Seven Springs (Enfield, Virginia)

Last updated
Seven Springs
Snowy Seven Springs.jpg
Seven Springs, ca 1725, with caretakers house at left, ca 1840
USA Virginia location map.svg
Red pog.svg
Usa edcp location map.svg
Red pog.svg
LocationW of Enfield, near Enfield, Virginia
Coordinates 37°44′49″N77°13′44″W / 37.74694°N 77.22889°W / 37.74694; -77.22889
Area27 acres (11 ha)
Built1725
Built byCapt. George Dabney I
Architectural styleTidewater domestic
NRHP reference No. 80004194 [1]
VLR No.050-0064
Significant dates
Added to NRHPMay 6, 1980
Designated VLRDecember 21, 1976 [2]

Seven Springs, situated on the Mehixen Swamp near the Pamunkey River in upper King William County, Virginia, is an historic home. Set in rolling farm country near the town of Manquin, the property lies within a community rich in colonial, revolutionary, and civil war history.

Contents

History

Early history

The brick manor house was owned, and likely built, for Captain George Dabney I, where he served as the first commission of the peace and later sheriff in 1715. [3] The initial acreage was one of several land grants the family received from King William III in 1701. [4]

The manor house is believed to have been built circa 1725–1740, and remained in the Dabney family until 1802, when ownership transferred to Captain Yancey Lipscomb. In 1822, it was sold to Thomas Broaddus Puller, where it stayed within the Puller and Atkinson families until 1940. [5]

Restoration

After many years of neglect, the home was purchased by H.D. Moffett in 1967, who began its restoration. [6] Mr. Harry H. Coon and his wife Alma of Glenview, Illinois, meticulously completed the restoration with guidance from the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. Today, a compound of offices, barns and carriage houses join the original manor house and caretakers house to re-create the tight, campus-style layout typical of colonial farms.

Architecture and significance

The small, three-bay manor house is an unusual example of eighteenth-century architecture, distinguished by its lack of symmetry. Its square footprint is divided into four unequal-sized rooms on the main floor, and five fireplaces on three floors feed a central T-shaped chimney.

While the interior was renovated in the early nineteenth century, many original features still exist. These include the triple-run walnut staircase, pine floors, chair rails, and doors, which feature both HL and foliated H hinges. The brick exterior, which was constructed in both Flemish and English bond, remains largely untouched. The half-hipped roof was originally built without the current dormers, which were added on subsequent renovations. The original cedar shingles have been replaced with slate.

The home is listed on the National and Virginia State Historic Registers.

Current use

Purchased by the Hunnicutt family, of Richmond, VA, in February 2015, the estate is open to the public for the first time in its history, operating as a wedding and event venue and heritage livestock farm. The farm is home to one of the largest flocks of Hog Island sheep in America. The Hog Island sheep is not commonly used in modern agriculture, largely because of its endangered status and because more modern breeds have been bred for other characteristics, including maximum size and fleece yield. It is nevertheless considered important to preserve because of the insight it may give into American history and the traits it has that modern sheep might lack such as its toughness, foraging skill, efficient use of food, and easy lambing. [7]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Colonial National Historical Park</span> Early history, operated by the U.S. National Park Service

Colonial National Historical Park is a large national park located in the Hampton Roads region of Virginia operated by the National Park Service. It protects and interprets several sites relating to the Colony of Virginia and the history of the United States more broadly. These range from the site of the first English settlement at Jamestown, to the battlefields of Yorktown where the British Army was defeated in the American Revolutionary War. Over 3 million people visit the park each year.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">White House of the Confederacy</span> Historic house in Virginia, United States

The White House of the Confederacy is a historic house located in the Court End neighborhood of Richmond, Virginia. Built in 1818, it was the main executive residence of the sole President of the Confederate States of America, Jefferson Davis, from August 1861 until April 1865. It was viewed as the Confederate States counterpart to the White House in Washington, D.C. It currently sits on the campus of Virginia Commonwealth University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shirley Plantation</span> Historical site

Shirley Plantation is an estate on the north bank of the James River in Charles City County, Virginia. It is located on scenic byway State Route 5, between Richmond and Williamsburg. It is the oldest active plantation in Virginia and the oldest family-owned business in North America, dating back to 1614, with operations starting in 1648. It used about 70 to 90 enslaved people at a time for forced labor including plowing the fields, cleaning, childcare, and cooking. It was added to the National Register in 1969 and declared a National Historic Landmark in 1970.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Green Spring Plantation</span> 17th century plantation of the governor of Colonial Virginia in North America

Green Spring Plantation in James City County about five miles (8.0 km) west of Williamsburg, was the 17th century plantation of one of the most unpopular governors of Colonial Virginia in North America, Sir William Berkeley, and his wife, Frances Culpeper Berkeley.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Green Springs National Historic Landmark District</span> 14,000 acres in Virginia (US) maintained by the National Park Service

Green Springs National Historic Landmark District is a national historic district in Louisa County, Virginia noted for its concentration of fine rural manor houses and related buildings in an intact agricultural landscape. The district comprises 14,000 acres (5,700 ha) of fertile land, contrasting with the more typical poor soil and scrub pinelands surrounding it.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mount Airy Plantation</span> Historic house in Virginia, United States

