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Stafford’s best-known gold mines were: Eagle/Rappahannock Smithfield Rattlesnake/Horsepen Lee Monroe New Hope Smaller Stafford mines included: Brower Elliot Farm Fairview Franklin MacDonald Prospect Puss King Wise Farm

Ironically, the South’s most prominent abolitionist, Stafford’s Moncure Daniel Conway, came from a diverse and eclectic family of predominantly enslavers and independent thinkers: Uncle Peter Vivian Daniel (also featured image), was Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. He advocated the “peculiar institution” of slavery as benevolent to mankind. Peter Vivian Daniel Cousin and Richmond…

1832-1907 Moncure Daniel Conway was the son of Walker P. Conway (1805-1884) and lived at what is now 305 King Street (River Road) in Falmouth. He graduated from Dickinson College in 1849, studied law for a year, then became a Methodist minister. He graduated from Harvard in 1854 with a degree in divinity. After graduation,…

Stafford historian Homer Musselman identified 153 Staffordians, almost all in the 45th Virginia Militia Regiment, who served in the War of 1812. Subsequent research by Mike and Marty Lyman indicates that as many as 1,000 Staffordians participated in the War of 1812. The war left Stafford untouched except for British soldiers who burned down the…

James Hunter’s Iron Works, also known as Rappahannock Forge, was located east of Falmouth. It was Stafford’s major industrial enterprise and one of Virginia’s and America’s early major industrial plants. Hunter’s large complex ran from today’s Old Forge neighborhood, south to the Rappahannock River, and east underneath I-95, to the Carter’s Crossing Shopping Center. Hunter’s…

John Mercer of Stafford’s Marlborough Point owned a vast and renowned library which he used to educate both his nephew George Mason (IV) and his son John Francis Mercer. Both were delegates to the U. S. Constitutional Convention who refused to sign the final document because it lacked a declaration or bill of rights. Mercer,…

By Marion Brooks Robinson Until the late 1930s, this large fish, weighing between 60 and 75 pounds and measuring 5 to 6 feet long, was caught regularly in the waters just below the fall line in the Rappahannock River. My father had a trap, known as a “fall” trap, used mainly for catching herring, but…

Falmouth – Westward Expansion “Gateway to the West” By Marion Brooks Robinson The first English Colony in the New World was established in what was to become the state of Virginia. In the early part of the 17th century the states many waterways were the only “roads.” Rivers emptying into the Chesapeake Bay were the…

George Brent, nephew of Giles (I), Margaret, and Mary Brent, joined them in Stafford in 1673. As a young man he was sent from England to reside with them “to learn how to live.” He certainly accomplished this; he later became captain of the Militia, lawyer, attorney general of the Colony, and Stafford representative to…

The story of Stafford’s first first permanent English settlers, the Brents. begins at Lark Stoke, their ancestral home in England. In 1638, Giles Brent (I), along with sisters Mary and Margaret, sailed on the “Elizabeth” to the new world and settled on Kent Island in southern Maryland. Giles Brent (I) became a prominent Maryland gentleman…