The Beginning 

The settlement of Grafton was part of a rapid movement west to the new frontier in the early to mid-1700’s. One of Grafton’s first residents, were late seventeenth-century Irish immigrants who entered the continent by the way of Maryland. When James Current traded a horse for 1300 acres of virgin land in Virginia, it was situated where the city of Grafton is today. His first act was to hire a surveyor from the eastern part of Virginia to stake his property. This was a young man who was only 19 years old and started surveying for fees at the age of 15. He had previously made a survey of western Virginia. His name was George Washington. James Current fought for America’s Independence against the British and died August 15, 1822 at the age of 92 and his wife, Margaret, died in 1830 at the age of 93. Their bodies were interred in the cemetery on their plantation which today is a part of the city of Grafton and known as “Bluemont Cemetery,” He remains the only Revolutionary War veteran buried in this municipal cemetery. In 1835, John Blue purchased 300 acres from the Current family and shortly thereafter “Bridge Valley” (present day Fetterman) began to grow. The Baltimore & Ohio (B&O) Railroad arrived in 1852 during the construction of the nation’s first trans-Appalachian railroad. By 1853, Grafton had emerged as a railroad town with several residences and stores catered to the development of the railroad. As the railroad facilities were being built, land was surveyed for the new town which was chartered on March 15, 1856 in the Virginia General Assembly and named in honor of John Grafton. Grafton was a civil engineer in the employment of Colonel Benjamin Latrobe, who laid out the route of the B&O Railroad.