The house also gave the family with enough space to participate in woven goods production. Sloan was a fabric weaver by trade, and he and his family established a thriving weaving company on their Mill Creek valley properties. Until Sloan built a separate loom house, they completed their full production process within the house. Six looms were built and operated there by him and his sons. Sloan and his family raised their own sheep and farmed flax on their farm, as well as obtaining flax and raw wool from neighbors.
Sloan counterpanes became well-known in the South Branch Valley region, and the majority of the Sloan family’s woven items were sold locally. Until the mid-nineteenth century, the family’s business of woollen items and linens thrived. Several woven coverlets made by the Sloans are still in the possession of the current Parker family tenants of the Sloan–Parker House. Richard and Charlotte Sloan utilised a process of casting lots to determine which of their ten children should marry, according to Sloan family tradition.
When their youngest son James married Magdaline Arnold on January 6, 1834, he won a straw drawing contest and became the only one of their ten children to marry. The Sloan household was run by James and Magdaline, while the rest of the family worked on their family’s weaving company. John and Thomas Sloan, two of Richard and Charlotte Sloan’s sons, served in the military and were involved in local and state politics.
The Virginia General Assembly appointed John Sloan Major General of the 3rd Division, Virginia Militia, in 1842, after he served in the War of 1812. He was also a county justice from 1824 to 1828, a county surveyor in 1827, a county sheriff in 1839, and a member of the Virginia House of Delegates from 1825 to 1827, representing Hampshire County in the Virginia House of Delegates.
From 1832 to 1834, and again from 1835 to 1837, Thomas Sloan served as a delegate for Hampshire County in the Virginia House of Delegates. He was also a delegate to the 1850 Virginia Constitutional Convention, representing a constituency that included Frederick, Hampshire, and Morgan counties.
The Sloan–Parker House, also known as the Stone House, Parker Family Home, or Richard Sloan House, is a late-eighteenth-century stone residence in Hampshire County, West Virginia, United States. It was established on land that had been left by the Shawnee when they were forcibly relocated to Kansas following their defeat at the Battle of Point Pleasant in 1774. On June 5, 1975, the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places, making it Hampshire County’s first property to do so. Since 1854, the Parker family has owned the Sloan–Parker House. Along the Northwestern Turnpike, in the remote Mill Creek valley, the house and its surrounding farm can be found.
Richard Sloan and his wife Charlotte Van Horn Sloan built the original fieldstone part of the home around 1790 for themselves. Sloan was born in Ireland and immigrated to the United States after the American Revolutionary War, where he worked as an indentured servant for David Van Horn. Sloan married Van Horn’s daughter Charlotte and they lived in the Mill Creek valley, where the original stone portion of the home was built.
The Sloans had 10 children, including John and Thomas Sloan, who eventually served in the Virginia House of Delegates as representatives for Hampshire County. From the stone home, Richard Sloan and his family maintained a profitable weaving company, and their Sloan counterpanes (woven coverlets with block motifs) became well-known across the South Branch Valley region Natural Stone Paving supplies near me.
In 1854, the Sloans sold the stone mansion as well as 900 acres (360 hectares) of land to three Parker brothers. On the Moorefield and North Branch Turnpike, the Parker family owned a stagecoach line that included a stop at the stone home, where the family served meals to travellers. The stone home was visited by both Union and Confederate armies during the American Civil War, and was plundered by Union troops for commodities and supplies.
After the opening of the Hampshire Southern Railroad in 1910, the stone house was used as a local voting station, and its employment as a stagecoach stop came to an end. In 1975, the Parker family decided to open the house to the public for tours, and it was added to the National Register of Historic Places. The original stone component of the Sloan–Parker House faces the Northwestern Turnpike, and a wooden frame addition (constructed around 1900) lies close to the original stone part.
At the basement level, the stone section’s outer wall is about 36 inches (91 cm) thick, tapering to about 12 inches (30 cm) at the attic level. The majority of the flooring in the stone part, as well as the door hardware, is original. The Sloan–Parker House site also includes a big barn (constructed in 1803) and the Sloan–Ludwick Cemetery, which is located to the northeast of the house.