About the year 1738, there were two cabins erected near the Run, in Winchester.* The author regrets that he has not been able to ascertain the names of the first settlers in this town. Tradition however relates that they were German families.
In the year 1752 the legislature passed an act for the establishing of the town of Winchester.
In the preamble are the following words:
WHEREAS, it has been represented to the General Assembly, that James Wood, gentleman, did survey and lay out a parcel of land at the court house† in Frederick county, in twenty-six lots, of half an acre each, with streets for a town, by the name of Winchester, and made sale of said lots to divers persons who have since settled and built and continue building and settling thereon; but because the same was not laid off and erected into a town by act of Assembly, the freeholders and inhabitants thereof will not be entitled to the like privileges enjoyed by the freeholders and inhabitants of other towns in this colony. Be it enacted, &c, that the said parcel of land lately claimed by the said James Wood, lying and being in the County of Frederick aforesaid, together with fifty-four other lots of half an acre each, twenty-four thereof in one or two streets on the east side of the former lots, the street or streets to run parallel with the street already laid off, and the remaining thirty lots to be laid off at the north end of the aforesaid twenty-six with a commodious street or streets in such manner as the proprietor thereof, the right honorable Thomas Lord Fairfax, shall see fit, be and is hereby constituted, enacted, and established a town, in the manner already laid out, to be called by and retain the name of Winchester, and that the freeholders of said town shall forever hereafter enjoy
* A very aged woman, by the name of Sperry, informed the author that when she first saw the place where Winchester now stands, she was 22 years of age, and from her age at the time the author conversed with her, (which was in 1809), he found the year in which she first saw Winchester to be in 1738, at which time she stated there were but two small log cabins, and those near the run.
† Mr. Jacob Gibson informed the author that he was in Winchester in 1755, and that the court house was a small cabin, and that he saw the court sitting in this cabin.
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