Upper Brandon Plantation is an historic
plantation
A plantation is an agricultural estate, generally centered on a plantation house, meant for farming that specializes in cash crops, usually mainly planted with a single crop, with perhaps ancillary areas for vegetables for eating and so on. The ...
in
Prince George County, Virginia
Prince George County is a county located in the Commonwealth of Virginia. As of the 2020 census, the population was 43,010. Its county seat is Prince George.
Prince George County is located within the Greater Richmond Region of the U.S. st ...
on the
James River.
History
Upper Brandon plantation was part of a 1616 original land patent of 5,000 acres granted to Captain John Martin, one of the founders of
Jamestown. Richard Quiney, the brother of the son-in-law of
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...
, purchased the property from Martin's grandson and shared ownership with John Sadler (and possibly with William Barker).1 For almost 100 years, these men or their heirs were absentee owners who bought an additional 2,000 acres. Benjamin Harrison II of Wakefield purchased the land prior to his death in 1712.
Harrison's son Nathaniel (1677-1727) inherited the acreage and passed it to his son Col. Nathaniel Harrison II (1703-1791), who built Brandon Plantation in 1765. His son, Benjamin Harrison III (1743-1807), named after his great uncle of the same name, left a will that divided the 7,000 acre property between his two sons, George Evelyn Harrison (1797-1839) and William Byrd Harrison (1800-1870), who were to receive their inheritance when they reached the age of twenty-one. When he came of age, George Evelyn Harrison received the original Brandon house and divided the land with his brother. County tax records show that in 1824 Brandon had 93 slaves and Upper Brandon had 94.
William Byrd Harrison, an 1820 graduate of
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...
inherited the property now known as Upper Brandon and completed the main building and its two dependencies in 1825. Two wings were added to the main structure in 1859. The main house at Upper Brandon is a five-bay center hall, red brick structure built in the
Federal style with a low hip roof with a
widows walk.
The design of the mansion and its woodwork was influenced b
The American Builder's Companionby
Asher Benjamin
Asher Benjamin (June 15, 1773July 26, 1845) was an American architect and author whose work transitioned between Federal architecture and the later Greek Revival architecture. His seven handbooks on design deeply influenced the look of cities an ...
. Due to similarities in construction, it is believed that the itinerant craftsmen involved in its construction may be responsible for several other equally important contemporary Virginia houses including
Magnolia Grange, in Chesterfield County.; Hampstead, in New Kent County;
Horn Quarter, King William County.; the
Governor's Mansion in Richmond; and 19th-century alterations to the 18th-century mansion at Brandon.
The house is a large Tidewater rectangular dwelling with a center hall and four corner rooms (20' X 20') repeated in the basement and on the second floor with approximately 3,756 square feet on each floor. The seven-foot-tall, third-floor attic, with access to the widow's walk, was never finished. This five-part Palladian form was well established among the grander Virginia plantations. The two smaller three-bay dependencies had similar configurations at either end of the main structure, connected by low hyphens that are partially below grade.
with the kitchen and laundry in the west building to allow passage of food to the main house. The east dependency is thought to have been a school or office and access through the east hyphen was never completed. The brickwork is a Flemish bond, and the roof is slate; smaller bricks were used to construct the dependencies. Classical porches complete the two facades using Composite order columns on the northwest front river entrance and Ionic order columns on the southeast land entrance.
William Byrd Harrison and his family lived there until the outbreak of the
Civil War
A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country).
The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies ...
. After the Civil War, William Byrd Harrison never returned to live at Upper Brandon and upon his death in 1870, the plantation was purchased by his nephew, George Harrison Byrd. Byrd's son Francis Otway Byrd, the last Harrison descendant to live at Upper Brandon inherited the plantation in 1909. He sold the estate to
Hopewell businessman Harry Clarke Thompson and his wife, Frances Hargroves Thompson in 1948. Thompson later acquired the adjoining Dunmore and Edloe properties.
In 1950, they asked their son-in-law, Henning Frederick Robertson, to take over operation of the farm and dairy. Following the death of Harry Thompson, the 1800 acre property was sold to Fred E. Watkins of
Curles Neck Farms in 1961, and the Dunmore and Edloe farm properties were left to the Thompson's two daughters. Robertson and his family continued to manage the farm for Watkins and live in the main house until 1969. Watkins used the farmland at Upper Brandon to grow feed for his cows at Curles Neck Dairy. The manor house was unoccupied from 1969 until 1984 when the property was purchased by the James River Corporation. They restored the mansion and used the property as a conference center and corporate retreat. James River Corporation later acquired the adjoining Edloe property from Frederick and Legare Thompson Robertson.
Current use
Upper Brandon was purchased in 2012 by the James C. Justice Companies, which is currently owned and operated by the Justice family, headed by patriarch
Jim Justice. The family owns The Greenbrier Resort and has extensive farming and mining operations in West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina, and South Carolina including 50,000 acres (200 km2) that it farms through its Justice Farms of North Carolina operations headquartered in
Roanoke, Virginia
Roanoke ( ) is an independent city in the U.S. state of Virginia. At the 2020 census, the population was 100,011, making it the 8th most populous city in the Commonwealth of Virginia and the largest city in Virginia west of Richmond. It is ...
.
The Upper Brandon property is protected through a
conservation easement
In the United States, a conservation easement (also called conservation covenant, conservation restriction or conservation servitude) is a power invested in a qualified private land conservation organization (often called a "land trust") or gover ...
held by the
American Farmland Trust. It was listed as a
Virginia Historic Landmark
A Virginia Historic Landmark is a structure, site, or place designated as a landmark by the Virginia Department of Historic Resources.
Inclusion process
Nominations for the Virginia Landmark Register are simultaneously processed for inclusion on ...
in 1996.
References
{{Coord, 37.2816, N, 77.0188, W, type:landmark_region:US-VA, display=title
Houses completed in 1825
Houses in Prince George County, Virginia
James River plantations