Van Swearingen-Shepherd House, Shepherdstown

The Van Swearingen-Shepherd House, also known as Bellevue, is a Colonial Revival mansion in Shepherdstown, West Virginia that is home to the descendants of Captain Thomas Shepherd, founder of Shepherdstown. The house, situated on a bluff overlooking the Potomac River, was built in 1773 by Thomas Van Swearingen as a single-story stone house. His son, also named Thomas Van Swearingen, was a US Representative. The Shepherd family acquired the house in 1900, when Henry Shepherd III bought the house as a wedding present for his bride Minnie Reinhart, whose grandfather was Thomas Van Swearingen. That year, the Shepherds gave a dinner party on the lawn for William Jennings Bryan during his second presidential campaign. The house remains in the hands of the Shepherd family. ()