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Carter Hall (Millwood, Virginia)

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Coordinates: 39°4′21.3″N 78°1′56.1″W / 39.072583°N 78.032250°W / 39.072583; -78.032250
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Carter Hall
Carter Hall
Carter Hall (Millwood, Virginia) is located in Northern Virginia
Carter Hall (Millwood, Virginia)
Carter Hall (Millwood, Virginia) is located in Virginia
Carter Hall (Millwood, Virginia)
Carter Hall (Millwood, Virginia) is located in the United States
Carter Hall (Millwood, Virginia)
LocationNE of Millwood off VA 255, Millwood, Virginia, U.S.
Coordinates39°4′21.3″N 78°1′56.1″W / 39.072583°N 78.032250°W / 39.072583; -78.032250
Area90 acres (36 ha)
Built1792
ArchitectWade Muldoon (1948 gardens)
Harrie T. Lindeberg (1930 remodel)
Architectural styleGeorgian
NRHP reference No.73002003[1]
VLR No.021-0012
Significant dates
Added to NRHPJuly 24, 1973
Designated VLRJune 19, 1973[2]

Carter Hall was the Millwood, Virginia, USA[3] estate of Lt. Col. Nathaniel Burwell (1750–1814). It is located in the upper Shenandoah Valley, off Virginia Route 255 northeast of Millwood. The estate includes a grand plantation house, a great lawn, and terraced gardens, and has panoramic views in all directions.[4] It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

History

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Nathaniel Burwell (1750-1814) inherited a 5,800-acre (2,347 ha) estate from his father Carter Burwell, including Carter's Grove, James City County,[5] and about 5000 acres in what was then Frederick County. He developed the land with the Burwell-Morgan Mill and normally spent summers nearby (the Blue Ridge Mountains' foothills being cooler and less subject to malaria than the Hampton Roads area). After the American Revolutionary War and his first wife's death, Col. Burwell remarried and with the assistance of former General Daniel Morgan began building the plantation house he called 'Carter Hall' during 1792–1800. Col. Nathaniel Burwell at his peak owned 8000 acres and enslaved more than 200 people in Frederick County; the next largest landowners enslaving 53, 43 and 28 people. [6] Col. Burwell would die at Carter Hall in 1814, but his estate would not settle until his widow's death in 1843. Carter Hall would be inherited by one of his sons by his second wife, George Harrison Burwell (1799–1873). Col. Burwell invited his cousin, U.S. Founding Father Edmund Randolph, who had been Governor of Virginia, United States Attorney General and later Secretary of State under George Washington, to pass his retirement at Carter Hall.[4] Both are buried outside Old Chapel (Millwood, Virginia), built in 1790 on land donated by Col. Burwell, and sometimes referred to as the "Burwell graveyard" because of succeeding generations of this branch of the Burwell family buried there.[7]

Col. Burwell's son Nathaniel Burwell Jr. (1779-1849) helped to form Clarke County from the eastern part Frederick County and at nearly 2400 acres and 52 enslaved people was its largest landowners.[8] He served as one its justices of the peace at various times, as well as its joint delegate in the Virginia General Assembly with neighboring Warren County (which the Castleman family dominated),[9] but lived at Saratoga (Boyce, Virginia), a plantation he bought from Gen. Morgan in 1809 after the retired soldier moved to Winchester to live with his family.[10]

Carter Hall has a five-bay central block built of local limestone, originally with a central hall flanked by rooms extending the full depth of the house (single-pile plan). The flanking two-bay wings have pediment gable ends and the outermost, single-story wings are of a single bay, formerly with pediment ends.[4] G.H. Burwell added the large portico, which is "by tradition" ascribed to a design of William Thornton, architect of the United States Capitol.[4]

Two navy ships have been named after this plantation. The first USS Carter Hall (LSD-3) was an Ashland-class dock landing ship in service from 1943 to 1947 and was Recommissioned from 1961 until 1969. The second USS Carter Hall (LSD-50) is a Harpers Ferry-class dock landing ship commissioned in 1995 and still in use today.

