Stephens Family

Frederick County · dedicated 2019 · Stephens Run Street just west of intersection with Route 11

Peter and Maria Stephens, German immigrants, settled here with their children in 1732. They had come from Pennsylvania with a group led by Jost Hite to form the Opequon settlement, a set of dispersed homesteads in this region. Archaeology reveals that the Stephens house occupied a site that Native Americans had once inhabited. Peter and Maria's son Lewis, land speculator, entrepreneur, and militia officer, laid out a town here, which the General Assembly established as Stephensburgh in 1758. The town, later known as Newtown and then as Stephens City, was about a day’s wagon journey south of Winchester, setting a precedent for similarly spaced developments along the Great Valley Road.

David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries

Example

under a mile from where William Gabby lived in the 1760s

what this marker records spans 1777 to 1789, overlapping William Gabby's years here

From one family's 77-marker roster

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Stephens Family

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