Jun 32 min read

What's New With Lil' Blue (Issue 1)

Updated: Jun 8

I probably wouldn’t be here and this business would not exist if I had not fallen in love with a house....

I closed on Lil' Blue November 22, 2023 and the Slow Living Solutions Headquarters was born! This is my first time owning a home and I plan on being here a long while. Why did I move to Staunton, Virginia? Because I fell in love with this house! Buy why you ask?

Let's start with a few fun facts: Lil'Blue dates back to somewhere between 1888-1892. The plot this house was built on was part of the first wave of economic development in the Sears Hill Neighborhood of Staunton, VA. Sears Hill is the rather giant hill that geographically sits behind the Staunton Train Depot, just at the edge of the city center. Barnas Sears resigned from his post as president of Brown College in Rhode Island to take the helm as agent for the Peabody Educational Fund used to establish free public education in the Post Civil War Era. His house still stands as a local landmark (and privately owned residence) known as The Sears House at the top of the hill.

After Sears's death in 1880, his wife Elisabeth began selling plots of land for development. Plot #11 was sold in two sections, the first in 1882 to JE Graham (owned a sawmill and fertilizer company) and the second to WP Whitmore in 1883. This plot ran from the property of JJ Ladd (Staunton Public Schools Superintendent 1873-1878) to the plot owned by Newton Argenbright (county clerk from approx. 1880-1920) spanning 517 feet north to south and 95 feet east to west.

Graham bought out Whitmore's share of the plot in 1885 and sold it to William Calvin Straughan in 1888. Straughan served as one of 2 magistrates for the city of Staunton's Ward 2 as of 1882. Straughan sold the plot with "a farm dwelling house thereon" to John W. Bryan in 1892. Bryan was a former private for the Staunton Artillery, a branch of the confederate army. Prior to the war he worked as a store clerk at Powell & Blackley. He later followed in his father's footsteps as a harness maker and then went on to open a grocery store with a partner in Staunton. He sold Lil' Blue to J. Fred Davis in 1893.

Fred is the son of Rebecca J. Davis, whose house is noted as having been built and occupied as the new plot boundary in 1885 (next door neighbor to the south). Rebecca was married to J. Frank Davis, who passed of typhoid fever at the age of 75 that same year (1893).

To be continued...

REFERENCES

What's New With Lil' Blue (Issue 1)

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