Camp Bartow Historic District

The historic inn known as "Traveller’s Repose" — or "Travelers’ Repose" — for many decades served patrons transiting the Staunton-Parkersburg Turnpike. It was once well known as the first stagecoach stop west of Allegheny Mountain. It was owned and managed from 1845 by Andrew Yeager (1800-1861), son of area pioneer John P. Yeager, Sr (1762-1833), an immigrant from near Lancaster City, Pennsylvania who had arrived in the area around 1795. The Repose served as Pocahontas county's first post office (1847-1906). The present two-story, wood-frame farmhouse dates to 1869.

The Repose owes its existence to construction of the historic turnpike, which began in 1838. By 1845, the turnpike having extended from Staunton to Weston, a traveler's inn had become an attractive proposition. The mail route through here was established in 1847, and when it did, Travelers’ Repose became the post office as well.

In September, 1861, a Confederate detachment encamped on the crest of Allegheny Mountain, just ten miles to the southeast. On October 3, the inn suffered crossfire during the Battle of Greenbrier River. Named Camp Bartow after the late Col. Francis S. Bartow (a Confederate commander who had died about 2 months before), the fortifications are still relatively intact. (The surrounding community would consequently be known as Bartow as well.) Later that winter, bushwhackers burned the Repose, thereby depriving both sides of its use. The Rebels, uncertain as to whether they could hold Camp Bartow in the event of another Union challenge, moved about 5 miles to the east to establish Camp Allegheny in an effort to retain control of the turnpike. On December 13, the Rebels repulsed a Union advance at this new position, thus ensuring that control of the turnpike would not be lost. But that advantage was secured at a significant cost: An unmarked grave on the property is said to contain the remains of more than 80 Confederate soldiers who died of their wounds, disease and exposure that winter.

In 1869, Peter Dilly Yeager (1829-1906), Andrew's son, who had spent a portion of the war in a Union prison, rebuilt Travelers’ Repose on the foundations of the earlier establishment. The refurbished lodge had 22 rooms, plus space for 28 horses in the barn. It was then variously known as the “Yeager Hotel” and the “Greenbrier Hotel”. The Repose was purchased by Brown Buren Beard (1883-1969) in 1912. (He was Peter's first cousin once removed.) His daughter, Jessie Beard Powell (1915-2013), a great-great-granddaughter of John Yeager, Sr, resided at the Repose for all of her 97 years and long kept alive stories of the old days. (One of them: that the 1,200 Rebel soldiers who invaded her family's farm exacted a cost of 500 of their sugar maples which were cut down for military purposes.)

Longstanding local lore asserts that Abraham Lincoln stayed here during his early journeys between Illinois and Washington, DC.[3] Among the other notables who are said (mostly without documentation) to have lodged at the Repose are Stonewall Jackson.

The Repose was still supplying "lodging and meals" to travelers around 1940 when writers for the WPA visited the area.[4]

In 2014, after Jessie Beard Powell had died, the property was auctioned and finally passed out of the family's hands.[5]

• Celebrated writer Ambrose Bierce described the Repose in an autobiographical essay (“A Bivouac to the Dead”) in 1903.[6] He had been a Union soldier here in 1861.
• Novelist Joseph Hergesheimer (1880–1954) wrote a short story (“Tol’able David”) set here in 1917; a play — and silent (1921) and talking (1930) movie versions — followed. In 1922, Hergesheimer described the Repose again in another Saturday Evening Post short story, itself entitled "Traveler's Repose".[7] His fictionalized name for the Greenbrier River Valley is "Greenstream County".

• Feather, Carl E. (2012), ”Sweet Repose in Bartow”, Goldenseal (Winter issue).