Civil War

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It served as headquarters for Stonewall Jackson during part of the American Civil War, and was raided and sacked by Union troops during the war.[4] Stonewall Jackson used another house, in Lexington, Virginia, as headquarters during 1861–1862,[11] and established headquarters at Carter Hall during the fall of 1862. Jackson "declined George Burwell's invitation to stay in the house, camping instead with his men on the grounds. During his stay General Jackson permitted his surgeon, Dr. Hunter McGuire, to perform a cataract operation on George Burwell on the portico."[4]

George's son, C.S.A. private Nathaniel Burwell (1838-1862) fought in the Stonewall Brigade and ultimately died that fall of wounds sustained at the Second Battle of Bull Run. Several more of Col. Nathaniel Burwell's great-grandsons enlisted in the Confederate army, including three sons of his grandson (through his son William Nelson Burwell of 'Glenowen', d. 1822) Nathaniel Burwell (1819-1896), with Robert dying of wounds received at the Battle of Brandy Station, George later becoming a mercenary in Mexico, sons Philip, John and William surviving and becoming physicians, and their youngest brother Thomas (1861-1923) farming and inheriting Carter Hall.[12]

1930 remodel

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The house was remodeled in 1930 for its new owner Gerard Lambert "under the direction of the fashionable New York architect, H.T. Lindeberg," and a four-level terraced garden designed by landscape architect Wade Muldoon was added in 1948. The stucco was removed from the exterior to expose the stone. In the house the central hall and east room were combined into a single space and the original wainscoting was replaced with richly-detailed neo-Georgian details based on woodwork at Shirley Plantation, Virginia. The dining room is the only room to retain significant portions of its original fittings.[4]

Carter Hall was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.[1][4]

Present day

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Acquired in 1978 it is currently a conference center owned by Project Hope.[13] The organization on November 27, 2018, placed the center with 87 acres (35 ha) on the market for $12,000,000 (~$14.3 million in 2023).[14]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b "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 29 Aug 2020.
  3. ^ Nathaniel Burwell and his neighbor the Revolutionary soldier Daniel Morgan established Millwood and the Burwell-Morgan mill there.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h Virginia Historic Landmarks Commission Staff (May 1973), National Register of Historic Places Inventory-Nomination: Carter Hall (PDF), National Park Service
  5. ^ Several generations earlier, Maj. Lewis Burwell (1622–1653) had settled at Carter's Creek, Gloucester County, Virginia. His grandson (this Nathaniel's father) Nathaniel Burwell (1680–c. 1721) married Elizabeth Carter, bringing the Carter name into the family. Carter Burwell was their second son, and his father died when he was a boy, so to assure him an inheritance (primogeniture rules awarding the 5000 acre plantation known as Fairfield to his brother another Lewis), his maternal grandfather King Carter bought about 1400 acres known as Martin's Hundred for young Carter, who upon reaching legal age built Carter's Grove http://homepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~marshall/esmd42.htm Burwell genealogy.
  6. ^ Warren R. Hofstra, A Separate Place: the Formation of Clarke County, Virginia (White Post; Clarke County Sesquicentennial Committee, 1986) p. 11 LCCN 85--30952
  7. ^ J.E. Norris, History of the Lower Shenandoah Valley: Counties of Frederick, Berkeley, Jefferson and Clarke (Chicago: A. Warner & Co. 1890) reprint Berryville: Virginia Book Company 1972, p. 464
  8. ^ Hofstra pp. 92-94
  9. ^ Cynthia Miller Leonard, The Virginia General Assembly 1619-1978 (Richmond: Virginia State Library 1978) pp. 392, 396, 410
  10. ^ https://npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/GetAsset/NHLS/70000788_text [dead link]
  11. ^ Stephen Lissandrello (February 8, 1975), National Register of Historic Places Inventory-Nomination: Stonewall Jackson House (pdf), National Park Service and Accompanying photos, one from 1970 of the Lexington headquarters house and one, undated, of Carter Hall (32 KB)
  12. ^ Norris pp. 649-650
  13. ^ "The Carter Hall Conference Center". Project HOPE. Retrieved 20 November 2015.
  14. ^ "Property Detail Page".
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