photography By Vince Lupo
Here on Virginia’s Route 5, driving between the fields of corn and wheat, the occasional modest home, and even rarer business, history seems eerily preserved. Even though we’re eighteen miles from Richmond and twenty-two miles from Williamsburg, there are no housing developments, no McDonald’s, and only one country store, which has been in the same spot since 1893.
It was along this route that Gen. George McClellan and 30,000 Union troops attempted—and failed—to take Richmond in the 1862 Peninsula Campaign. And it’s where generals Philip Sheridan and Ulysses S. Grant dug a final wedge deep into the Confederacy in 1864.
Traces of the war remain everywhere: Cannonballs lay embedded in the sides of buildings. Bullet holes mark old barns. Trenches dug by troops still border quiet lanes. It seems that every quarter mile another historic marker commemorates the sight of an important site, house, or event.
And most of the majestic plantation houses that lined this stretch of the James River in Charles City, about a three-hour drive from Annapolis, still stand, occupied by descendants of those who stared down the Union army.
The plantations marked the earliest westward expansion of colonial America; their owners, the first elite American class who secured their wealth on the backs of slave labor and indentured servants.
Thomas Jefferson married Martha Skelton here. Benjamin Harrison, signer of the Declaration of Independence, and presidents William Henry Harrison and John Tyler lived here, as did Robert E. Lee for much of his boyhood.
Today, nine of the plantations and/or their grounds remain open for tours; three are bed and breakfasts. All are wonderfully preserved. Their thousands of acres have been reduced to hundreds, but many of them are still farmed.
It’s history come alive; Williamsburg for real.
North Bend Plantation
Like most James River plantations, North Bend sits at the end of a long gravel road among working fields of grain, corn, and soybeans, no longer the cotton and tobacco that once grew here so plentifully. A sign, “Civil War Trenches, 1864,” marks the mounds of earth along the road.
Proprietor Ridgely Copland greets her bed and breakfast guests in the building’s main hall. A quick-witted and kind woman with a seemingly encyclopedic knowledge of local history, like most of those who live in these parts, she’s kin to somebody from the history books. In her case, it’s Robert E. Lee.
She introduces her husband, George, as the great-great-grandson of Edmund Ruffin, the famed Southern agriculturist and the gent who fired the first shot of the Civil War at Fort Sumter. He’s also the great-grand-nephew of William Henry Harrison, the ninth president of the United States. In fact, the house was built in 1819 for John Minge, a wealthy landowner, and his wife, Sarah Harrison, the sister of William Henry. But George can also trace his roots back to Europe—way back. “Prove you’re related to George and you can trace your ancestors all the way back to Charlemagne,” says Ridgely.
North Bend has a weathered plantation feel, with its white siding and well-trodden wooden floors. Its interior scale is huge: twelve-foot-high ceilings throughout the first floor and doorways wide enough to drive through in a horse-drawn carriage.
Upstairs there’s a colossal armoire with a sand-blasted mirror so heavy it hasn’t been moved in 250 years. The four guestrooms contain many pieces original to the house, including the Sheridan Room with its enormous canopy bed that once belonged to Edmund Ruffin. It dates from the early half of the nineteenth century, except its headboard, which was shot out in 1864 and rebuilt in 1870. It’s the size of a small truck—guests must use a two-level footstool to climb on top. Also in the room is a mahogany desk used by Gen. Sheridan when he and 30,000 Union troops occupied the plantation in 1864. In the 1940s George’s father found a secret compartment in the desk containing Sheridan’s maps of the area. A copy of one of the originals graces its worn surface now.
Downstairs is a game room with a billiards table and a parlor full of old books, many original to the house. The “best thing in the house,” as Ridgely calls it, is a copy of the Memoirs of Kirkland Ruffin Saunders, George’s aunt. It’s a fascinating, candid account of genteel Southern woman’s life in the early twentieth century, covering everyday and major life events, such as meeting her husband at a Virginia Military Institute dance: “At intermission he asked me to sit in the moonlight and he sang in his beautiful tenor voice a popular song of the time, ‘I Hear You Calling Me.’ It was lovely and I knew that night I heard his call.”
