This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/SFk.2ACIB/1300.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1 Message Board Post: Will continue to post on the House Message Board as long as there is still interest in this case. The next few letters are unbelievable, as House Heirs make all sort of claims and tell stories of what has happened. Some of the letters are hard to read but have family relationships as described by heirs. This letter is 6 pages long and tells how Andrew Valentine House was tricked out of his land. Will post in two segments. Mrs L R House, Sec: Keep Tryst, Washington Co MD Princeton, NJ Aug 17, 1899 Dear Madam: Three weeks, since I saw in the Washington Star, that an association had been formed by some of the descendents of Andrew Valentine House for the purpose of recovering large tracts of land, formerly owned by him; and in these last days, the scenes of the Battle of Antietam and Fredericksburg. As my paternal great grandmother was a daughter of A V House and my father, when a boy, went with three members (two sons and a grandson, or a son and two grandson), I forget precisely which at present, of A.V. House's family to visit the farm on the Antietam Creek and found the metes and bounds precisely as their father and grandfather had told them, I feel as if I am almost the missing link in the chain of evidence. I had the acount of the whole matter from my father and none of the four mentioned are now living--and probably none of their children---so that I am nearest to the facts in the earlist effort to recover the land. So let me tell the tale as it was told to me. I did not know that his name was Andrew also, as my father, in answer to my questions, said that his name was Valentine. Andrew Valentine House ( formerly translated Haus) came from the Palatinate (I think on account of religious persecution) arriving in America in the early part of the 18th century. His wife was a Hugonet, whose family excaped from France, at the close of the 17th Century, just after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. She continued to speak French all her life. I should be very glad to learn the name of her family and her full name. Can anyone help?? Where or precisely when the Haus Family came to America, I do mot know, but before 1725. A.V. House owned the land on and at the mouth of Antietam ( end of page one) Creek, where it empties into the Potomac, three miles below Sherpardstown, VA., (now W. V.) which was largely settlled by Germans and was at first called Mecklenburg. He probably purchased it from the Chaplin family, who owned a great deal of land in that part of MD, shortly after 1700. Neither do I know its extent. It was the more valuable on account of the water-power in the creeks, and what is now called Antietam Furnace ( The Harriet Furnace until lately) has been the site of the mill for nearly two hundred years( perhaps fully) years. I visited the place a few days ago and while it has been completely swept away( the corner stone with the name of its builder'"Brown" is alone perserved, and its place taken by a huge limekiln, an old mill still retains its place. The forge, nail-mill, and other buildings have disappeared; the dam is broken; the large race sends down but a small quantity of water; and a flourishing field of corn occupies a large part of the ground, where the bloody battle of Antietam or Sharpesburg ended, is two miles away from the furnace, and the Potomac, into which the Antietam empties though an aqueduct beneath the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal is but two hundred yards distant. Two miles further up the river, and one mile below! Shepardstown at Reynold's Mill, is Blackford's, a most remakeable rock formation by which Lee and his Army escaped after the battle of Antietam. But I am wandering from my subject' In the early colonial days we were greatly hampered by the Mother country. Our trade with other countries was forbidden or greatly restricted. We had to purchase articles manufactured in England and only after years of struggle were we allowed any freedom in this respect. The search for gold had been a failure; now the quest for iron, a much more useful metal for the colonists, began. Where found in sufficient quantities furnaces were established. The only power that could be used in connection with the manufacture of iron, was water-power. The law, however, very justly gave the flouring mills the preference. ( End of Page Two) Continued on next posting.