Located along the Great Wagon Road in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, Linville quickly became a civilized outpost on the frontier.

[4][disputed – discuss][better source needed] Boone’s wife and children stayed in the Linville area while he explored the wilderness west of the Allegheny Mountains.

The President's father, Thomas Lincoln, was born on this property in 1778 before his family moved west to what is now Kentucky, which was then part of Virginia but across the mountains from the settled areas.

The property, a registered Virginia Historic Landmark, includes a family cemetery where five generations of Lincolns are buried along with two slaves, identified as Queenie and Uncle Ned.

[6] During the antebellum period, Linville was an important stop on the Underground Railroad due to the large number of Anabaptists in the area who were opposed to slavery and helped runaway slaves find safe passage out of Rockingham through Brock's Gap to Pendleton for a walk through Franklin and on to Petersburg in what is now West Virginia where they could find rail passage to the north.