By Everard K. Meade
Clarke County Historical Association
The story of Boyce goes back to November, 1879, when the first trains of the Shenandoah Valley Railroad stopped in a dense woods at the intersection of its tracks with the Berry's-Ferry-Winchester turnpike, and called that stop, "Boyceville". The intersection is today the heart of the incorporation town of Boyce.
Soon after the Civil War the Shenandoah Valley Railroad Company obtained a charter to build a road between Hagerstown, Maryland, and Roanoke, Virginia. Clarke County promptly invested $100,000 in its stocks. By 1873 the road bed had been graded and filled well beyond the present town of Boyce and then construction came to an abrupt stop for lack of funds.
The enterprise was saved by the energetic efforts of Col. Upton Lawrence Boyce, a St. Louis lawyer who had married a niece of Col. Joseph Tuley and had moved to Clarke County in 1866, soon after his purchase of "The Tuleyries", one of the county's beautiful homes and situated a scant two miles from the town which was to appropriately named "Boyce" in his honor. Col. Boyce secured the necessary funds to complete the railroad from Northern capitalist, and construction was resumed in 1878.
All of this is necessary background; for Boyce is the legitimate offspring of the Shenandoah Valley Railroad, which is now a part of the Norfolk and Western system. Once the Shenandoah Valley was completed the growth of a town around the intersection of its tracks and Berry's Ferry-Winchester turnpike, now a part of the Leww-Jackson highway, was inevitable. This turnpike was then the artery over which the livestock and produce from a large area of rich and productive Clarke County farm land flowed to Winchester to be shipped to Baltimore and other cities over the Winchester and Potomac. This intersection was a "natural" shipping point. It would save the long haul to Winchester.
In 1879 all the 232 acres within the limits of the Boyce of today belonged to the five farms of "Roseville", "Abbyville", Huntington", "Pleasant Hill", and "Saratoga", then owned respectively, by William F. Knight, Dr. William Albert Bradford, Henry H. Harrison, Mrs. M. Camilla Pleasants Whiting (widow of N. Burwell Whiting), and R. Powel Page. All of it was tick woodland except that small triangle today enclosed by Van Deventer's Lane, the Lee-Jackson highway and the White Post-Old Chapel road.
"The Roseville Cornor", well known in an earlier day, was at the intersection of the White Post road and the turnpike. "Roseville", once the home of William Wilmer ("Buck") Whiting, in now owned by Mr. and Mrs. Julian A. Everly. "Abbyville" was originally a part of "Page Brook". Dr. Bradford was the father of W. Albert Bradford, who has served Clarke County so long and so well as its county treasurer, and of the late Louis Bradford, a distinguished journalist who became managing editor of the New York Tribune, and whose daughter - Miss Elizabeth Bradford - is the present owner. "Huntington" was also originally a part of "Page Brook" and is now owned by Clay Carr, Sr. "Pleasant Hill" is now "Scalaby" and is own by Maj. Kenneth N. Gilpin. "Saratoga" was built by Gen. Daniel Morgan during the Revolutionary War and was sold by him to Nathaniel Burwell, II. It is now owned by the Misses Agnes R. and Mary F. Page, daughter of the late R. Powell Page.
Generally speaking, that part of the Boyce of 21943 which lies North of the White Post - Old Chapel road and West of the Lee-Jackson highway was once "Roseville" land; the part East of the highway to the Carr of "Huntington" Lane and North of the road, was "Abbyville" land; the part North of the road and East of Carr Lane was "Huntington" Land; the part West of the highway and South of the road, "Pleasant Hill' land, and the part West of the highway and South of the road, "Saratoga" land. Boyce still includes land belonging to the present day "Roseville", "Abbyville", "Scaleby", ("Pleasant Hill"), and "Saratoga".
Dennis Seals, colored carriage drive for the "Pleasant Hill" Whitings, built on a two acre lot in the "Saratoge Corner," - just across the Hite Post road from the "Roseville Corner" - in the late eighteen-seventies, the first house ever put up within Boyce's corporate limits. Boyce's second building wasa rough grain "warehouse" built in 1879 by one, Saunders, a Pennsylvania, who installed a corn sheller in it and, for a space, did a brisk business in buying corn from neighboring farms, shelling it, and then shipping it out over the new railroad. This "warehouse" was wither on the Seals lot or a five acre lot just south of it which Jacob Willingham bough from "Saratoga."
A good picture of Boyce in the early part of 1880 is given in the following excerpt from a letter written March 9th of that year.
