The Van Swearingen-Shepherd House, also known as Bellevue, is a Colonial Revival mansion in Shepherdstown, West Virginia that is home to the descendants of Captain Thomas Shepherd, founder of Shepherdstown. The house, situated on a bluff overlooking the Potomac River, was built in 1773 by Thomas Van Swearingen as a single-story stone house. His son, also named Thomas Van Swearingen, was a US Representative. The Shepherd family acquired the house in 1900, when Henry Shepherd III bought the house as a wedding present for his bride Minnie Reinhart, whose grandfather was Thomas Van Swearingen. That year, the Shepherds gave a dinner party on the lawn for William Jennings Bryan during his second presidential campaign. The house remains in the hands of the Shepherd family.
The original stone house has been extensively altered, with brick Victorian-era alterations exchanged for the present Colonial Revival style with a tetrastyle Ionic portico.
Famous quotes containing the words van and/or house:
“The first day that we landed upon that fatal shore
The planters they came round us full twenty score or more,
They rank’d us up like horses, and sold us out of hand
Then yok’d us unto ploughs, my boys, to plow Van
Dieman’s Land.”
—Unknown. Van Dieman’s Land (l. 9–12)
“Adjoining a refreshment stand ... is a small frame ice house ... with a whitewashed advertisement on its brown front stating, simply, “Ice. Glory to Jesus.” The proprietor of the establishment is a religious man who has seized the opportunity to broadcast his business and his faith at the same time.”
—For the State of New Jersey, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)