How Do Settlement Systems Evolve - The Virginia Backcountry During The 18th-Century

Traditional perspectives on the origins of Southern settlement patterns have undergone major revisions during the past two decades. In particular, scholars have focused increasingly on the transition from dispersed agrarian communities to the formation of town-based settlement systems during the eighteenth century. Such systems were first developed in the northern Shenandoah Valley in the Virginia backcountry. Three phases of settlement evolution occurred. A pioneer, open-country neighborhood system existed between 1730 and the mid-1740s. This was followed by the founding of Winchester and the initiation of a primate market-town system between the late 1740s and the mid-1770s. A well-developed central-place system was finally evident by the 1790s. Although this evolution was closely associated with the shift from local subsistence farming to rising consumerism associated with commercial livestock and grain production, current settlement theories have provided incomplete explanations of the founding of individual towns and of differential town growth. Private initiatives in response to the need for sites for local government functions and the commitment of local settlers to town residence were crucial to village formation and selective town status. While the export trade in farm commodities remained decentralized, control of the import trade in dry goods by Winchester merchants, financed by liberal extensions of credit using land as collateral, was essential to the maintenance of Winchester's position as a regional entrepot.