Feature Story

A Small History of the Shackelford Family in Stony Point

by Tina Stephens and Fred Shackelford

Some of the early inhabitants of Stony Point were the Shackelfords, who built Dovedale in the crook of the road where Stony Point Pass meets Route 20. Dovedale Farm was deeded in 1817, and a long line of Shackelfords have worked the land among other pursuits and been laid to rest in the family cemetery there. A.C. Shackelford, Jr., known locally as Corky, is part of the fourth generation to live in the house, along with his wife Mary Aston.

Born in 1930, Mr. Shackelford was raised mostly at Woodberry Forest School, where his father taught mathematics, but he came home in the summers to Dovedale, where his widowed aunt lived. He has early memories of helping with the chickens and cows, and he helped to get up the hay. He says they fed the milk from their cows to the hogs and sold the cream to Monticello Dairy.

Among his memories are recollections of Mr. White’s grocery store, no longer standing, and the mill across the street next to the school where he used to go to get corn ground into meal for cornbread. Mrs. Shackelford remembers the day she went inside the store, and was looking for mayonnaise, and Mr. White said that yes, he had had some, but he kept selling out, so he thought he would stop ordering it! Long ago, a Post Office operated inside Mr. White’s store. At times, Corky delivered mail that arrived there.

Electricity came to Dovedale in the mid-1930’s, but Mr. Shackelford remembers the old icehouse behind his house, where people would cut ice off the farm’s pond to store in the coolness of the deep hole inside the icehouse.

Mary Aston Leavell was born in Bowling Green, Kentucky in 1932. Her mother, Lilian McMurdo, was born at Buena Vista, a farm located on Stony Point Road, about a mile from Charlottesville. Her father, Charles Leavell, was born in Louisville, Kentucky, and he became an Episcopal clergyman after graduating from UVA and a seminary.

Over the years, Rev. Leavell served churches in Kentucky, North Carolina, and Virginia. Mary Aston was the valedictorian at St. Mary’s School in Raleigh, North Carolina, which at that time was a high school with a two-year college program. She finished her college education at UVA.

Corky and Mary Aston met in the early 1950s when Rev. Leavell became the Rector at Grace Episcopal Church in Cismont. Around the same time, Corky began a teaching career in English and public speaking at Woodberry Forest School, a secondary boarding school near Orange, Virginia. Mary Aston worked for many years in Woodberry’s library, and the couple had three children in the 1950s.

 

Mr. Shackelford’s grandfather was a doctor who served many in the area, traveling from place to place on horseback. He also served in the Confederate Army, and he was in the Raccoon Ford battle near Culpeper. He had a servant named Henry Tyree, who is buried in the Shackelford cemetery near the house at Dovedale, at his request. Here is a bit of history from the WikiTree website about Zachariah Shackelford, who bought Dovedale in 1817:

Zachariah Shackelford m. (1) Susan Gilmer m. (2) Sarah Christie Cave. Zachariah was born in Spotsylvania in 1768, and his name appears on many records of that county until 1803. He appears to have come to Albemarle in 1806, when he bought the land—or part of it—which now is called "Dovedale". In the reign of King George III, 650 acres of land, lying along the western foothills of the Southwest Mountains were granted its, first settler, one named Morton, then transferred to a Terrell, and from Terrell to Zachariah Shackelford, who built the lovely quaint old house—"Dovedale". On June 30, 1809, Zachariah married into the distinguished family of Gilmer. His wife was Susanna Gilmer, youngest daughter of Dr. George Gilmer of Pen Park, sister to William Wirt's first wife, and a granddaughter of Dr. Thomas Walker, of Castle Hill.

Mr. Shackelford’s father, also known as A.C. Shackelford, was the Principal at Stony Point School from 1920 to 1922. He then went to work for Woodberry Forest School in Madison County. Corky followed in his footsteps and went there as well. When Corky retired after serving for 41 years on the faculty, the A. Colquitt Shackelford Jr. Senior Master’s Award was established in his honor.

The Shackelfords were instrumental in having All Saints Episcopal Chapel built on the edge of their property in the 1920’s, when according to Corky, cars were not able to make it over the pass to Keswick, unlike the horses and wagons of before.

Tom Brown, who worked at Dovedale for many decades, lived in the little cottage called Dovecote, which is on the left-hand side of Stony Point Pass, just off Route 20. Since then, Fred Shackelford, Corky’s son, has built a house on the other side of Stony Point Pass, and his sister Mary Leslie, lives further down that road. They have another sister, Lilian, who lives in Belvedere, California. Fred and his wife Anne have two children, who attended Stony Point Elementary School in the 1990s.