Est. 1832 · Civil War Hospital · Women's College History · Virginia Historic Hotel · War of 1812 Era
General Francis Preston, a War of 1812 hero and Virginia statesman, built the brick residence at 150 West Main Street in Abingdon in 1832 at a cost of approximately $15,000. The original central structure remains intact within the hotel's current footprint. Preston, his wife Sarah Buchanan Preston, and their nine children occupied a home notable enough to attract notice — a nine-foot Dutch Baroque grandfather clock from the original furnishings still stands in the lobby.
In 1858, the Preston family home was purchased for $21,000 and converted into Martha Washington College for young women, named for the nation's first lady. The college operated for over seventy years, closing in 1932 as the combined pressures of the Great Depression, a typhoid fever outbreak, and declining enrollment made continued operation untenable.
The Civil War transformed the college between 1861 and 1865. As the conflict swept through southwest Virginia, the building's function shifted dramatically. Schoolgirls became nurses. The grounds housed the Washington Mounted Rifles as a training encampment. The building treated both Union and Confederate wounded, generating the concentrated trauma that underlies the property's ghost traditions.
After the college closed in 1932, the building temporarily housed actors from the adjacent Barter Theatre — including young performers who would become Patricia Neal and Ernest Borgnine. In 1935 it reopened as a hotel, welcoming notable guests over the following decades including Eleanor Roosevelt and President Truman.
In 1984, the United Company purchased the property for substantial renovation. The Camberley hotel group acquired it in 1995 and added the spa facilities, indoor pool, and refurbished rooms. Sisters American Grill, the on-site restaurant, opened during this period. The hotel currently operates 63 individually furnished rooms.
Sources
- https://www.themartha.com/abingdon-hotel-history
- https://scholar.lib.vt.edu/VA-news/VA-Pilot/issues/1995/vp951029/10270066.htm
- https://ghostlandia.media/2022/10/24/ghost-to-coast-the-martha-washington-inn-and-spa-in-virginia/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Washington_Inn
ApparitionsPhantom soundsResidual haunting
The Martha Washington Inn's ghost traditions are among the most specifically documented in southwest Virginia, tied to named individuals and precise locations within the building.
The most frequently cited account involves Captain John Stoves, a wounded Union officer brought to the third floor of the building — then functioning as a hospital — sometime during the Civil War. A Martha Washington College student, recorded only as Beth, became his nurse. As he neared death, the captain asked her to play violin so he could die in peace. Beth played as he died. Three weeks later she contracted typhoid fever and died in the same building. A Virginia Pilot article from October 1995, archived in the Virginia Tech library collections, documents that on nights of the full moon, violin melodies are heard on the third floor. The account has been consistent across multiple independent sources over decades.
A second account involves a Confederate scout who secretly entered the building to visit his sweetheart, then enrolled at the college, which was occupied by Union forces. Two Union soldiers discovered him, and he was shot, dying at the foot of his sweetheart's door. His blood left a stain on the floor that has been documented to reappear despite repeated cleaning and recarpeting — the same phenomenon described in the Shadowlands source report. This account is corroborated by the hotel itself; former management confirmed to the Virginia Pilot that the room was at one time rented at a premium for its notoriety.
A third account, the riderless horse, involves a Union soldier whose horse waited on the inn's grounds while the man died inside of his wounds in 1864. The horse vanished by morning. On moonless nights, according to the account documented by the History Museum of Western Virginia, a riderless horse is sometimes seen on the inn's south lawn.
The Ghostlandia podcast and the Colonial Ghosts website have both published detailed accounts of the Martha Washington Inn's paranormal history, drawing on the Appalachian GhostWalks partnership that uses the hotel as an anchor for their Abingdon ghost tour itinerary.
Notable Entities
BethCaptain John StovesThe Riderless HorseThe Confederate Scout
