Farley, previously named Sans Souci, is a historic home located near Brandy Station,

Culpeper County, Virginia Culpeper County is a county located along the borderlands of the northern and central region of the Commonwealth of Virginia. As of the 2020 United States Census, the population was 52,552. Its county seat and only incorporated community is Culp ...

. It was built before 1800, purchased from Robert Beverly in 1801 by William Champe Carter and renamed Farley in honour of his wife, Maria Byrd Farley. It is a two-story, frame dwelling, nine bays across with two bay projecting pavilions at either end and a single-bay pavilion in the center. The house measures 96 feet long and 46 feet deep. The house was purchased in 1863 by wealthy distiller and Unionist Franklin Stearns, who also owned the Stearns Block in

Richmond, Virginia (Thus do we reach the stars) , image_map = , mapsize = 250 px , map_caption = Location within Virginia , pushpin_map = Virginia#USA , pushpin_label = Richmond , pushpin_m ...

and Tree Hill Plantation in

Henrico County, Virginia Henrico County , officially the County of Henrico, is located in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. As of the 2020 census, the population was 334,389 making it the fifth-most populous county in Virginia. Henrico County is incl ...

. The same year, the house was used as headquarters for Union General

John Sedgwick John Sedgwick (September 13, 1813 – May 9, 1864) was a military officer and Union Army general during the American Civil War. He was wounded three times at the Battle of Antietam while leading his division in an unsuccessful assault against C ...

at the time of the

Battle of Brandy Station The Battle of Brandy Station, also called the Battle of Fleetwood Hill, was the largest predominantly cavalry engagement of the American Civil War, as well as the largest ever to take place on American soil. It was fought on June 9, 1863, aroun ...

. an
''Accompanying photo''
/ref> Franklin Stearns gave it in 1870 to his son, Franklin Stearns Jr., as a present upon his marrying. They had nine children, including Franklin Stearns III, who operated the farm then continued the family's business. He married the daughter of prominent lawyer James W. Green (also the niece of West Virginia Supreme Court justice Thomas Claiborne Green as well as the head of the U.S. Fish Commission,

Marshall McDonald Marshall McDonald (October 18, 1835 – September 1, 1895) was an American engineer, geologist, mineralogist, pisciculturist, and fisheries scientist. McDonald served as the commissioner of the United States Commission of Fish and Fisheries ...

) and had several children (including Franklin Stearns IV). Three of his sisters never married. One of them, Emily Palmer Stearns, became a prominent suffragette with

Alice Paul Alice Stokes Paul (January 11, 1885 – July 9, 1977) was an American Quaker, suffragist, feminist, and women's rights activist, and one of the main leaders and strategists of the campaign for the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ...

in Washington, D.C. and later worked inspecting housing for war workers during World War II. She later retired to Farley, where she cared for many dogs and cats (pursuant to her vegetarian, no-kill philosophy) and became known as the "cat lady of Culpeper".Nancy J. Martin-Perdue and Charles Perdue, Talk About Trouble: A New Deal Portrait of Virginians in the Great Depression (University of North Carolina Press 1996), at pp. 97-105 available at https://books.google.com/books?id=VfkPKhinsZ0C Farley was subsequently restored and 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 v ...

in 1976.

References

Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Virginia Federal architecture in Virginia Houses completed in 1801 Houses in Culpeper County, Virginia National Register of Historic Places in Culpeper County, Virginia {{CulpeperCountyVA-NRHP-stub