Moss Neck Manor

Last updated
Moss Neck Manor
Entrance to Moss Neck Manor.jpg
Property entrance
USA Virginia location map.svg
Red pog.svg
Usa edcp location map.svg
Red pog.svg
LocationVA 766, S side of Rappahannock R., Rappahannock Academy, Virginia
Coordinates 38°12′30.528″N77°19′32.772″W / 38.20848000°N 77.32577000°W / 38.20848000; -77.32577000 Coordinates: 38°12′30.528″N77°19′32.772″W / 38.20848000°N 77.32577000°W / 38.20848000; -77.32577000
Area280 acres (110 ha)
Built1856 (1856)
Architectural styleMid 19th Century Revival
NRHP reference No. 99000069 [1]
VLR No.016-0018
Significant dates
Added to NRHPJanuary 27, 1999
Designated VLRDecember 10, 1998 [2]

Moss Neck Manor is a historic, antebellum plantation house located at Rappahannock Academy, Caroline County, Virginia, United States.

Contents

Construction

James Parke Corbin (1808-1868) inherited the plantation, which did not have a significant house, from his father, Richard Corbin (1771-1819). [3] After his and his father's main plantation house, Laneville in King and Queen county, burned in 1843, Corbin began construction of the manor in the then-popular Greek Revival style. Enslaved labor probably both helped construct the building, as well as provided the income for the building project. In the 1850 census, Corbin owned 33 enslaved people in King and Queen County, [4] and about 100 in Caroline County. [5]

The house was completed in 1856, shortly after the death of his first wife, the former Jane Katherine Wellford. She had already borne three sons, all of whom would fight for the Confederacy: Richard Corbin (1833-1863), Spottswood Wellford Corbin (1835-1897), and James Parke Corbin Jr.(1847-1909). Their younger daughter Katherine (1839-1920) would marry CSA staff officer Sandie Pendleton during the conflict described below.

The two-story central section features long hyphens, and pedimented terminal wings. The colonnaded verandahs have Doric order columns, a two-level portico, and octagonal cupola. The house measures 225 feet long. [6] It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1999. [1]

Civil War

Moss Neck Manor, situated about 10 miles from the site of the Battle of Fredericksburg, was then owned by the Corbin family. The Corbins invited General Stonewall Jackson to stay at Moss Neck Manor during the winter of 1862–63. He declined to stay in the main house, but accepted the use of an office outbuilding. Moss Neck Plantation became the winter quarters of the Second Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia. [7]

Jackson entertained Confederate generals Robert E. Lee, Jeb Stuart, and William N. Pendleton in the office on Christmas Day, 1862. [7] The event was depicted, somewhat inaccurately, in the film, Gods and Generals .

Mrs. Thomas Jackson (Anna) with infant daughter, Julia Jackson, arrived by train at Guiney's Station on April 20, 1863, for a visit with General Jackson. They stayed at nearby Belvoir. Julia Jackson was baptized by the Reverend Tucker Lacy three days later. The visit ended suddenly nine days later when a report came that Union forces had crossed the Rappahannock River near Chancellorsville, Virginia. [8]

Today

The 290-acre property is privately owned by Gilbert and Judy Shelton. The house has been renovated and updated and is occasionally open for tour. [9]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Caroline County, Virginia</span> County in Virginia, United States

Caroline County is a United States county located in the eastern part of the Commonwealth of Virginia. The northern boundary of the county borders on the Rappahannock River, notably at the historic town of Port Royal. The Caroline county seat is Bowling Green.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edmund Pendleton</span> American judge

Edmund Pendleton was an American planter, politician, lawyer, and judge. He served in the Virginia legislature before and during the American Revolutionary War, rising to the position of speaker. Pendleton attended the First Continental Congress as one of Virginia's delegates alongside George Washington and Patrick Henry, signed the Continental Association, and led the conventions both wherein Virginia declared independence (1776) and adopted the United States Constitution (1788).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Northern Neck</span> Region in Virginia, United States

The Northern Neck is the northernmost of three peninsulas on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The Potomac River forms the northern boundary of the peninsula; the Rappahannock River demarcates it on the south. The Northern Neck encompasses the following Virginia counties: Lancaster, Northumberland, Richmond, King George and Westmoreland; it had a total population of 50,158 as of the 2020 census.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Fitzhugh</span> American politician

William Fitzhugh was an American planter, legislator and patriot during the American Revolutionary War who served as a delegate to the Continental Congress for Virginia in 1779, as well as many terms in the House of Burgesses and both houses of the Virginia General Assembly following the Commonwealth's formation. His Stafford County home, Chatham Manor, is on the National Register for Historic Places and serves as the National Park Service Headquarters for the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park.

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

Chatham Manor is a Georgian-style mansion home completed in 1771 by farmer and statesman William Fitzhugh, after about three years of construction, on the Rappahannock River in Stafford County, Virginia, opposite Fredericksburg. It was for more than a century the center of a large, thriving plantation and the only private residence in the United States to be visited by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Dwight D. Eisenhower.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George Washington Parke Custis</span> Adopted grandson of George Washington (1781–1857)

George Washington Parke Custis was an American plantation owner, antiquarian, author, and playwright. His father John Parke Custis was the stepson of George Washington. He and his sister Eleanor grew up at Mount Vernon and in the Washington presidential household.

