White Post is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

Clarke County, Virginia Clarke County is a County (United States), county in the Virginia, Commonwealth of Virginia. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the population was 14,783. Its county seat is Berryville, Virginia, Berryville. Clarke County is inc ...

. White Post is located at the crossroads of White Post Road and Berrys Ferry Road off Lord Fairfax Highway ( U.S. Route 340). In the 1730s,

Thomas Fairfax, 6th Lord Fairfax of Cameron Thomas Fairfax, 6th Lord Fairfax of Cameron (22 October 16939 December 1781) was a British-born planter. The only member of the British peerage to permanently reside in British America, Fairfax owned the Northern Neck Proprietary in the Colony ...

(1693–1781), the major landowner in the lower

Shenandoah Valley The Shenandoah Valley () is a geographic valley and cultural region of western Virginia and the eastern panhandle of West Virginia in the United States. The Valley is bounded to the east by the Blue Ridge Mountains, to the west by the east ...

through an inheritance from his mother Catherine Culpeper, Lady Fairfax, settled here and built his " Greenway Court" manor home. According to a tradition currently inscribed on a bronze plaque affixed to the post, then Col.

George Washington George Washington (, 1799) was a Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father and the first president of the United States, serving from 1789 to 1797. As commander of the Continental Army, Washington led Patriot (American Revoluti ...

set the original post to guide travelers to Lord Fairfax's residence. Greenway Court

plantation Plantations are farms specializing in cash crops, usually mainly planting a single crop, with perhaps ancillary areas for vegetables for eating and so on. Plantations, centered on a plantation house, grow crops including cotton, cannabis, tob ...

was unusual in that Lord Fairfax was titled and residing in the colony.

Ethnic German Germans (, ) are the natives or inhabitants of Germany, or sometimes more broadly any people who are of German descent or native speakers of the German language. The constitution of Germany, implemented in 1949 following the end of World War ...

and Scots-Irish subsistence farmers, many of them recent

immigrants Immigration is the international movement of people to a destination country of which they are not usual residents or where they do not possess nationality in order to settle as permanent residents. Commuters, tourists, and other short- ...

, settled in the area, as well as the Meade, Randolph and Burwell families, which were among the

First Families of Virginia The First Families of Virginia, or FFV, are a group of early settler families who became a socially and politically dominant group in the British Colony of Virginia and later the Commonwealth of Virginia. They descend from European colonists who ...

. Although the original Anglican church for the community was at Old Chapel several miles away, by the late 19th century, Meade Memorial Church (Episcopal), a Methodist church and Masonic Lodge were all established near the intersection that gave the community its name. In addition to Greenway Court, the Bethel Memorial Church, Farnley, Guilford, Lucky Hit, Meadea, The Tuleyries, and the White Post Historic District are listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

References

Unincorporated communities in Clarke County, Virginia Unincorporated communities in Virginia {{ClarkeCountyVA-geo-stub