George W.
Rosenberger
Model Farmer of Rosendale
Family
George
Rosenberger, an immigrant from Zurich, Switzerland, came to colonial Virginia,
, established himself in what is now Page County, and served in the
Revolutionary War.[i] His son, George Washington Rosenberger was
born in 1778 and died in 1858 in his eightieth year. In about 1790, this George acquired the land
at the present Rosendale location on which he built a two-over-two log house. Evidence of the senior George Washington
Rosenberger’s success can be deduced from the 1850 Census records in which his
real property was valued at $24,000. He
also owned two working-age slaves.
In 1802 George W.
Rosenberger married Margaret Zirkle (1780-1836) of New Market. Their fifth child, also named George Washington,
was born on February 23, 1823 at Rosendale and is the subject of the following
article. Fifty-five years later he was described as the
“model Valley farmer.” He added what is
now the front face of Rosendale in 1870; the original house became the ell. In the 1870 Census Rosenberger’s real estate
was valued at $12,500, about half the value of his father’s real property twenty
years before. The difference could
reflect local conditions after the Civil War.
George Washington
Rosenberger married Barbara Ann Kagey in 1845.
They had eight children, five of whom died before 1887 when their mother
died. In 1892, George W. Rosenberger
married Barbara’s sister, Amelia (Millie) Kagey, who had been living with the
family at Rosendale for several decades.
He was sixty-nine years old and she was fifty-two years old when they
married. Of the three surviving children
from the first marriage, one was Arthur Russell Rosenberger, a successful local
banker and entrepreneur. Another son,
Charles W., oversaw the Rosendale operation after the death of the father and
probably for some years before the father’s death.[ii]
Rosendale
during the Civil War
Documents
found in the George W. Rosenberger Collection at the VMI Archives provide a
glimpse of Rosendale and, by extension, the local the farming experience during
the later part of the Civil War. When
the War began Rosenberger was thirty-seven years old. Instead of serving in the military Rosenberger
purchased a substitute. From March 1862
to April 1863 Abner Canada
was the substitute. An archival
document recounted Canada’s capture in Shenandoah County and his escape that
returned him to his comrades. In the
Civil War Rolls found in A History of
Rockingham County,[iii] Abner Canada does not appear. The only Abner Canada
listed in the 1860 Census was a sixty-one year old farm laborer in Rockingham County.
G.W. Rosenberger was listed as
member of the Company H, 10th Va. Cavalry. There is no record that he actually served in
combat.