Martinsburg, WV news and local guide

The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad reached Martinsburg in 1842, and its Martinsburg Shops were built in 1848 and rebuilt after the Civil War. According to William Still, historian of the Underground Railroad, Robert Brown escaped from slavery in Martinsburg on Christmas night in 1856, swimming his horse across the freezing Potomac, riding forty miles and walking two days in wet clothes to Harrisburg before reaching Still's office in Philadelphia, where he sought help finding his wife and four children, who had been sold. In 1853 Isabelle "Belle" Boyd moved to Martinsburg, where her father ran a store. When Union troops under General Robert Patterson took the town early in the Civil War and some tried to raise a flag over the Boyd home, Belle shot a soldier who threatened her mother and was acquitted. She went on to become a noted Confederate spy, sending information to Stonewall Jackson and J.E.B. Stuart. Sources Wikipedia: Martinsburg, West Virginia