Elm Grove, also known as the Williams-Rick House, is a historic

plantation house A plantation house is the main house of a plantation, often a substantial farmhouse, which often serves as a symbol for the plantation as a whole. Plantation houses in the Southern United States and in other areas are known as quite grand and e ...

located near Courtland,

Southampton County, Virginia Southampton County is a county located on the southern border of the Commonwealth of Virginia. North Carolina is to the south. As of the 2020 census, the population was 17,996. Its county seat is Courtland. History In the early 17th century ...

. The original section was built about 1790, and enlarged by its subsequent owners through the 19th century. The main section is a two-story, six-bay, frame dwelling sheathed in weatherboard. It has a side gable roof and exterior end chimneys. an
''Accompanying photo''
/ref> Three noteworthy early outbuildings survive. Directly north of the house is a single-story, one-cell frame building probably erected as an office and used at the turn of the century as a school. West of the house is a frame dairy with a gable roof, beaded weatherboards, and louvred ventilator above the door on the front. Most interesting is the smokehouse which stands northwest of the house. This low, square building has saddle-notched round log walls and encloses four srnokepits. This is the only known early example of a multiple-pit smokehouse in Virginia. It was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...

in 1979. The tract now known as Elm Grove was left to Isaac Williams by his father, Jonah Williams, in 1771. After Isaac Williams's death in 1788, the property remained in his estate until 1803, when 342 acres of his land were transferred to his son Edwin. After Edwin Williams's death in 1811, the estate was divided among several heirs, all of whom soon sold their portions to Richard and Oswin Ricks, a father and son. In 1832 Oswin Ricks sold the property to Dr. Robert Murray, an Irish-born physician. Tradition states that Murray operated a school at Elm Grove at mid-century, a belief substantiated by the 1850 census which lists fourteen girls and two boys (in addition to the Murrays's own six children) residing at the house at that time. Murray sold the property to William W. Briggs in 1858. In 1887 Lucius Lelius Manry bought Elm Grove. It remained in the Manry family until the death of Edward Smith Manry in 1996.

References

Plantation houses in Virginia Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Virginia Houses completed in 1790 Houses in Southampton County, Virginia National Register of Historic Places in Southampton County, Virginia {{SouthamptonCountyVA-NRHP-stub