When Frederick Stidinger Shryock and his eldest son Charles E. Shryock purchased the stone side of the property from the Millers Frederick was approximately 49 years old. He was born in 1794 at Hagerstown, Maryland, and was a descendant of Hans Jakob Schreyack (1714-1772), who emigrated from Germany and settled in York County, Pennsylvania in 1733. Frederick married Elizabeth Ann Shepherd in 1815 and the couple had moved to Stephensburg where they purchased a portion of the in-town Lot 22 in 1818 which they owned until 1831. It was also in the year 1818 that Frederick was licensed and bonded to operate an ordinary or tavern. He does not appear to have renewed that license. Frederick and his household are counted in the 1820 US Census in Stephensburg. At that time he had either an apprentice or journeyman between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five working with him in his shop, and he owned one female slave under the age of fourteen. His wife Elizabeth, his daughter Emily, and his son Charles were also counted at that time. In that same year that he sold his part of Lot 22 Frederick attended an auction on 3 January 1831 and paid $100 for 60 acres of land south of the town called “Linnwells Field.” In July of 1833 Frederick and Elizabeth sold this 60-acre property for $300. We do not know where Frederick Shryock and his family resided between 1833 and 1843 before they purchased the stone side of the property. It is likely that they moved to Winchester where William Greenway Russell (1800-1891) remembered “F. Shryock” working as a cabinet and chair-maker sometime during the Antebellum era.
Frederick and Elizabeth had five sons and three daughters. The son’s names were Charles E. (born 1819), James P. (born 1821), Thomas W. (born 1826), Jacob N. (born 1828), and John M. (born 1833). Frederick and his sons Charles, James, Thomas, Jacob, and John were all listed in period records as carpenters, and cabinetmakers. Frederick and Elizabeth’s three daughters were named Emily S. (born 1817), Amelia L. (born 1823), and Ann E. (born 1831). The eldest was Emily Sophia who married blacksmith George Guard in December of 1837. When the Shryocks purchased the stone side of the property in 1843 they had seven unmarried children who may have still lived with them. They were Charles (age 24), James (age 22), Amelia (age 20), Thomas (age 17), Jacob (age 15), Ann (age 12), and John (age 10). It is important to note that Charles was listed in the deed as purchasing the stone side of the property along with his father. The records do not show if and when Amelia married but Charles and James would marry in 1846 and 1849 respectively. Thus, it is possible that the Shryocks all crowded into the stone side of the property for the first couple of years.
It is likely that the Shryocks used their carpentry skills to alter the stone side of the house, making adjustments so that it would be independent of the log side of the duplex. The lean-to kitchen addition that was once attached to the rear of the stone side of the house was most likely added by the Shryocks after the old detached kitchen behind the log side was torn down. The Shryocks family alterations may also have included the construction of a narrow right-angle stairway leading to the second floor in the southern room of the ground floor on the stone side of the house. The scar of this stairway can be seen today on the southern wall of the ground floor room. They also may have built the walls to seal-off the old doorways that connected the two sides of the house. It is also possible that the Shryocks altered and improved the outbuildings that once stood behind the Stone House for use in their woodworking business. Though there are no specific references in the deeds to the stone side of the duplex being his residence, Frederick did not appear to own any other properties in town at that time.
Frederick Shryock passed away in March of 1848. Among the items listed in his estate sale were wood working tools including a lathe, turning tools, planes and a veneer saw. His son Charles purchased these items at his father’s estate auction and undoubtedly continued to use them in his carpentry and cabinet making business. Frederick’s wife Elizabeth retained a life interest in the stone side of the duplex. The 1850 Federal Census shows Charles (age 29), Jacob (age 22), and John (age 18) all residing in the same household. Charles had earlier purchased the north half of Lot 58 (5322/5324 Main Street) in 1846 when he married his first wife Rachel Ann Young. This evidence implies that Charles and his younger brothers had all moved out by 1850 leaving it to their mother who was living alone in the stone side of the property. Inexplicably, Elizabeth is not listed in the 1850 Federal Census. We might be tempted to think she had passed away by that time if it were not for the fact that Shryock family records maintain that she died on 27 February 1858. We also know that on 7 May 1850 Charles Shryock sold his interest and share as an heir in the stone side of the Stone House to his brother-in-law Jacob A. Marks, the husband of Charles’ sister Ann. The 1850 census lists Jacob and Ann Marks living with their two-year-old son Charles in the household of a local machinist named Robert B. Winslow. This deed specifically states that Charles’ share in the Stone House was subject to the life estate of his mother, Elizabeth Shryock. In other words, this deed confirms that Elizabeth Shryock was alive in 1850 and that she had a legal right to live in the stone side of the Stone House property until she died. Elizabeth never remarried before she died, and in 1855 Jacob A. Marks sold his “interest,” or share, in the Stone House property to pay a debt he had incurred in 1853. Elizabeth Shryock appears to have lived alone in the stone side of the Stone House until her death in 1858.
It was also during this decade of the 1850s that Charles’ first wife Rachel died and he married his second wife Martha V. Pifer. John, the youngest of the Shryock sons, married Elizabeth Crider on 11 May 1854. Jacob Shryock was married to Mary Elizabeth Dinges on 27 April 1857. Their first child, a boy they named Webster H., was born in February 1858, the same month that his grandmother Elizabeth Shyock passed away. When Elizabeth died, ownership of the stone side of the Stone House remained among Shryock family heirs. Jacob was the member of the family who took the greatest interest in the Stone House. At that time, he was living at the site of the old Thornton McLeod wagon shop on lot 29 (5377 Main Street) and had been there since 1857, the year of his marriage. In the years that followed, until 1872 when Jacob Shryock finally sold the stone side of the house, it appears that the Shryocks leased the stone side of the property to tenants.