"Well old Clarke instead of being the ultima thule is now the omphalon ges. You can reach Boyce Ville at almost any hour of the day from all parts of the know world. A train passes here in the morning at 8 o'clock on its way to Front Royal and returns at 10 1/2 on its way back to Shepherdstown, connecting with the Winchester and Potomac at Charles Town. Another passes at 2 o'clock returning at 3 1/2, connecting at Buffields Depot with the Baltimore and Ohio. You can't imagine what a change has taken place at Boyceville, A depot, a warehouse, and shanties innumerable have sprung up all around. Millwood has felt the advantages of the railroad and you would be astonished to see the volume of business going on between it and the depot. Poor Winchester makes no secret of its lamentations. Some one asked at a public meeting there "Who has seen a Clarke Co. wagon in Winchester since the cussed railroad was built?"
In 1880, P. Powell Page and Addison H. Garvin, in business partnership under the name of Page & Garvin established Boyce's first real business enterprises by building a large store and warehouse. The former was on the site of T. B. Strode's present store, and the latter, nearby. Joseph Keeler and William Garvin clerked in the store and John M. Jolliffe managed the warehouse. Boyce's second store was built in the same year by John W. Sprint who, with his sons, operated it. It was just across from the Page and Garvin Store. By 1885, J. N. Laws had built a large store, later converted into a grain elevator and warehouse and now operated as such by the Clarke County Farmers Association.
From 1885 to 1910 the growth of Boyce was normal and not particularly eventful, except that each year the town did a far larger volume of business than is customarily done by villages of its size.
Early in 1910 a proposal to incorporate Boyce received general approval. Delegate J. R. Grigsby attended to the necessary legislation, and on November 28, 1910, Boyce became an incorporated town. The area within its corporate limits was surveyed by the late C. E. Harris, County Surveyor, who made a large plat of this survey. This plat, together with a detailed description of the metes and bounds of the town, are recorded in Deed Book 6, Clarke County Records, beginning on page 220. The first election of town officers was held on December 20, 1910. W. M. Gaunt was elected Boyce's first mayor and its first town council was composed of George W. Garvin, M. O. Simpson, J. T. Sprint and George W. Harrison. Four days later they elected Mr. Harrison Recorder.
Boyce's charter was amended on September 26, 1930. As amended, it provided for biennial elections of a Mayor and four Councilmen to be held on the second Tuesday in June and all these were to take office on the first Monday of the following September.
In 1910 Boyce's population was 312; in 1920, 301 and in 1940, 342. If the growth of its population has been slow throughout its corporate existence, its progress in all directions which make the town a healthy, pleasant and desirable place in which to live has been rapid. Situated in a beautiful and prosperous countryside and surrounded by historic homes, Boyce has most of the conveniences and many of the luxuries of modern life. The Norfolk and Western Railway and the Greyhound Bus system give it exceptional transportation facilities. A large modern school building, just completed, and adequately staffed with teachers, cares for the educational needs of its children. It has three churches, connected with one of which is a large parish hall, equipped with an auditorium, a library, reading rooms and bowling alleys, all of which are at the service of the community. Its numerous and varied stores and business houses are adequate to take food care of the needs of the town and the surrounding area they serve. Boyce has always enjoyed an enviable health record, and the almost total absence of serious crime is evidence that it is blessed with a law abiding and God fearing citizenry. Vagrant vignette of Boyce in bygone years - Hop Jolliffe's "Bright Lights", the summer gathering of a the gay and fashionable of the neighborhood at the depot "to watch the 6 o'clock train come in"; the jingling of the harness bells of the big four horse farm wagons as they rolled toward the grain elevators; the drilling of the "Home Guard" on the station plaza - these, and others, would stir nostalgic memories in many. There is no space for them here.
This sketch must close with brief reference to a few persons not hitherto mentioned. M. L. Dunlap was station agent for seemingly unnumbered years. Charles L. Estep and J. Trone Sprint were alternately perennial postmasters. Mr. Estap was sure to be postmaster when the Republicans won; Mr. Sprint, when the Democrats were victorious. Edward A. Lindsey fell heir to the Estep mantle, and retired to the management of the Farmers Union during Democratic administrations. Courtney B. Jones as Boyce's rural mail carrier for more that a quarter of a century. Cornelius Van Deventer has always been a continues to be the cashier of the bank in Boyce. J. R. Strode operated one of the town's best stores until ill health forced his retirement from his business. The late Nathaniel B. Page and J. Glenn Burch was pioneers in the automobile business, a business in which the latter is still engaged. Mr. Page also owned and operated a grain elevator and warehouse business until her sold both to the Clarke County Farmers Association. And, finally, there was Tom Simmons, the colored barber, who so lived that all his customers sincerely regretted his death.