Breakfast at North Bend is a feast. Ridgely makes the fluffiest pancakes in Virginia, and even the table settings are historic—guests get to eat off Sarah Harrison’s fine china. Open for tours by appointment; B&B rates range from $135 to $175. 12200 Weyanoke Rd. 804-829-5176 or http://www.northbendplantation.com. --J.S.
Belle Air
The quaintest of the batch, Belle Air breaks the “if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen ‘em all” stigma about plantations. Built in 1670 by shipwrights, Belle Air is considered the sole authentic example of a seventeenth-century frame dwelling in the state. “It’s been very interesting living here,” says Meriwether Major, the four times great niece of Meriwether Lewis, whose husband bought the house in 1947. “It’s been very educational, and I enjoy giving tours to people tremendously. But it’s a lot of hard work, too.”
Heart pine floors and structural timbers warm the cozy, low-ceilinged interior, as do formal antiques such as a John Fisher tall case clock, a part of the Meriwether family’s antique collection, and a small wooden bench on which General Grant reputedly sat. Also of interest are original prints by Scottish ornithologist Alexander Wilson. Mrs. Major tells the story of Meriwether Lewis bringing back skins of different birds collected during his Western travels for Wilson to copy and describe. “Many of these birds had never been seen before,” says Major. “And some are extinct today.”
The house and its gardens, maintained by the lady of the plantation herself, are open to the public only during April’s Historic Garden Week in Virginia or for private group tours for fifteen or more throughout the year. 11800 John Tyler Hwy. 804-829-2431 or http://www.jamesriverplantations.com/belleair.htm. --K.B.
Shirley Plantation
One of the first things you notice about Shirley Plantation is the four-foot-tall pineapple on its roof. The colonial sign of hospitality looms large over the plantation, where thousands of travelers refreshed themselves with a pint of ale and a meal as they were entertained by members of the Hill and Carter families, who have occupied the house since it was completed in 1738. (Several Carters continue to live on the mansion’s second and third floors.)
Shirley Plantation was settled in 1613, making it the oldest in the state. And the business has been in the same family since 1638, giving it the official designation as the longest continuously running family business in America. Of its 720 acres, 300 are still farmed.
The first floor of the house remains open for tours. Visitors start in the entrance hall, adorned with portraits of the home’s original couple, Elizabeth Hill and John Carter, eldest son of Robert “King” Carter, the Colonial tycoon who is said to have more than 65,000 descendants. The most striking architectural detail of the hall is the “flying” staircase --the only one of its kind in the country. It appears to float unsupported as it runs up to the second and third floors. (Iron bars embedded in the side of the building are really doing all the work.)
The house remained untouched during the Civil War, even with 2,000 Union troops camped on the home’s front lawn. The women of Shirley supplied help to injured troops during the 1862 Peninsula Campaign. When word of their benevolence reached Gen. McClellan, he ordered the plantation spared. You can still get an accurate picture of the original grounds, as nine outbuildings have survived, including the smokehouse, kitchen, and tool barn.
Guides drop interesting tidbits along the tour: the walls have only been painted four times in 250 years; Charles Carter had twenty-three children with two women; the family’s magnificent silver pieces survived the Civil War buried in the backyard.
There’s also the unique tradition unwittingly started by Elizabeth Carter. As the story goes, in 1748 Carter was engaged to a man she most definitely did not want to marry. She was convinced her engagement ring was glass crystal, not diamond, and was determined to demonstrate her betrothed’s frugality in front of her parents during a dinner reception. But when she etched her initials in the room’s lead glass windows, it worked, proving the ring was indeed authentic. She didn’t get out of her engagement, but she did start a tradition of Hill/Carter brides etching their initials in the window panes with their engagement rings. Walk around the dining room and you’ll find twenty-six sets of initials in all, including the most recent, Harriett Carter, who married in 1995. Open daily for tours, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. 501 Shirley Plantation Rd., 800-232-1613 or http://www.shirleyplantation.com. --J.S.