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

Woodlawn is a historic house located in Fairfax County, Virginia. Originally a part of Mount Vernon, George Washington's historic plantation estate, it was subdivided in the 19th century by abolitionists to demonstrate the viability of a free labor system. The address is now 9000 Richmond Highway, Alexandria, Virginia, but due to expansion of Fort Belvoir and reconstruction of historic Route 1, access is via Woodlawn Road slightly south of Jeff Todd Way/State Route 235. The house is a designated National Historic Landmark, primarily for its association with the Washington family, but also for the role it played in the historic preservation movement. It is now a museum property owned and managed by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

<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.

Jeremiah Morton was a nineteenth-century politician, lawyer, physician and architect from Virginia. He was a younger brother of Florida senator Jackson Morton.

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

Sabine Hall is a historic house located near Warsaw in Richmond County, Virginia. Built about 1730 by noted planter, burgess and patriot Landon Carter (1710–1778), it is one of Virginia's finest Georgian brick manor houses. Numerous descendants served in the Virginia General Assembly. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1969, and declared a National Historic Landmark in 1970. At the time of its National Register listing, it was still owned by Carter / Wellford descendants.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sandie Pendleton</span>

Alexander Swift "Sandie" Pendleton was an officer on the staff of Confederate Generals Thomas J. Jackson, Richard S. Ewell and Jubal A. Early during the American Civil War.

Thomas Grosvenor Corbin was a career United States Navy officer descended from the First Families of Virginia who remained loyal to the Union during the American Civil War, during which he served as commandant of midshipmen at the U.S. Naval Academy and commanded a ship in the Union blockade of southern ports during the conflict. Since he never married, but had many relatives, including military members, across the United States, his relation to Air Force Major General Thomas Goldsborough Corbin (1917-1992) is unclear.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Guinea, Virginia</span> Unincorporated community in Virginia, United States

Guinea is an unincorporated community in Caroline County, Virginia, United States. Guinea is 8.5 miles (13.7 km) northwest of Bowling Green. The modern spelling of the name has been altered from the earlier "Guiney" or "Guiney's", so called after an old Caroline County family, the Guineys. Guinea was the site of a Civil War era railroad station on the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad known as Guiney's Station.

Rappahannock Academy is an unincorporated community in Caroline County, Virginia, United States. Rappahannock Academy is located on U.S. Route 17 13 miles (21 km) southeast of Fredericksburg. Rappahannock Academy has a post office with ZIP code 22538. The community was named after the Rappahannock Academy & Military Institute, a now-defunct military academy in the community.

Moss House or Moss Hall or variations may refer to:

Corbin Braxton was an Virginia physician, planter, politician and soldier who served in both houses of the Virginia General Assembly as well as Brigadier General of the Virginia militia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Henry Corbin (colonist)</span> Virginia colony tobacco planter (1629–1675/76)

Henry Corbin was an emigrant from England who became a tobacco planter in the Virginia colony and served in both houses of the Virginia General Assembly, in the House of Burgesses representing Lancaster County before the creation of Middlesex County on Virginia's Middle Neck, then on the Governor's Council.

Robert Wormeley Carter II was a Virginia planter who served multiple terms in both houses of the Virginia General Assembly. In his early and last terms, he represented his native Richmond County in the Virginia House of Delegates, then for eight years represented the counties of the Northern Neck of Virginia in the Virginia Senate.

Francis Corbin was a Virginia lawyer, planter and politician, who represented Middlesex County in the Virginia House of Delegates and the Virginia Ratifying Convention and later moved to Caroline County.

Richard Corbin was a Virginia planter, officer and politician who at times represented Middlesex County and King and Queen County in the Virginia House of Delegates.

References

  1. 1 2 "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. Ralph Emmett Fall, People, Postoffices and Communities in Caroline County, Virginia, 1727-1969 (WH Wolfe Associates, 1989) p. 198
  4. 1850 U.S. Federal Census Slave Schedule for Stratton Major Parish, King and Queen County, Virginia p. 3 of 17
  5. 1850 U.S. Federal Census Slave Schedule for Caroline County, Virginia pp. 100-101 of 123 (although metadata indicates 95 slaves, count appears 110
  6. Calder Loth (September 1998). "National Register of Historic Places Inventory/Nomination: Moss Neck Manor" (PDF). and Accompanying two photos
  7. 1 2 Gwynne, S. C. (October 2015). Rebel Yell. New York: Scribner. pp. 508–12. ISBN   978-1-45167328-9.
  8. Gwynne, S. C. (October 2015). Rebel Yell. New York: Scribner. pp. 517–8. ISBN   978-1-45167328-9.
  9. "Moss Neck Manor is a hidden gem in Caroline County". 12 April 2015. Retrieved 27 December 2015.