The Frank Kemper House

The Frank Kemper House. Thriving river community was transportation hub. , When Virginia Governor Alexander Spotswood’s 1716 expedition first laid claim to the Shenandoah Valley, the area had already been used for centuries by Native Americans. The town of port Republic was laid off into lots and chartered by an 1802 act of the Virginia Assembly. John Cathrae, Jr., son of a colonial landowner here, platted the village whose layout has changed little in the ensuing years., By 1832, Port Republic had become a thriving industrial town and shipping port. The millraces supported a foundry, a tannery, grist mills, a woolen mill, sawmills/a cooper, a tilt-hammer shop, a tinner, boot and shoe factories, weavers, a saddler, a cabinet maker, a turner, a chairmaker, blacksmiths, stores, and other small industries and artisans., The village’s location where two tributary rivers converge to form the Shenandoah made it a transportation hub. As a result, the seven roads leading into Port were used to bring goods from farms, forests, and mines. One hundred yards south of here, raw products and manufactured goods were loaded onto flat-bottomed boats and transported north., This, the home of Benjamin Franklin Kemper and his wife, Eliza Holbrook, was built in the 1830s. Here Kemper kept the account books for the mill across the street and operated an inn and tavern for boatmen. On June 6, 1862, Confederate general Turner Ashby was killed in a skirmish on the outskirts of Harrisonburg. Grieving comrades carried his body to this house where ladies of the village prepared it for burial. Townspeople and soldiers filed by a window to view the body of Ashby, the gallant cavalry officer known as the Knight of the Confederacy. General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, who was headquartered in the village, entered the room to pay his respects. Since 1993, the house has been owned by the Society of Port Republic Preservationists and is used as the Port Republic Museum.