet . . . Shiloh Baptist Church, Staunton Vindicator, March 19, 1880; and Hawke, History of Waynesboro, front endsheets. Work on the second Pleasant View Church may have begun in the summer of 1879 (Staunton Vindicator, January [2?], 1880). The Ohio Street Baptist church is the only white Baptist church depicted on the 1884 Hotchkiss map. Perhaps the Shiloh congregation shared space with the white Baptists until their own church was completed. The lot for the Methodist church was deeded to the congregation after construction of the second church (in 1883; Augusta County Deed Book 100, p. 49). A third church had been built in the neighborhood by 1925. Located on Port Republic Road nearly opposite Abraham Hall and known as Monumental AME Church, the building was vacated about 1950 and has since been torn down (Sanborn maps; Waynesboro . . . City Directory, 1950-51).

Pickle (b. ca. 1826) as a "depot hand" who lived with his wife Harriett (b. ca. 1815) and a boarder, Robert Coleman (b. ca. 1838), who was a carpenter. (Perhaps Coleman was involved in the construction of churches and other buildings in the district during the 1870s and 1880s.) Typical occupations of Waynesboro blacks during the period included domestic servant, laborer and railroad worker.’

The 1884 Jedediah Hotchkiss map of Waynesboro, the 1891 aerial perspective and other period sources provide a wealth of information on the neighborhood and its occupants. The Hotchkiss map, which refers to the area as "the village of North Waynesboro," gives the names of fifteen black residents and six white residents or absentee property owners. The latter group included J. S. Wallace, who owned two dwellings, a Mrs. Fishburne (three dwellings), and Philip Killian (five dwellings). Killian played an important role in the early development of the district. The prominent Waynesboro merchant purchased three of the original Imboden lots in 1876, and in February 1880 a Staunton newspaper reported that Killian and a partner were preparing to build a half dozen "tenements" in "Sable Manor, a thrifty suburb on the northern border" of Waynesboro. Killian anticipated an increase in the need for worker housing that accompanied the construction of he Shenandoah Valley Railroad through the Waynesboro vicinity in 1880-1881."

"Sable Manor" as a name for the Port Republic Road neighborhood probably had no existence outside the imagination of the newspaper editor, but Killian's tenements did exist and are depicted on the 1884 map, the 1891 perspective, and on twentieth-century Sanborn maps. Three of Killian's rental houses (now gone) were located on the steeply sloping 200 block of the back street now known as Shiloh Avenue. Sanborn maps depict them as identical story-and-a-half frame dwellings with small front porches and apparently two-room plans without ells. The 1891 perspective shows them as somewhat larger buildings, perhaps because they are viewed from the rear where their elevations were taller. The other two houses were located on the east side of the 200 block of Port Republic Road just uphill from the intersection with Minden Place. The 1925 Sanborn map shows them to be two-story frame

dwellings with ells and more capacious front porches. Their larger size likely reflects theit location on the neighborhood's principal street and at some remove from the noise and smoke of the railroad tracks (although it is possible the second stories and ells were added at some point between 1880 and 1925). Philip Killian's frame tenements represent the two ends of the size spectrum for the district's housing stock during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Houses from earlier decades were often built of logs. In 1871 James Thomson (or Thompson) purchased a one-acre lot at the north end of Port Republic Road and he and a relative, Joshua Thomson, had built two log houses at the location by 1884. (1920s stone houses at 452 and 456 Port Republic Road occupy the site now.)”

Public schooling has occupied an important place in the life of the Port Republic Road neighborhood. A black schoolhouse existed in Waynesboro by the beginning of 1871. George W. Perrett served as the principal in 1874, assisted in his work by teacher Sarah Ellen Johnson. In April 1874 a Staunton newspaper reported on the performance of a "dramatic entertainment” at the "Perrett Colored School," and noted "hearty applause for remarkably good acting" from the white citizens who attended the play. School attendance stood at seventy pupils during the winter "free term" and dropped to forty in the spring. The paper predicted that many of Perrett's graduates would go on to careers in education. In January 1880 the Pleasant View United Methodist congregation sold their first church building to the county school board, presumably for new use as a schoolhouse to replace the one in use during the 1870s. The 1891 aerial perspective shows a simple one-story schoolhouse near the north end of the district in the general location of the present Rosenwald School building. The school that was in existence in the early twentieth century contained two rooms, and students were taught only through the seventh grade.”

In the 1910s Waynesboro's African American community began to push for improved school facilities. A Parent's School League was formed to raise funds and additional monies were donated by the Rosenwald Fund, a philanthropic organization headed by Sears Roebuck executive Julius Rosenwald that assisted the construction of black elementary and high schools throughout the South. A new facility known as the Julius Rosenwald Training School or simply Rosenwald School was erected in 1924 at 413 Port Republic Road. The original building and a 1934 addition were replaced by the

Clark et al, "Waynesboro's Black Community," 25, 40, 41, 68, 69; Vindicator, April 3 and 17, 1874, and January [2?], 1880; and Hawke, History of Waynesboro, front endsheets.

