Qualla: Abram's Delight

Abram's Delight: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit APK, CC BY-SA 4.0. By tradition, the price Abraham Hollingsworth paid for his Shenandoah Valley land in the 1730s included a cow, a calf, and a piece of red cloth - the customary acknowledgment paid to the local Shawnee people who lived on the ground. He had a paper grant from the colonial speculators Alexander Ross and Morgan Bryan, and later he had to renegotiate the title with Lord Fairfax, who claimed everything between the Potomac and the Rappahannock. Hollingsworth called his land a delight to behold. The two-story limestone house his son built in 1754 - the oldest building still standing in Winchester - still carries that judgment as its name.

Read more: Abram's Delight on Qualla

Image: APK | CC BY-SA 4.0

Abram's Delight: The Quaker Founder

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Joel Bradshaw, CC0. Abraham Hollingsworth was born in 1686, the grandson of Valentine Hollingsworth, a Quaker who had immigrated to America from Ireland. By 1728, Abraham was in the lower Shenandoah Valley, eventually settling on the spring-fed land just east of what is now Winchester. He built a lo...

Read more: Abram's Delight on Qualla

Image: Joel Bradshaw | CC0

Abram's Delight: A House and a Meeting

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit APK, CC BY-SA 4.0. Isaac Hollingsworth designed the house to serve as both a family residence and a Quaker meeting place. The Society of Friends gathered there for worship - men in the parlor, women in the dining room, the two rooms separated by a sliding partition that could open to make a larger ...

Read more: Abram's Delight on Qualla

Image: APK | CC BY-SA 4.0

Abram's Delight: A Limestone Farmhouse

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Joel Bradshaw, CC0. Architecturally, Abram's Delight is a classic Shenandoah Valley farmhouse - random rubble limestone on a stone foundation, slate roof, central-hall plan with two rooms over two on either side. The original 1754 section is three bays wide and 39 feet long, two stories tall, with t...

Read more: Abram's Delight on Qualla

Image: Joel Bradshaw | CC0

Abram's Delight: Restoration

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Joel Bradshaw, CC0. After Annie Hollingsworth left in the 1910s, the house deteriorated for almost three decades. The Winchester-Frederick County Historical Society took on the restoration in the late 1940s. Irvan O'Connell oversaw the structural work; Mary Boxley directed the interior restoration. ...

Read more: Abram's Delight on Qualla

Image: Joel Bradshaw | CC0

Abram's Delight: What You See in Winchester

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit APK, CC BY-SA 4.0. From the air the property sits at the eastern edge of Winchester, a tidy compound of limestone and white frame buildings clustered around a small spring and pond. The town itself is one of the older European settlements in the Shenandoah Valley; Lord Fairfax's land office, George...

Read more: Abram's Delight on Qualla

Image: APK | CC BY-SA 4.0