Bedford, Virginia

"Worlds Best Little Town"

Page Two

In October, 1782, in response to a petition by the justices of Bedford,    the General Assembly of Virginia, passed an act establishing the town  of Liberty in title County of Bedford with the provision that the Court-House property continue to remain in County hands.  William Leftwich, James Turner, James Wright, William Meade, William Callaway, James Buford, and Robert Clarke were named as trustees of the hundred acres and were authorized to “divide” it into lots of half   an acre each, or more, with convenient streets, which shall be and the same as, hereby established a town by the name of  “Liberty”.    It has been suggested that the name was chosen for one of two reasons; namely, because of Patrick Henry's great speech on "Liberty"   or because of the new gained freedom the colonies had so recently won from England.

The following quotation, which appeared in The History of Bedford County, Virginia by Lula Jeter Parker, was culled from a newspaper clipping in the  possession of C. R. Hurt of the county, and describes “Liberty” in the year 1830. :

       Liberty, a seat of justice, is situated on a branch of Otter River, 26 mls. S.W. from Lynchburg, and 223 mls. from W. Lat. 37 deg. 17' long. 20 deg. W. of N.C. The Lynchburg and Salem Turnpike runs through the town.     

     In which contains, besides the county buildings, 70 houses, two Baptist and one Free Church; Masonic Hall, two taverns, five mercantile stores, one tobacco manufactory, two tan yards, three house carpenters, one wheelwright, and two turners.

   The mail arrives and departs fifteen times a week  Liberty contains nine attorneys and four regular physicians; whole population 350.

Henry Howe, in Historical Collections of Virginia  published in 1856,  had this to say about Liberty:

         Liberty, the county-seat, is on the Lynchburg and Salem Turnpike, 26 miles southwest of, the former, and contains five mercantile stores, one Baptist, one Presbyterian, one Episcopal and one Methodist church, a large and of about 600. This neat and flourishing village is the admiration of travelers, being surrounded by a beautiful, rolling, fertile country, bounded by   a background of great sublimity.

Reverend Joseph A. Craves, in his History of the Bedford Light Artillery, has given the following description of the town:

·    “Liberty”, in May, 1861, was a quite unpretentious town. The streets were paved with poor material and only for a short distance. Our orators and politicians were James F. Johnson, William Burwell, William L. Goggin and the Hon. John Goode. Our leading merchants were Alfred Bell,  0. P. Bell, S. H. Hoffman and William Graves.   The storehouses in which they did business were inconvenient wooden buildings, without any apparatus for heating them save in the counting room, into which a very few persons were allowed to come; but they kept a full line of almost every kind of merchandise. There were no soda fountains, nor hardware stores, nor tobacco warehouses.   We had no water works, no telephone, and no electric   lights. When the moon did not shine we took our lanterns.