In the fall of 1777 the Assembly provided for a large part of Augusta County to be formed into the new County of Rockingham, and in April of the next year the gentlemen Justices met at the home of Daniel Smith, one of the number and organized. The Justices (Magistrates) at that time composed the county court and also performed the functions of the present Board of Supervisors. Daniel Smith’s house stood about one hundred yards east of the present Liskey House, at "Smithland". Late in the fall of 1781 when the men of Rockingham were firing off guns and otherwise celebrating the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown, Daniel Smith’s horse was frightened and threw his rider with fatal effect.

When Washington passed through the county in 1784 he spoke of "Smithland", as the:"Widow Smith’s."

The Courts of the County met at "Smithland" until November 1779, then because a "dangerous and malignant fever" was raging at Smith’s the Justices met and held court at the plantation of Thomas Harrison’s, doubtless in the old stone house still standing on Bruce Street. Already on august 5, 1779, Thomas Harrison and his wife, Sarah, had conveyed a lot of two acres and a half including a spring to the Justices as a building site for a County Court House, etc. On May 25, preceding the Justices had decided a Court House near the said spring and the

March 24, 1937 Miles E. Snyder

Harrisonburg, VA