Belle Grove Plantation (Middletown, Virginia)
Encyclopedia
- For Pres. James Madison's birthplace, see Belle Grove (Port Conway, Virginia)Belle Grove (Port Conway, Virginia)Belle Grove is a historic plantation located on U.S. 301 in Port Conway, Virginia. The present plantation house was built in 1790.James Madison, the fourth President of the United States, was born on March 16, 1751, on Belle Grove plantation in an earlier house which is no longer in existence...
- For other Belle Groves, see Belle GroveBelle Grove- Places in the United States :Virginia* Belle Grove Plantation , home of Major Isaac Hite; built 1794-97; listed on the NRHP, NHL, NTHP**Cedar Creek and Belle Grove National Historical Park, encompassing the above since 2002...
Belle Grove Plantation is a late-18th-century plantation and estate in the northern Shenandoah Valley
Shenandoah Valley
The Shenandoah Valley is both a geographic valley and cultural region of western Virginia and West Virginia in the United States. The valley is bounded to the east by the Blue Ridge Mountains, to the west by the eastern front of the Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians , to the north by the Potomac River...
of Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
, USA. It is situated in Frederick County
Frederick County, Virginia
Frederick County is a county located in the Commonwealth of Virginia. It is included in the Winchester, Virginia-West Virginia Metropolitan Statistical Area. It was formed in 1743 by the splitting of Orange County. For ten years it was the home of George Washington. As of 2010, the population was...
, about a mile southwest of Middletown
Middletown, Virginia
Middletown is a town in Frederick County, Virginia, United States. The population was 1,265 at the 2010 census.- History :Belle Grove Plantation, about a mile southwest of Middletown, was first settled in about 1750 and its historic Federal-style manor house was completed in 1797...
.
Built between 1794 and 1797, the large Federal
Federal architecture
Federal-style architecture is the name for the classicizing architecture built in the United States between c. 1780 and 1830, and particularly from 1785 to 1815. This style shares its name with its era, the Federal Period. The name Federal style is also used in association with furniture design...
-style manor house
Manor house
A manor house is a country house that historically formed the administrative centre of a manor, the lowest unit of territorial organisation in the feudal system in Europe. The term is applied to country houses that belonged to the gentry and other grand stately homes...
is a National Historic Landmark
National Historic Landmark
A National Historic Landmark is a building, site, structure, object, or district, that is officially recognized by the United States government for its historical significance...
and was opened to the public by its owners, the National Trust for Historic Preservation
National Trust for Historic Preservation
The National Trust for Historic Preservation is an American member-supported organization that was founded in 1949 by congressional charter to support preservation of historic buildings and neighborhoods through a range of programs and activities, including the publication of Preservation...
(NTHP), as a historic house museum in 1967. In 2002, Belle Grove became part of the Cedar Creek and Belle Grove National Historical Park
Cedar Creek and Belle Grove National Historical Park
Cedar Creek and Belle Grove National Historical Park became the 388th unit of the United States National Park Service when it was authorized on December 19, 2002...
(CCBGNHP), a National Park Service
National Park Service
The National Park Service is the U.S. federal agency that manages all national parks, many national monuments, and other conservation and historical properties with various title designations...
unit, although it continues to be owned and operated by the NTHP.
It is part of a U.S. National Historic Landmark
National Historic Landmark
A National Historic Landmark is a building, site, structure, object, or district, that is officially recognized by the United States government for its historical significance...
, the Cedar Creek Battlefield and Belle Grove Plantation. Belle Grove is also designated a Virginia Historic Landmark and, as part of 900 acres (3.6 km²) "Cedar Creek Battlefield and Belle Grove", is listed on the National Register of Historic Places
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...
.
Historically important as the home of revolutionary veteran Major Isaac Hite, Jr – President James Madison
James Madison
James Madison, Jr. was an American statesman and political theorist. He was the fourth President of the United States and is hailed as the “Father of the Constitution” for being the primary author of the United States Constitution and at first an opponent of, and then a key author of the United...
’s brother-in-law – and as the headquarters of General Philip Sheridan
Philip Sheridan
Philip Henry Sheridan was a career United States Army officer and a Union general in the American Civil War. His career was noted for his rapid rise to major general and his close association with Lt. Gen. Ulysses S...
during the Battle of Cedar Creek
Battle of Cedar Creek
The Battle of Cedar Creek, or Battle of Belle Grove, October 19, 1864, was one of the final, and most decisive, battles in the Valley Campaigns of 1864 during the American Civil War. The final Confederate invasion of the North, led by Lt. Gen. Jubal A. Early, was effectively ended...
(1864), the manor house has been little altered over the centuries and remains one of the best preserved 18th century homes in the country. Affording grand vistas of the surrounding Shenandoah Valley, Blue Ridge
Blue Ridge Mountains
The Blue Ridge Mountains are a physiographic province of the larger Appalachian Mountains range. This province consists of northern and southern physiographic regions, which divide near the Roanoke River gap. The mountain range is located in the eastern United States, starting at its southern-most...
and Alleghenies, the estate is situated on 283 acres of Maj. Hite’s original 483 acres. (The entire CCBGNHP, including the nearby battlefield, consists of 3,593 acres.)
