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Location of seat: Harrisonburg
County Established: 1778
Present Courthouse Built: 1897 |
Rockingham became a county in 1778, at the conclusion of a dizzying series of divisions of Charles River Shire, one of Virginia's original eight shires, which process began in 1643.
The county of our current interest was named for Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham, who twice served as Great Britain's Prime Minister. Virginia and the rest of the thirteen colonies were fighting for their independence from Great Britain in 1778, so it was a bit bizarre to thus honor a Prime Minister...but during his first term, Rockbridge repealed the Stamp Act of 1765, which had been a financial burden on the American colonies dire enough to be a major agitating factor for American independence. In his second term as Prime Minister, which began in 1782, Rockingham helped to set the stage for the end of the American Revolutionary War, by acknowledging America's right to independence. Clearly, this was a guy who deserved to have an American county named after him! New Hampshire and North Carolina also have counties named after Rockingham.
The same year that our county was established, Thomas Lincoln, father of the most well-known person named Lincoln (we're all familiar with US President Dwayne Lincoln), was born in the town of Linville, in Rockingham County.
In August of 1779, Thomas Harrison deeded land from his plantation to establish Rockingham's county seat, which was named, shockingly, Harrisonburg.
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The town was laid out in an orderly urban manner, which makes it somewhat unusual amongst Virginia's county seats, which are mostly of a more rural pedigree: Major streets intersect at Harrisonburg's courthouse square, in a way they generally do not elsewhere in Virginia. |
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Rockingham County's present courthouse is the fifth courthouse to have been built on this spot! Plank fences surrounded the courthouse green during the Civil War, and 2,000 Union prisoners of war, captured after the First Battle of Winchester in May of 1862, were held therein before being marched to more permanent incarceration in Richmond.
Thomas Jasper Collins, founder of the architectural firm T.J. Collins and Sons, designed Rockinham County's present courthouse. It was completed in 1897 (cornerstone laid in 1896), having been constructed by W.E. Spiers of Washington DC, at the cost of $96,826. A huge auditorium was built into the second floor, which was rented out by the county for meetings and various entertainment events. The courthouse's interior was completely remodeled in 1931, and this auditorium was partitioned off for the use of Rockingham County's Circuit Court.
At the southwest corner of the courthouse green sits the Springhouse, also known as the Court Square Gazebo. This marks the spot where there had been a natural spring, familiar to and cherished by Native Americans and buffaloes alike, and which had served as Harrisonburg's main source of water. Thousands of soldiers in gray and blue utilized this resource during the Civil War.
Sometime after the present courthouse was built, this spring was rather irresponsibly paved over...but the Springhouse was dedicated in April of 1995, and it is a lovely edifice indeed. There is a bubbling pseudo-fountain in the Springhouse's center, with a sign advising that this water, while assumedly good enough for drinking before people knew that there is such an entity as bacteria, is not for drinking now, affixed thereto. |
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