Mount Airy, near Warsaw in Richmond County, Virginia, is the first neo-Palladian villa mid-Georgian plantation house built in the United States. It was constructed in 1764 for Colonel John Tayloe II, perhaps the richest Virginia planter of his generation, upon the burning of his family's older house. John Ariss is the attributed architect and builder. Tayloe's daughter, Rebecca and her husband Francis Lightfoot Lee, one of the only pair of brothers to sign the Declaration of Independence are buried on the estate, as are many other Tayloes. Before the American Civil War, Mount Airy was a prominent racing horse stud farm, as well as the headquarters of about 10-12 separate but interdependent slave plantations along the Rappahannock River. Mount Airy is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as a National Historic Landmark as well as on the Virginia Landmarks Register and is still privately owned by Tayloe's descendants.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lower Brandon Plantation</span> Historic house in Virginia, United States

Lower Brandon Plantation is located on the south shore of the James River in present-day Prince George County, Virginia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Green Spring Gardens Park</span> United States historic place

Green Spring Gardens is a public park, including a historic 18th-century plantation house "Green Spring", which is the heart of a national historic district listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2003. The Fairfax County Park Authority operates Green Spring with the assistance of various nonprofit organizations concerned with history and gardening. Open daily without charge, the street address is 4603 Green Spring Road, Alexandria, Virginia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oatlands Historic House & Gardens</span> Historic house in Virginia, United States

Oatlands Historic House and Gardens is an estate located in Leesburg, Virginia. Oatlands is operated by the National Trust for Historic Preservation and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as a National Historic Landmark. The Oatlands property is composed of the main mansion and 415 acres of farmland and gardens. The house is judged one of the finest Federal period country estate houses in the nation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Van Cortlandt Manor</span> Historic house in New York, United States

Van Cortlandt Manor is a 17th-century house and property built by the van Cortland family located near the confluence of the Croton and Hudson Rivers in the village of Croton-on-Hudson in Westchester County, New York, United States. The colonial era stone and brick manor house is now a museum and is a National Historic Landmark.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Washington Bottom Farm</span> Historic house in West Virginia, United States

Ridgedale is a 19th-century Greek Revival plantation house and farm on a plateau overlooking the South Branch Potomac River north of Romney, West Virginia, United States. The populated area adjacent to Washington Bottom Farm is known as Ridgedale. The farm is connected to West Virginia Route 28 via Washington Bottom Road.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Huntley (plantation)</span> Historic house in Virginia, United States

Huntley, also known as Historic Huntley or Huntley Hall is an early 19th-century Federal-style villa and farm in the Hybla Valley area of Fairfax County, Virginia. The house sits on a hill overlooking Huntley Meadows Park to the south. The estate is best known as the country residence of Thomson Francis Mason, grandson of George Mason of nearby Gunston Hall. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP), the Virginia Landmarks Register (VLR), and the Fairfax County Inventory of Historic Sites.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Historic Blenheim</span> Historic house in Virginia, United States

Historic Blenheim is a c. 1859 brick farm house designed in the Greek Revival style and located in City of Fairfax, Virginia. During the American Civil War, Union soldiers were often encamped on the grounds surrounding the house and utilized it as part of a reserve hospital system. As a result, more than 115 of these soldiers inscribed words and pictures on the first and second floor walls, as well as the attic of the house. Blenheim was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2001.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Prospect Hill (Spotsylvania County, Virginia)</span> Historic house in Virginia, United States

Prospect Hill is a plantation house in Spotsylvania County, Virginia. The house was built between 1811 and 1812 by Spotswood Dabney Crenshaw for Waller Holladay. Holladay was elected to several local political positions and also served in the Virginia General Assembly. Waller purchased land around Prospect Hill beginning in 1803 using an inheritance from his half-brother, General Lewis Littlepage. One of the original outbuildings housed the first post office in Spotsylvania in 1809.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Burwell family of Virginia</span>

The Burwells were among the First Families of Virginia in the Colony of Virginia. John Quincy Adams once described the Burwells as typical Virginia aristocrats of their period: forthright, bland, somewhat imperious and politically simplistic by Adams' standards. In 1713, so many Burwells had intermarried with the Virginia political elite that Governor Spotswood complained that " the greater part of the present Council are related to the Family of Burwells...there will be no less than seven so near related that they will go off the Bench whenever a Cause of the Burwells come to be tried."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tinkling Spring Presbyterian Church</span> Historic church in Virginia, United States

The Tinkling Spring Presbyterian Church, is a Presbyterian church founded in 1740, and is the oldest Presbyterian congregation in the Valley of Virginia. Its historic building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bushfield (Mount Holly, Virginia)</span> Historic house in Virginia, United States

Bushfield, also known as Bushfield Manor, is a historic 2+12-story Flemish bond, 18th century brick Colonial Revival mansion located in Mount Holly, Westmoreland County, Virginia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Denbigh Plantation Site</span> Archaeological site in Virginia, United States

Denbigh Plantation Site, also known as Mathews Manor, is a historic archaeological site located at Newport News, Virginia.

References

  1. "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places . National Park Service. July 9, 2010.
  2. "Virginia Landmarks Register". Virginia Department of Historic Resources. Retrieved 5 June 2013.
  3. Harris, Malcolm Hart (1977). Old New Kent County (Virginia): Some Account of the Planters. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc. ISBN   9780806352947 . Retrieved 2011-04-11.
  4. Dabney, Charles W. (April 1937), Origin of the Dabney Family of Virginia (PDF), retrieved 30 Apr 2011
  5. McGehee, Chris, Pullers of Virginia , retrieved 9 Apr 2011
  6. U.S. Dept of the Interior, Seven Springs Final Nomination Form (PDF), retrieved 8 Apr 2011
  7. "Home". Seven Springs. Retrieved 2015-05-15.