McMechen House

McMechen House. Confederate Headquarters. , This house was constructed about 1853 for Samuel A. McMechen, merchant, father of five daughters and deacon of Moorefield Presbyterian Church up the street on your right. The attached McMechen Store, on the right, predates the house. A Confederate sympathizer, McMechen entertained Confederate officers at his house when they controlled Moorefield. When Union forces occupied the town, McMechen left for his cabin at Howard's Lick Spring (presently Lost River State Park) or for friends' homes in the Shenandoah Valley. Presumably he was away when Union Gen. John C. Frémont made his headquarters in the house in May 1862. , Confederate Gen. John McCausland, retreating after the unsuccessful attack on Washington, D.C. and the burning of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, in 1864, was asleep upstairs when Union Gen. William W. Averell attacked his troops bivouacked four miles north of here about dawn on August 7. McCausland lost hundreds of horses, later hampering Confederate cavalry operations in the Shenandoah Valley. , Moorefield changed hands several times during the war as each side sought control of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, or advanced to or retreated from the Shenandoah Valley. Each army foraged for horses, cattle, sheep, hogs, wheat, corn, and dry goods in the countryside and in Moorefield. , Confederate Gen. Fitzhugh Lee reported at the end of 1863 that few supplies could be found here. , At war's end, McMechen repaired his house, restocked his store, and helped the community recover. Resentment lingered, however. His wife, Mary Elizabeth McMechen, remarked in 1866, "We have been torn from Virginia by wicked force, but we are Virginians still."