Sherwood Forest
If you’re a believer that a man’s character can be determined by the way he treats animals, then you would have had no complaints about John Tyler. Upon entering the grounds of the tenth president’s 1730 plantation, the first thing you encounter is the graveyard dedicated to centuries of dearly departed Tyler family pets: dogs, cats, goats—and even the prez’s favorite horse, whose epitaph he personally wrote: “Here lie the bones of my old horse, ‘General,’ who served his master faithfully for twenty-one years, and never made a blunder. Would that his master could say the same.”
At 300 feet in length, the clapboard house is the country’s longest frame house and is modest in its grandeur. Tyler moved in after his term had ended in 1845 and converted its 1,600 acres into a self-sufficient plantation, which has been owned and used as a private residence by the Tyler family ever since. On the grounds is the circa-1660 wine house (Tyler made his own vintage), the circa-1745 smokehouse and milkhouse, and the birdbath added to the garden by Tyler’s bride, Julia Gardiner. The house is open only during Garden Week; grounds are open year-round. 14501 John Tyler Hwy. --K.B.
Piney Grove
While some regard the circa-1790 corn crib/breakfast room to be the main attraction of Piney Grove at Southall’s Plantation, Buffy, the miniature horse in its mini-zoo, is a close second --along with the handful of sheep, chickens, ducks, and geese.
Joan and Joseph Gordineer have owned Piney Grove since 1984. Behind this clapboard frame house, which is their private residence, is Ladysmith House, an 1857 Greek revival farmhouse that the Gordineers salvaged from a Caroline County, Va., farm and transformed it into a five-room bed and breakfast. Also on the property is Ashland, an 1835 Tidewater home, Dower Quarter, a pre-1835 slave quarter, and Duck Church, a former 1917 one-room schoolhouse later used as a church.
The grounds offer English gardens, a pool, and a half-mile nature trail that runs through a “last generation” forest. Room rates range from $130 to $170, which include full breakfast. 16920 Southall Plantation Ln. 804-829-2480 or http://www.pineygrove.com. --K.B.
Berkeley Plantation
Berkeley is a plantation of firsts: bourbon was first distilled here in 1621, the James River’s first commercial shipyard was established here in 1691, “Taps” was composed here in 1862 by Union General Daniel Butterfield, and it’s also where the Jamieson family, owners of the plantation since 1907, claim the real Thanksgiving occurred. Seems that after the plantation’s English settlers arrived in December 1619, they held a prayer meeting to thank God for their safe voyage, a turkey-free event that has come to be regarded by some as the authentic Thanksgiving, beating the Pilgrims to it by one hundred years and seventeen days.
It’s also a plantation of hard knocks: In 1622 Indians massacred the 6,000-acre settlement’s population, and in 1743 Benjamin Harrison IV, builder of the three-story brick Georgian mansion, was struck by lightning. In 1862, a cannonball, courtesy of Confederate Major General J. E. B. Stuart, missed the main house by feet, plowing into the side of the laundry/kitchen, where it remains lodged.
During the house tour, be sure to note the detailed hand-carved woodwork in the parlors, the period Waterford crystal chandelier in the dining room, and the 1690 William & Mary chest in the gentleman’s room, the oldest piece of furniture in the house. The tour ends in the basement, where Civil War bullets, uniforms, and other artifacts --all found on the plantation’s grounds --are exhibited.
Ten acres, with five terraces of boxwood and flower gardens, stretch a quarter mile from the front door to the James River and are sprinkled with weeping willows and sinewy crape myrtles. During the Civil War, President Lincoln twice visited Berkeley to inspect Gen. McClellan’s 140,000 troops during their encampment at the plantation. Outside of war time, it’s easy to imagine that these serene grounds were an ideal pondering and wandering spot for its famous owners, Benjamin Harrison V, a three-time Virginia governor and signer of the Declaration of Independence, and his son William Henry Harrison, “Old Tippecanoe,” the ninth president of the United States. Open daily to visitors, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. 12602 Harrison Landing Rd. 804-829-6018 or http://www.berkeleyplantation.com. --K.B.
