Ashville Historic District

Ashville is a small rural village in northwest Fauquier County, Virginia, about 3.5 miles west of Marshall. It grew after the Civil War on land that sisters Harriet and Catherine Ash willed to their former slaves in 1869. The 23-acre district follows Ashville Road and holds seventeen contributing resources: modest vernacular houses and outbuildings, the Gothic Revival Ashville Baptist Church rebuilt in 1899, a school building from the 1910s, a former store, and a community cemetery with burials dating to 1873. Land ownership, worship, education and commerce shaped the settlement, and the school lot was deeded to public school trustees as early as 1876. Although Ashville has continued to grow through the twentieth century, its streetscape retains an early-twentieth-century appearance with few modern intrusions. It is described as one of the best preserved of several African-American communities that developed in the county in the late nineteenth century.