The original Rosenwald School was a stuccoed tile-block building. Alternative building materials such as tile block and concrete were used in African American communities throughout the nation during the early twentieth century. The materials were popular because of their novelty and plastic properties but also because they were less expensive and easier than other forms of masonry construction. The use of tile block in the construction of the Rosenwald School probably contributed to the decision of the Shiloh Baptist Church to rebuild its sanctuary in the same material. The 1924 church, built by African American contractor Jacob Fuller, features dark brown glazed tile block construction and is accented by concrete blocks with a scrolling foliage design.

The ornamental concrete blocks were probably manufactured using a hand-operated press such as the ones sold by Sears Roebuck and other firms during the period. Concrete block itself was used in the construction of Tarry's Hotel, built in 1940 at 208 Port Republic Road, and cinder block (a light-weight form of concrete block) was used for the 1960s commercial building, now a church, at 212 Port Republic Road.!?

Another important early community fixture was the Fairview Cemetery. In 1885 Joshua and Nancy Hill, who had lived in the neighborhood from 1873 or before, deeded one acte to a group of trustees for use as a “colored cemetery for the burial of colored persons." The plot was located opposite the public school on Port Republic Road near the crest of the hill. Today few historic markers survive in this original section, suggesting that easily misplaced fieldstones or impermanent wooden markers were used to mark most early graves. According to long-time neighborhood resident Lilly Mae Johnson, many graves in the original section were once marked uninscribed wooden headboards. The graveyard was enlarged eastward in the late 1920s and more recently it was extended to Fairview Avenue. Monuments from about 1900 on are conventional in form, material and detail, but at least one fieldstone marker survives and two poured concrete markers stand in the Leach family plot (one appears to mark the grave of Luther Leach, who died in 1910).'°

Commercial activity gradually developed in the neighborhood. An 1893 business directory lists two black businessmen in Waynesboro: barber D. T. Young and tobacconist Robert Cousins. It is unknown whether these individuals lived and worked in the district, but their businesses are typical of ones that thrived there in the twentieth century. A 1926 tax rate directory lists a broom factory, two restaurants, a barber shop and beauty parlor, a dance hall, a pool room, and a general store. The 1935 city directory (published during the Great Depression) names only three businesses: Jones Shoe Shop, Ideal Barber Shop, and Frog Pond Store. The latter formerly stood at the intersection of Port Republic Road and Dogwood Street and was owned for a time by Horace Grinstead, the mayor of Waynesboro's neighboring community of Basic City. Several of these businesses operated in the neighborhood's two lodge halls, the Elks Lodge at 228 Port Republic Road, built in 1917, and the Abraham Lodge at 260 Port Republic Road, built in 1922. An important addition was made to the neighborhood's commercial component in 1940 with the construction of the aforementioned Tarry's Hotel, which replaced a shoe shop and one or more restaurants at the same location.'*+

These businesses provided employment within the neighborhood, where several physicians also maintained offices, but most residents worked at jobs in white Waynesboro and surrounding Augusta County. From about 1930 on the large Du Pont Rayon Co. acetate plant at Waynesboro was an important source of employment. Many residents wotked in white businesses and homes as waiters, cooks, janitors, maids, and gardeners. Among the more prestigious occupations in the neighborhood were those of educator and minister.'>

The Port Republic Road neighborhood retained a vibrant mix of businesses and religious and educational institutions into the mid-twentieth century. The 1951 city directory lists Tarry's Hotel, the Casa Blanca Restaurant, the Dew Drop Inn, the Ideal Barber Shop, the Harry Brown and Monroe pool halls, the Methodist and Baptist churches, and Rosenwald School. The business sector gradually declined during the second half of the twentieth century and presently the neighborhood is almost

entirely residential. Interest in the neighborhood's heritage has grown steadily in recent years. In the early 1990s Lillian Clark and a team of researchers compiled a collection of newspaper clippings and original material printed in photocopy form as "“Waynesboro's Black Community: Historical Reflections." The project was an outgrowth of the "Reach Out" radio broadcast series on local black history, which aired on station WANV. In 2000 Estello Randolph and Portia Bass spearheaded a neighborhood effort to seek listing in the state and national historic registers. The listings are seen as a way to celebrate the Port Republic Road neighborhood's African American history. As Randolph has noted: "The bigger picture is that people are getting back in touch with their ancestry; they are finding pride in their heritage .. . If we dream together, we can see what this street used to look like and what it could be in the future."'