Career
His A History of the Valley of Virginia (1st edition, 1833) provides important primary information on the earliest white settlements of the Shenandoah Valley and South Branch Potomac River and their encounters with local Indians. Kercheval married Susannah Chinn on 23 September 1787. Kercheval corresponded with Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.
Jefferson wrote 3 letters to Sam.
They were replies to Sam"s concerns. One was about a political pamphlet.
One was about a donation to the Kentucky Military Academy In which the reply, though in good spirit, indicated that if he gave to every request he would be destitute and that he preferred to give where he could oversee the results. The very long letter, considered to be one of Jeffersons" very best because it goes into his prejudices, and how the responsibilities of Civic affairs were subdivided and the interpretation of the Constitution.
Ben later moved on to Detroit.
Kercheval Avenue, which extends from Detroit into Grosse Pointe and is the main shopping area there is named in their honor. The grave in Detroit"s Historic Elmwood Cemetery has disappeared. They were Freemasons adhering to the teaching of the metaphors of geometry.
His Valley of Virginia was so popular that the first edition was soon exhausted.
He died before the second edition came out. He lived at the time of his death at "Harmony Hall" between Strasburg and Middletown.
First edition, 1833: Winchester, Virginia: Samuel H. Davis. 486 pgs. Second edition, 1850 ("Revised and Extended by the Author"): Woodstock, Virginia: John Gatewood, Printer.
347 pgs. Third edition, 1902: West.N. Grabill, Power Press.
Fourth edition, 1925. With notes by Oren F. Morton.
