Shirley Plantation, visited by three U.S. Presidents

 

Shirley and Edgewood Plantations

Family Trees

      It did not take many years for the English who settled at Jamestown in 1607 to discover that one path to the wealth they craved was tobacco.  To that end they began spreading out, establishing plantations to grow the golden weed. One of the earliest of these plantations was Shirley; the name first appeared on records in 1611, although it would be two more years before the estate was inhabited.

For three centuries and ten generations Shirley has been held by the Hill-Carter family.  Though the intricate family tree dates back to 1660, the house was not built until 1724 when Edward Hill III began constructing it for his daughter Elizabeth and her husband John Carter, son of Robert "King" Carter.  Architectural historians trace the inspiration for this square-shaped home to the Governor's Palace in nearby Williamsburg.  Rather than the Georgian hyphen and wings design, Shirley has a basement and three stories.  Like the numerous dependencies, the brick house is built in the Flemish bond pattern.  On the roof is a carved pineapple, symbol of hospitality.

Shirley is noted for its hospitality---to horses as well as presidents.  The family silver has been used to serve George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Tyler and Theodore Roosevelt.  Not one of the presidents, however, had his own silver cup like Nestor, the family's champion racehorse.  After a victorious race Nestor was offered wine from his cup, reversing the practice of offering the loving cup to the owner.

Family lore abounds at Shirley.  One story that is told and retold concerns the frieze over the fireplace in the dining room.  It may have been told one too many times.  One of the current younger generation at Shirley, after hearing repeatedly about an earlier Carter youngster who whittled all but four acorns out of the carved frieze, decided to make his own mark and eliminated all but one before his mother stopped him in mid-crime.

Fortunately the frieze is not the carved work for which Shirley is noted.  That honor belongs to the hanging staircase.  This square, not curved, staircase rises without visible means of support, and each tread is gracefully scrolled.

The parlor at Shirley is historically, rather than architecturally, significant.  It was here that Anne Hill Carter married Governor Henry "Lighthorse Harry" Lee.  Their son, Robert, would spend several boyhood years at Shirley.  History also marked this plantation during America's early struggles.  Like so many of the James River plantations, Shirley had troops on her soil during both the Revolutionary War and the War Between the States.

Shirley is still a working plantation producing corn, barley, wheat and soy beans.  The grounds have a full complement of dependencies---a large two-story kitchen, smokehouse, dovecote, stable and barns.  You can visit Shirley daily except Christmas Day from 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M.  Admission is charged.

At nearby Edgewood, just three miles from Shirley, the family tree is likely to be one of the 18 decorated Christmas trees that fill this Carpenter's Gothic house from October well into January.  Here the ambience is not Revolutionary or antebellum but Victorian, a delightful change of pace.

The house was built in 1849 by Spencer Rowland, a New Jerseyite who fell in love with the South.  His daughter, Lizzie, likewise fell in love with the South, or at least a young Southerner from a nearby plantation, perhaps even Shirley.  Lizzie was in her mid-twenties when she moved to Edgewood and lost her heart.  Then she lost him to the Civil War.  Her ghost is said to haunt the bedroom where she died and her name is etched on the window through which the apparition peers, forever searching for her handsome beau on his spirited horse.