Gloucester County is a county in the Commonwealth of Virginia. As of the 2020 census, the population was 38,711. Its county seat is Gloucester Courthouse. The county was founded in 1651 in the Virginia Colony and is named for Henry Stuart, Duke of Gloucester.
Gloucester Courthouse is a census-designated place (CDP) in and the county seat of Gloucester County, Virginia, United States. The population was 2,951 at the 2010 census.
The Maggie L. Walker National Historic Site is a United States National Historic Landmark and a National Historic Site located at 110½ E. Leigh Street on "Quality Row" in the Jackson Ward neighborhood of Richmond, Virginia. The site was designated a U.S. National Historic Landmark in 1975. The National Historic Site was established in 1978 to tell the story of the life and work of Maggie L. Walker (1867-1934), the first woman to serve as president of a bank in the United States. It was built by George W. Boyd, father of physician, Sarah Garland Boyd Jones. The historic site protects the restored and originally furnished home of Walker. Tours of the home are offered by National Park Service rangers.
Jackson Ward, previously known as Central Wards, is a historically African-American district in Richmond, Virginia, with a long tradition of African-American businesses. It is located less than a mile from the Virginia State Capitol, sitting to the west of Court End and north of Broad Street. It was listed as a National Historic Landmark District in 1978. "Jackson Ward" was originally the name of the area's political district within the city, or ward, from 1871 to 1905, yet has remained in use long after losing its original meaning.
St. Paul's Episcopal Church is an historic Episcopal church in Richmond, Virginia, United States. Located directly across Ninth Street from the Virginia State Capitol, it has long been a popular house of worship for Richmond political figures, including General Robert E. Lee, Confederate President Jefferson Davis, and many Virginia governors throughout the years..
Rosewell Plantation in Gloucester County, Virginia, was for more than 100 years the home of a branch of the Page family, one of the First Families of Virginia. Begun in 1725, the Flemish bond brick Rosewell mansion overlooking the York River was one of the most elaborate homes in the American colonies.
Morven Park is a 1,000-acre historic estate and horse park in Leesburg, Virginia, United States. Located on the grounds are the Morven Park Mansion, the Winmill Carriage Museum, formal boxwood gardens, miles of hiking and riding trails, and athletic fields. The park is also home to the Museum of Hounds and Hunting of North America with displays of art, artifacts and memorabilia about the sport of foxhunting.
Zion Poplars Baptist Church is a historic Baptist church located near Gloucester, Gloucester County, Virginia. It was built in 1894 during the Reconstruction Era, and served more than just religious functions. As one of the oldest independent African American congregations in Gloucester County, Virginia, the church also served the economic and educational needs of its community. It was built in the Gothic Revival style with vernacular detailing, attributed to the handiwork of Frank Braxton, a former slave. The church gained its name from the historical origins of the church and congregation, because the first services were held under seven united poplar trees. Four of these trees still stand on church grounds today.
Beaver Creek Plantation, under the ownership of George Hairston, was a large slave-holding tobacco plantation and the center of an empire in tobacco-growing and slave-trading built by the Hairston family, Scottish emigrants to Pennsylvania in the early 18th century. Located just outside today's Martinsville, Virginia, the plantation thrived in tobacco production and textile manufacturing, as well as producing household goods and raising livestock. At one point the enslaved blacks of Beaver Creek were tending a thousand yam plants; in one day they made 660 candles.
Holly Knoll, also known as the Robert R. Moton House, is a historic house in rural Gloucester County, Virginia, near Capahosic. It was the retirement home of the influential African-American educator Robert Russa Moton (1867-1940), and is the only known home of his to survive. It now houses the Gloucester Institute, a non-profit training center for African-American community leaders and educators. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1981.
Mirador is a historic home located near Greenwood, Albemarle County, Virginia. It was built in 1842 for James M. Bowen (1793–1880), and is a two-story, brick structure on a raised basement in the Federal style. It has a deck-on-hip roof capped by a Chinese Chippendale railing. The front facade features a portico with paired Tuscan order columns. The house was renovated in the 1920s by noted New York architect William Adams Delano (1874–1960), who transformed the house into a Georgian Revival mansion.
