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Salisbury (Chesterfield County, Virginia)

Plantations in Virginia
Salisbury, 1888
Salisbury, 1888

Salisbury was a house and plantation in northwestern Chesterfield County, Virginia in the Southside area of Metro Richmond, Virginia. It was most likely built in the early 1760s by Abraham Salle (c.1732-c.1800), a descendant of Huguenot refugees fleeing persecution in France. Salle's grandfather, also named Abraham (1670–1719), was the immigrant ancestor for most of the Huguenot Salles living in Colonial Virginia. Abraham Salle (the younger) had "assembled the original 1,500 acre tract between 1760 to 1763" from various parcels of land primarily owned by his uncles William and Robert Wooldridge. The Wooldridge's had inherited the land from their father, John "Blacksmith" Wooldridge (c.1678-1757), himself the immigrant ancestor of all Wooldridges living in the American South.Abraham sold it to Thomas Mann Randolph in 1777. Randolph used the plantation house as a hunting lodge. His main plantation Tuckahoe was just north of Salisbury, across the James River. The famed American patriot and statesman, Patrick Henry, rented the house during two of his terms as governor of Virginia from 1784 to 1786 because the governor's residence in Richmond used at the time of his tenure was not large enough to accommodate Henry's family. Eventually Salisbury was sold to Dr. Philip Turpin, a graduate of the University of Edinburgh. Upon Turpin's death at Salisbury, the plantation passed to his daughter and son-in-law, Caroline and Dr. Edward Johnson. Their son was Confederate Major General Edward Johnson who participated in the Civil War. After the conflict, Edward Johnson returned to Salisbury (which he had inherited in 1843) to farm along with his brother, Philip Turpin Johnson. The two brothers died at Salisbury in 1873 and 1882, respectively. In 1882, Salisbury, along with the rest of the estate of Philip T. Johnson, passed to Dr. Joseph W. Johnson, a druggist in Richmond.Dr. Johnson likely leased the land to the Salisbury coal company but in November 1905, he offered it for sale. In December 1905, the Salisbury estate was sold to H. D. Eichelberger (who represented the Ginter estate, owner of all of the former Clover Hill mining lands) for $25,000 (~$634,409 in 2022). Later, in 1906, Salisbury and its 1,585-acre property were sold to George Arents and Thomas F. Jefress. The two men were tobacco executives and entrepreneurs. Furthermore, Arents was the nephew of the affluent Richmond businessman, Lewis Ginter; while Jeffress built the Meadowbrook mansion in 1918 in southern Chesterfield which was said to have been the largest house ever built in Chesterfield County. (Unfortunately, it burned down in 1967 and is now the site of Meadowbrook Country Club.) In 1923, the over 150-year-old house burned down. It was sold by Richmond attorney James Marshall Turner to the Salisbury Corporation in June 1956 for $110,000 (~$911,517 in 2022) and was noted as "the largest individually owned tract located close to any major city in the East." This company built the subdivision of Salisbury starting in 1958. In the current day, the clubhouse of the Salisbury Country Club (established 1963) is located near where the Salisbury Plantation main house once stood and its central section was built to resemble the original Salisbury.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Salisbury (Chesterfield County, Virginia) (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Salisbury (Chesterfield County, Virginia)
Radstock Road,

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N 37.531258333333 ° E -77.643325 °
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Radstock Road 2650
23113
Virginia, United States
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Salisbury, 1888
Salisbury, 1888
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Aetna Hill (Midlothian, Virginia house)
Aetna Hill (Midlothian, Virginia house)

Aetna Hill is a house in Midlothian, Virginia. It was built soon after 1791 by Thompson Blunt, who had just married Frances Morrisette, a granddaughter of Pierre Morrisette, one of the early Huguenot settlers. This original building consisted of "a 1 1/2 story Huguenot-style structure with a three-bay facade and twin front doors".In 1831 Thompson Blunt retired to Powhatan County and left Aetna Hill and its lands to his daughter Moriah and her husband, Elijah Brummall. A large addition was made to the house around 1840, when a 2+1⁄2-story, side passage house adjoining the west side of the original house was completed. In 1928, the house was in the possession of a local preacher named Robert H. Winfree. How the house came into the possession of Rev. Winfree is unclear, but it might have been inherited by his wife, Maria P. Watlington Winfree. Maria was the daughter of John O. W. Watlington and Ann Maria Brummall, who was the daughter of Elijah and Moriah.Winfree was the pastor of nearby Jerusalem Baptist Church (later renamed Winfree Memorial Baptist Church, in honor of him and his father David B. Winfree, Jerusalem's first pastor), where he preached at for more than 30 years. The Midlothian and Chesterfield County historian, Bettie Woodson Weaver, also lived here with her mother, who was Robert H. Winfree's daughter, in her early years.After going to college and marrying Albert Weaver, Bettie returned to Aetna Hill after World War II and started renovated the building over the next three years, adding heating, electricity, and indoor plumbing to the 150-year-old house. The facade of the original 1791 house was altered when one of the front doors was taken off and replaced with a wide double window. Weaver lived at the house until very shortly before her death, writing and publishing 11 books and countless articles.In the present day, Aetna Hill is largely untouched and the main house appears as it did in the 1840s, with slight alterations. Its lands are one of the largest sections of still standing forests in central Midlothian.