Description
Belle Grove's plantation grounds include the large limestone manor house (which accommodates the visitor's center in its basement), an 1815 icehouse and smokehouse, a slave cemetery, a "heritage orchard", and a demonstration garden designed by the Garden Club of Virginia.The manor house
Exterior:The symmetrical main block (which excludes the single west wing, added in 1815) consists of three stories: a basement, a piano nobile
Piano nobile
The piano nobile is the principal floor of a large house, usually built in one of the styles of classical renaissance architecture...
main floor, and an attic half-story. The corners are decorated with quoin
Quoin (architecture)
Quoins are the cornerstones of brick or stone walls. Quoins may be either structural or decorative. Architects and builders use quoins to give the impression of strength and firmness to the outline of a building...
s. The front (south) elevation, which is the only one in which the limestone is finished, consists of seven bays: six with main floor windows (the extreme right and left are double width) and the center one with the main entry. Twleve steps ascend the elevated front portico
Portico
A portico is a porch leading to the entrance of a building, or extended as a colonnade, with a roof structure over a walkway, supported by columns or enclosed by walls...
, with its prominent pediment and four Tuscan
Tuscan order
Among canon of classical orders of classical architecture, the Tuscan order's place is due to the influence of the Italian Sebastiano Serlio, who meticulously described the five orders including a "Tuscan order", "the solidest and least ornate", in his fourth book of Regole generalii di...
-style columns, which encompasses the three central bays – of which the middle one has the main door and door surround, framed by two pilaster
Pilaster
A pilaster is a slightly-projecting column built into or applied to the face of a wall. Most commonly flattened or rectangular in form, pilasters can also take a half-round form or the shape of any type of column, including tortile....
s also of the Tuscan order
Tuscan order
Among canon of classical orders of classical architecture, the Tuscan order's place is due to the influence of the Italian Sebastiano Serlio, who meticulously described the five orders including a "Tuscan order", "the solidest and least ornate", in his fourth book of Regole generalii di...
. This main block originally had neo-classical
Neoclassical architecture
Neoclassical architecture was an architectural style produced by the neoclassical movement that began in the mid-18th century, manifested both in its details as a reaction against the Rococo style of naturalistic ornament, and in its architectural formulas as an outgrowth of some classicizing...
-style porticos on all four sides, but today only the front and back (south and north) porticos survive.
Interior:
The interior is notable for its fine woodwork in a transitional style ranging from Georgian to Federal.
History
Jost Hite – grandfather of Major Isaac Hite, Jr – was a German immigrant to the Shenandoah Valley. In 1732, Jost and his partner Robert McKay, along with 16 other families, journeyed via the Valley PikeValley Pike
Valley Pike or Valley Turnpike is the traditional name given for the Indian trail and roadway which now is designated as U.S. Highway 11 in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia....
into the northern Valley to settle on 140000 acres (566.6 km²) acquired through two land grants. One of Jost's sons – Isaac Hite, Sr – purchased 300 acres (1.2 km²) in 1748, and another 183 acre (0.74057538 km²) in 1770, just southwest of Middletown. Together, these would become the Belle Grove Plantation.
The first house on the Belle Grove site (a large limestone
Limestone
Limestone is a sedimentary rock composed largely of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of calcium carbonate . Many limestones are composed from skeletal fragments of marine organisms such as coral or foraminifera....
structure later called the “Old Hall”) was built for a tenant farmer around 1750. (Its foundations are still visible adjacent to the smokehouse.) Isaac, Jr, attended William and Mary College and served in the Continental Army
Continental Army
The Continental Army was formed after the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War by the colonies that became the United States of America. Established by a resolution of the Continental Congress on June 14, 1775, it was created to coordinate the military efforts of the Thirteen Colonies in...
during the American Revolutionary War
American Revolutionary War
The American Revolutionary War , the American War of Independence, or simply the Revolutionary War, began as a war between the Kingdom of Great Britain and thirteen British colonies in North America, and ended in a global war between several European great powers.The war was the result of the...
. Upon their marriage in 1783, Isaac, Sr, gave his son and daughter-in-law – Nelly Conway Madison, sister of the future President – the 483 acres (2 km²) Belle Grove house and grounds. In 1794, construction began on the new mansion, which was completed in three years. It was constructed of local limestone quarried on the property, and, according to prevailing custom, was intended to display the owners' high social and financial status. Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom , the third President of the United States and founder of the University of Virginia...
, through the agency of his friend James Madison, made a number of suggestions to the architect which strongly influenced the final design. Madison is known to have visited the plantation several times, even staying in the "Old Hall" (before the larger house was built) during his own honeymoon in 1794.
After Nelly’s death (1802), Major Hite married Ann Tunstall Maury. Of the three children born to the first marriage and the ten to the second , all but one lived into adulthood. In 1815, an addition was made at the west end of the house realizing the 100 feet (30.5 m) facade that exists today. As his grain and livestock holdings grew, Maj. Hite expanded his estate to include a total of 7500 acres (30.4 km²) of land and 103 slave workers. He eventually owned and operated a general store
General store
A general store, general merchandise store, or village shop is a rural or small town store that carries a general line of merchandise. It carries a broad selection of merchandise, sometimes in a small space, where people from the town and surrounding rural areas come to purchase all their general...
, grist-mill, saw-mill and distillery. After his death (1836), and that of Ann (1851), Belle Grove Plantation was sold out of the family.
By the start of the Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
, the estate no longer existed as it had during the Hite family era. There was a succession of owners before the Brumback family purchased the property in 1907. The Brumbacks operated an inn there in the 1920s, but sold it to Francis Welles Hunnewell of Wellesley, Massachusetts in 1929. These 20th century owners altered the house very little. With professional assistance, Mr. Hunnewell had the house carefully restored in the 1930s and '40s. Upon his death in 1964 he bequeathed the house, 100 surrounding acres, and an endowment of $100,000 to the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Belle Grove was opened as a house museum in 1967 and has been open to the public, as well as remaining a working farm, ever since.