Toddsbury is a historic home located on the banks of the North River in Gloucester County, Virginia. The house was built around 1669 by Thomas Todd and inhabited by his descendants until 1880. The builder Thomas Todd was the son of an English emigrant of the same name who patented land in Elizabeth City County in 1647 and in Gloucester County in 1664. However, he moved to Maryland and became a burgess for Baltimore County before dying at sea in 1676. The wife of one of the early settlers named Thomas Todd was Ann Gorsuch, daughter of Rev. John Gorsuch.
Upper Wolfsnare, historically called Brick House Farm until 1939, is a colonial-era brick home built, probably about 1759, in Georgian style by Thomas Walke III in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
White Hall on the Ware River near Zanoni, Gloucester County, Virginia, was the ancestral home of the prominent Willis family of colonial Virginia.
Limestone, also known as Limestone Plantation and Limestone Farm, has two historic homes and a farm complex located near Keswick, Albemarle County, Virginia. The main dwelling at Limestone Farm consists of a long, narrow two-story central section flanked by two wings. the main section was built about 1840, and the wings appear to be two small late-18th-century dwellings that were incorporated into the larger building. It features a two-story porch. The house underwent another major renovation in the 1920s, when Colonial Revival-style detailing was added. The second dwelling is the Robert Sharp House, also known as the Monroe Law Office. It was built in 1794, and is a 2+1⁄2-story, brick and frame structure measuring 18 feet by 24 feet. Also on the property are a contributing shed (garage), corncrib, cemetery, a portion of a historic roadway, and a lime kiln known as "Jefferson's Limestone Kiln" (1760s). Limestone's owner in the late-18th century, Robert Sharp, was a neighbor and acquaintance of Thomas Jefferson. The property was purchased by James Monroe in 1816, after the death of Robert Sharp in 1808, and he put his brother Andrew Monroe in charge of its administration. The property was sold at auction in 1828.
Airville is a historic home located near Gloucester, Gloucester County, Virginia. It consists of two sections. The earliest section dates to the last half of the 18th century, and has a central-passage plan and gambrel roof. The second section is a three-story, frame addition dated to the late-1830s. It features a Greek Revival style front porch with fluted-Ionic order columns. Also on the property are the contributing dairy, smokehouse, office, lumber house, and icehouse.
Burgh Westra is a historic home located near Gloucester, Gloucester County, Virginia. Built between 1842 and 1851 on 2,400 acres, the estate's original design is a two and a half story brick dwelling in the Gothic Revival style. In addition to the main house, the property contains an original dairy, a rebuilt carriage house, guest cottage, gazebo built upon original sketches of Dr Taliaferro, north and south gardens modeled on the original house designs, and a kitchen vegetable garden. Additional dependency foundations of the kitchen, smoke, and ice houses on the property are currently under consideration for reconstruction. Still noticeable in the spring are native daffodils planted around the entrances to originally wooden servant houses on either side of the lane. Aspects of the original fruit and nut orchards are located next to the estate and near the remains of a barn burned by raiding union troops during the Civil War. The extended property contains the original farm managers house and working and fallow fields along the estate's nearly 2-mile long lane. Burgh Westra's floor plan is Design III in Cottage Residences (1842), by Andrew Jackson Downing. The name "Burgh Westra" comes from the Scottish phrase for "Village of the West", symbolizing the cottage's location on the North River, Virginia.
Roaring Spring is a historic home located near Gloucester, Gloucester County, Virginia. It was built about 1725, and is a 11⁄2-story, four-bay, gambrel roofed frame dwelling. The interior features Greek Revival style details.
Sunnyside, also known as the Duke House, is a historic home located at Charlottesville, Virginia. The original section was built about 1800, as a 1+1⁄2-story, two room log dwelling. It was expanded and remodeled in 1858, as a Gothic Revival style dwelling after Washington Irving's Gothic Revival home, also called Sunnyside. The house features scroll-sawn bargeboards, arched windows and doors, and a fieldstone chimney with stepped weatherings and capped corbelled stacks topped with two octagonal chimney pots.
Blandome is a historic hilltop home built circa 1830 and located overlooking the downtown area and within the city limits of Lexington, Virginia. Its history shows Virginia's changing racial relations: from 19th century occupation by privileged whites ranging from slaveowners to proponents of Jim Crow, to 20th century occupation by economically successful and politically active African Americans.
