Qualla: Fort Pearsall

Fort Pearsall: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Justin A. Wilcox, Romney, West Virginia, United States, CC BY-SA 3.0. Before there was Romney there was Pearsall's Flats - a riverside plantation owned by Job Pearsall and his brother John, on a bend of the South Branch Potomac where a Native American river crossing met a colonial wagon road headed for Winchester. In the summer of 1755, the news from Braddock's defeat at the Monongahela reached the frontier. The Pearsalls did what scared settlers did. They threw up a log house and stockade and turned their plantation into a fort.

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Image: Justin A. Wilcox, Romney, West Virginia, United States | CC BY-SA 3.0

Fort Pearsall: The Brothers' Stockade

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Justin A. Wilcox, Romney, West Virginia, United States, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Pearsalls had been in the South Branch valley since at least the 1730s, when the area was still considered the western edge of European settlement in Virginia. Hunters and traders had been moving through since 1725 or earlier. Tradition holds that the brothers built their fir...

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Image: Justin A. Wilcox, Romney, West Virginia, United States | CC BY-SA 3.0

Fort Pearsall: Garrisoned by the Virginia Regiment

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Justin A. Wilcox, Romney, West Virginia, United States, CC BY-SA 3.0. Pearsall's stockade was upgraded by the Virginia Regiment, who provisioned it as one of the strings of forts protecting the frontier under the young Colonel George Washington's command. Captain Robert McKenzie took charge of the fort during the French and Indian War. Fort Pearsal...

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Image: Justin A. Wilcox, Romney, West Virginia, United States | CC BY-SA 3.0

Fort Pearsall: Lord Fairfax Renames the Town

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Justin A. Wilcox, Romney, West Virginia, United States, CC BY-SA 3.0. After the hostilities subsided, Thomas Fairfax, 6th Lord Fairfax of Cameron - the same Lord Fairfax whose disputed Northern Neck Proprietary claims had brought the teenage George Washington to the region in the 1740s - saw an opportunity. With the frontier quieter, settlers would...

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Image: Justin A. Wilcox, Romney, West Virginia, United States | CC BY-SA 3.0

Fort Pearsall: What Remains

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Justin A. Wilcox from Washington, D.C., United States, CC BY-SA 2.0. Oral tradition holds that the old fort was garrisoned one last time in 1774, during Lord Dunmore's War - the brief conflict over Shawnee land claims west of the Ohio - though historical records do not confirm it. After that the fort fades from the record. The structure itself has...

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Image: Justin A. Wilcox from Washington, D.C., United States | CC BY-SA 2.0