Midlothian, Virginia
Midlothian, Virginia

Midlothian ( mid-LOH-thee-ən) is an unincorporated area and Census-designated place in Chesterfield County, Virginia, U.S. Settled as a coal town, Midlothian village experienced suburbanization effects and is now part of the western suburbs of Richmond, Virginia south of the James River in the Greater Richmond Region. Because of its unincorporated status, Midlothian has no formal government, and the name is used to represent the original small Village of Midlothian and a vast expanse of Chesterfield County in the northwest portion of Southside Richmond served by the Midlothian post office. The Village of Midlothian was named for the early 18th-century coal mining enterprises of the Wooldridge family. Incorporated in 1836, their Mid-Lothian Mining and Manufacturing Company employed free and enslaved people to do the deadly work of digging underground. Midlothian is the site of the first commercially-mined coal in the Colony of Virginia and North America.By the early 18th century, several mines were being developed in Chesterfield County by French Huguenots and others. The mine owners began to export the commodity from the region in the 1730s. Midlothian-area coal from Harry Heth's Black Heath mines heated the U.S. White House for President Thomas Jefferson. The transportation needs of coal shipping stimulated construction of a paved toll road (Virginia's first), the Manchester Turnpike in 1807; and the Chesterfield Railroad, Virginia's first, in 1831; each traveled the 13 miles (21 km) from the mining community to the port of Manchester, just below the Fall Line of the James River. In 1850, the Richmond and Danville Railroad built Coalfield Station, a freight and later passenger depot, near the mines. In the 1920s, the old turnpike was straightened and became part of the new east-west U.S. Route 60. A few decades later, residential neighborhoods were developed in Southside Richmond near Midlothian, including the large Salisbury community and the Brandermill planned development sited on Swift Creek Reservoir. In the 21st century, Midlothian extends many miles beyond the original village area. State Route 288 connects the community with Interstate 64 and the State Route 76 "Powhite Parkway" toll road, and Interstate 95 in the Richmond metropolitan area's southwestern quadrant.

Summerville Plantation
Summerville Plantation

Summerville Plantation was a farm in northwestern Chesterfield County, Virginia. Established around the 1760s by Robert Moseley, Summerville was home to many prominent Chesterfield families until its decay following the American Civil War. In the late 1900s the tract was built over by new housing developments. The Summerville site was originally part of a 17,653-acre tract granted by the British crown to John Tullit. From 1705 to 1760, the tract was owned by numerous people with the names of Page, Digges, Cary, Price, and Lacy. In 1760, the original 200-acre parcel was bought by Robert Moseley (1732–1804) and Magdalene Guerrant Moseley (1740–1826), a young couple, from Thomas Lacy for 65 pounds. Two additional purchases in 1762 and 1763 of 228 and 100 acres, respectively, brought the total acreage of the farm to 528 acres. The Moseley's built a small house at Summerville in the early 1760s which was soon enlarged on account of the number of children they had: Thomas, Arthur, John, Magdalene, Judith, William, and Peter. The site of the Summerville house was on a ridge overlooking the Michaux Creek valley and "it is said that the westward view was unsurpassed in that area of Virginia." In 1777, Summerville was sold to Colonel William Fleming of "Mount Pleasant" in neighboring Powhatan County, while Robert, Magdalene, and their family moved to a much larger plantation in Buckingham County called "Willow Lake." William Fleming (1736–1824) was a man with distinguished Virginia heritage. His father, John Fleming, married in 1727 Mary Bolling, daughter of John Bolling and Mary Kennon, two scions of rich and powerful tidewater Virginia families. When William was 36 years old, in 1772, he became a member of the House of Burgesses for Virginia. During the next couple decades, he was part of a group of Virginia politicians that crafted and ran the early state's government. In 1789, Fleming was chosen to be part of the new Virginia Supreme Court. He served in that duty until 1809, when he was elevated to become the chief justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia. This role took up the last 15 years of his life until his death in 1824. An interesting note about William Fleming and Summerville is that in early 1781, Thomas Jefferson, then governor of Virginia, spent a night at Summerville with Fleming while Richmond was being burned by Benedict Arnold. Fleming and Jefferson had both attended and known each other at the College of William and Mary. During Fleming's tenure at Summerville, the plantation's acreage was expanded from 528 acres to 906 acres. An 1815 tax list indicates that there were 8 horses or mules and 21 cows on the plantation. In 1820, he owned 13 slaves (9 males and 4 females). On February 15, 1824, William Fleming died at Summerville and was buried in the burial grounds there. In 1825, Colonel Higgison Hancock (1794–1866) bought Summerville. He was the son of Rev. Francis Hancock, a Baptist preacher when it was not always safe to be one. Higgison served as High Sheriff for Chesterfield in 1846–47 and as a member of the House of Delegates in 1847–48. When Col. Hancock came to Summerville, he was not a man of great means but over time, he became one of the richest men in Chesterfield County. At the time of his purchase of the estate, he had two slaves over 16 years old. By 1830, he had 16 slaves (8 male and 8 female) and just before the Civil War he had 31 slaves over 12. He also owned two carriages, three watches, and a piano (things that were very uncommon back then except for the extremely wealthy). Higgison and Hannah Walthall Hancock had three sons (Dr. Francis W. Hancock, Dr. William G. Hancock, and Dr. Philip S. Hancock) who all attended Jefferson Medical College and all became physicians. After the Civil War, the plantation system of farming collapsed as a result of the emancipation of the slaves and numerous plantations across the south fell into ruin, among them Summerville. Higgison Hancock died in 1866 at the Ballard House hotel in Richmond, where he was living with his son Francis. In 1885, the 786+1⁄2-acre Summerville was split into four lots, one of which was the "305 acre 'House Lot' containing the homestead."In the 1900s, part of Summerville was farmed, or at least the fields were kept up. During the 1960s, the fields of Summerville were planted over with trees and in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the entire former tract north of Michaux Creek was built over by housing developments. Today, nothing remains of the once grand plantation Summerville.