Haymarket Day on Sept. 19 will be 27th year of celebration

The third Saturday in September spells festival time in Haymarket, because in this one- square mile of a town, Sept. 19 marks the 27th annual Haymarket Day.

That’s the day when locals and visitors come out of the woodwork to celebrate Haymarket, which dates to 1799, the second oldest town in Prince William County.

Festivities begin with the annual parade at 9:30 a.m.; vendors will line the streets; food abounds, and everything winds down around 5 p.m.

Denise Hall, Main Street coordinator for the Town of Haymarket and director of the Haymarket Museum, plans and organizes town-sponsored events, as well as serving as the liaison for the town council. She said this year’s theme is “Haymarket - Everybody’s Hometown.”

James Shepard, son of the late Sarah McDarment Turner, will be the grand marshal. “He will be representing his mother who was the town’s historian,” Hall said.

Turner wanted to be sure the history of the town was not forgotten; therefore, in 2001, her book, “Haymarket - A Town in Transition,” which includes fascinating facts and photos, was published. Hall added, “Sarah spearheaded the move in 2002 for the old town hall to become today’s Haymarket Museum.”

There are some new things in the works including free Novant health care screenings inside town hall and free mammograms inside a medical vehicle. Also new is an outdoor hot dog eating contest, sponsored by Foster’s Grille. The Very Thing for Her will be doing free caricatures and will host a children’s fashion show.

As always, the parade will include fire trucks, police cruisers, various civic groups, churches, local businesses and some floats. It will begin at the west end of Washington Street, VA 55 near Fauquier Bank.

To accommodate the Old Carolina bridge closure, the general layout of the parade and vendor route will be altered, veering north onto Jefferson Street.

There will be a teen zone including a rock-climbing wall in a grassy area behind the Haymarket Museum and a kid’s zone on a four-acre lot next to Details for the Home on Jefferson Street. Dominion Woman’s Club is sponsoring a beer pub on Jefferson.

The day’s headliner band will be the Hackens Boys out of the Shenandoah Valley. “Their lead guitarist, Casey Armstrong, is from Gainesville,” Hall added. Other bands and acts will also perform.

The Haymarket Museum building on Washington Street dates to 1883 and was originally a school and town hall. Its doors will be open during Haymarket Day so that visitors can learn of the town’s history.

For the month of September, the museum will feature a school exhibit to demonstrate that the building was used as a school for 25 years (1883-1908).

Inside the museum, visitors will see a portrait of the town’s founder, William Skinker, who established his family home at Green Hill Farm, the site of present-day Greenhill Crossing neighborhood.

Originally, “Hay Market” was known as Red House because of the Red House Ordinary, a tavern at the crossroads of current-day Washington and Jefferson streets that is now occupied by several businesses; only the stone foundation of the structure remains.

William Skinker moved his family away from the port city of Norfolk in 1776 to escape the siege of British war ships and discovered the peaceful countryside of Prince William County. Across from the Red House Ordinary, Skinker opened the Haymarket Inn in 1787, and supposedly named it after an area in London called Haymarket, according to Turner’s book.

Her book makes another reference to England: “In Bristol, England, a portion of the town was an old market place called Haymarket where a fair was held.”

Since Skinker spent much of his youth in England, she wrote, perhaps he wished to commemorate the Skinker family seat in England. Turner includes a third possible explanation of the origin of the Haymarket name: “Old timers in Haymarket said Skinker named the inn for a Haymarket race course in London.”

A decade after opening the inn, Skinker petitioned the Virginia General Assembly for the establishment of a town, which was chartered as “Hay Market” on January 11, 1799.

According to Turner, fairs are an old English custom. Her book describes two fairs in town: “Haymarket Day, sponsored by the Ruritan Club and the Town Council, and a Spring Festival, organized by the town.” There was also Lafayette Day, which was an historical event sponsored by the Haymarket Historical Commission, of which Turner was the first chairman beginning in the early 1990s.

A photo of Shepard from the 1993 Lafayette Day is shown in Turner’s book along with other reenactors: Robert Mayer, Charles Leonard and George Lee, great grandson of Revolutionary War General Henry Lee, III (known as “Lighthorse Harry Lee” and the father of Robert E. Lee).

Because of Turner and Shepard, we can learn about Haymarket’s past and appreciate its present. What better way to celebrate “Everybody’s Hometown” than participating in this year’s Haymarket Day?