Westover
Relax and enjoy the bucolic setting that borders the two-mile-long dirt road leading to Westover, a 300-acre plantation nestled between Herring Creek and the James River. Considered one of the country’s finest examples of eighteenth-century Georgian architecture, Westover boasts the most copied front door in America, according to its owner Muchi Fisher. William Byrd II, founder of Richmond and Petersburg, built it in 1730, and the Fisher family purchased it in 1952. While Garden Week is the only time you can get inside this private residence, its grounds are always open.
The main entrance leads to a riverfront, pebbled path shaded by a canopy of century-old tulip poplars. With no herding tour guide to be found for miles, feel free to camp out on one of the benches and absorb the view of the James, the sweeping lawn, which includes an English yew supposedly planted by George Washington, and the occasional bald eagle, likely a denizen from the preserve directly across the river.
Be sure to check out the entrance to the underground tunnel, which ran from the river and under the house to the dry well and served as a precautionary escape route from Indians. In the formal gardens, connected by narrow paths, you’ll find the nearly seven-foot-tall tomb of William Byrd II, whose rather immodest and lengthy self-written epitaph describes him as “a well-bred gentleman and polite companion.” At the rear of the house stand the massive, ornate wrought iron gates he had made in London in 1709, which are topped with Byrd’s initials. More mundane, but no less interesting, is the five-hole privy --complete with fireplace. Grounds and garden open daily, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. House tours available only during Garden Week. 7000 Westover Rd. --K.B.
Edgewood Plantation
Dot Boulware thought she was looking at a ghost, she tells her bed and breakfast guests over a morning meal of french toast, made from croissants stuffed with cream cheese and strawberries. “I couldn’t believe my eyes,” she says, her own brown eyes bulging. “There were two young men in Civil War uniforms standing at my front door. They had their horses tied up on a post by my porch. When I asked them who they were, one said he was Jeb Stuart. I said, ‘Yeah, right. Then I’m Florence Nightingale.’”
They were really two students from the College of William & Mary re-creating Confederate General J. E. B. Stuart’s 1862 ride to Richmond to warn Robert E. Lee of the Union army’s strength. The students told Dot that her bed and breakfast, then a private residence, was one of Stuart’s stops along his famous ride. “Right then and there I knew I had to do more on the history of the place,” she says of the once rundown house that she and her husband, Julian, had purchased in 1978. “I figured if it was worthy of being a historical landmark, it already would’ve been.”
Dot learned the property was originally part of Berkeley Plantation’s 17,000 acres. If it doesn’t look like any other building along Route 5, it’s because its builder and owner Spencer Rowland was from New Jersey and he brought with him a Yankee fondness for Gothic Revival, an architectural style unheard of in antebellum Virginia.
It was Rowland’s daughter Lizzie who etched her name in a window on the second floor. As the story goes, she died of a broken heart waiting in vain for her lover to return from the war. Some say Lizzie’s ghost remains waiting.
Throughout its history, the 7,000-square-foot building also served as a church, post office, telephone exchange, restaurant, nursing home, and a signal post for the Confederates to spy on McClellan’s army.
When the Boulwares bought the circa-1849 structure, it came with several outbuildings, including a 1725 Benjamin Harris Grist Mill, which ground corn for both the Union and Confederate armies and the remains of slave quarters, which Dot and Julian renovated into two additional guest rooms. They opened the B&B in 1983.
Dot’s style of decorating can best be summed up as “waaay-over-the-top.” Literally every square inch of wall and floor is covered with Victorian dolls, dresses, pictures, and primitive and Colonial antiques. Guest rooms have armoires and settees, fabulous antique beds somewhere beneath all the pillows, and displays of antique clothing, shoes, and whatnots. For the antique buff, it’s a feast for the senses. And for anyone who likes listening to a good story, the bubbly Dot will feel like a long-lost beauty parlor friend by the end of your stay. Open daily for tours; overnight for B&B guests. Edgewood also hosts Victorian high teas for groups, $24 to $34. Rooms range from $132 to $198. 4800 John Tyler Hwy. 804-829-2962 or http://www.edgewoodplantation.com. --K.B.
