The Frank Kemper House

The Frank Kemper House to your left was built c. 1835 as a home for Benjamin Franklin Kemper and his wife, Eliza Holbrook Kemper. Originally a one room building with a side hall, the larger part of the structure was added over the next ten years. In addition to being the Kempers' residence, it was also used as an inn and tavern for travelers, primarily for river boatmen., When Confederate Gen. Turner Ashby was killed near Harrisonburg on June 6, 1862, his body was brought to this house. The women of the village prepared his body for burial, one of them placing a rose over his fatal wound. The body was laid under a window in the front corner room of the house (on the opposite side), where Confederate troops passed to pay their respects., After the war, the house was used for various purposes, including as a tea room and a boarding house. The Society of Port Republic Preservationists purchased the building in 1992 and converted it into the Port Republic Museum. The Shenandoah Valley Battlefields Foundation assumed stewardship of the house and museum in 2022., History of Port Republic , Port Republic was laid off into lots and chartered by an 1802 act of the Virginia Assembly. By 1832, the village was 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 converged at The Point to form the South Fork of the Shenandoah River, made it a transportation hub. The seven roads leading into Port Republic were used to bring goods from farms, forests, and mines. One hundred yards to your right, products and manufactured goods were loaded onto flat-bottomed boats at The Point for transport north., (captions) , The Frank Kemper House, c. 1928. The man at left is pointing to the window where Ashby's body lay., Photograph of Turner Ashby's corpse, taken here at the Kemper House. Image courtesy American Civil War Museum, under the management of Virginia Museum of History and Culture.