Return to beginning
The central Piedmont of Virginia offers rich architectural examples of the Federal and Colonial Revival periods in American architecture. Within this area, Thomas Jefferson established a Roman paradigm rarely equalled elsewhere. His legacy, perpetuated through his master builders, continued into the mid-nineteenth century in the region twenty years longer than in other parts of the United States. Because of this dominance of Federal architecture and the disruption caused by the Civil War, the Greek Revival and Victorian periods had less effect on the area before the next important architectural period, the Colonial Revival, when eclectic classical motifs again became prominent. Albemarle County and Charlottesville have some of the earliest as well as the finest examples in Virginia of buildings designed by architects trained in the beaux-arts tradition.
In the 1730's, long before Charlottesville existed, the Three Notch'd Road (later known as Three Chopt Road) followed an Indian buffalo hunting path through the region. The route ran from Richmond to Wood's Gap (Jarman's Gap) in the Blue Ridge Mountains west of Crozet. As it emerged from a water gap formed by the Rivanna River between Southwest Mountain and Carter's Mountain, the road crossed the Rivanna River at Secretary's Ford, just north of Monticello Mountain, and continued into the area occupied now by the Woolen Mills. From there it traveled up the ridge that later became Belmont, back again to the present downtown mall, along West Main Street and south of the University by Midmont to what would become U.S. Route 250 West.
Settlers employing this route were predominantly English from the Tidewater area, but an estimated tenth of the population was made up of Germans and Scots-Irish who had migrated down the fertile limestone Shenandoah Valley from the port at Philadelphia. Coming into the region from the west through Wood's Gap, they brought with them the Lutheran and Presbyterian Churches to an essentially Anglican area.
The earliest land patents retained and perfected in the area were in the northeast corner along the first mountain range west of Richmond. In 1727, George Hoomes, Jr., obtained a patent for 3,100 acres. Within three years, Nicholas Meriwether had patented about 18,000 acres, and others soon followed: George Nicholas, Allen Howard, Charles Hudson, and Francis Eppes. Thomas Carr had perfected 2,800 acres north of present-day Charlottesville, while John Carter owned over 9,000 acres to the south.l
Tobacco was the staple eighteenth-century crop exported to England; hemp and ginseng also found foreign markets. Beef and pork were sold locally, and rye, wheat, barley, and Indian corn were grown for personal consumption. By the close of the century, wheat had become the principal crop, although large tobacco crops continued into the mid-1800's.2
In 1744, the year after Thomas Jefferson's birth at "Shadwell," Albemarle County was formed from Goochland County. Its magistrates were sworn in at Scott's Landing on the James River in February of the following year. The county included an area that now comprises Fluvanna, Buckingham, and part of Appomattox counties, while portions of present-day northern Albemarle were then in Louisa County. In 1750 the county population approached 1,725. Only five years later, 3,100 people lived in the county, with slaves slightly outnumbering whites. By 1782, when the county's population had reached 5,300, the ratio of slaves to whites was five to one.3
County boundaries were reduced in 1761, and in December of the following year, Charlottesville was established one mile west of the Rivanna River water gap on a gently sloping knoll. The site was acquired by Richard Randolph and conveyed to Thomas Walker to be sold for the benefit of the county, and the county seat was moved there from its previous location near ScottsvÀ1Àlle. The town was laid out on fifty acres located according to a 1737 grant to William Taylor between the properties of Nicholas Lewis's "The Farm" on the east, John Carter's land on the south, Abraham Lewis's on the west, and Charles Lynch's to the north. Divided into fifty-six half-acre plots in a rectangular pattern, with the courthouse just beyond the northeast boundary on the highest ground, the town lay on the land between the present streets of South and Jefferson and Mclntire and Sixth. It was named for Queen Charlotte Sophia of Mecklenberg, the wife of England's King George III. Within three years of its establishment forty-seven lots had been sold. Nevertheless, British Major Thomas Anbury could observe in 1779 that all that existed in Charlottesville were "a courthouse, one tavern, and a dozen little houses."4 Obviously, although all but nine lots were sold, few were developed other than as vegetable gardens. But eighteen years later, Jedidiah Morse claimed that the city had forty-seven houses along with its courthouse and jail.5
Few buildings exist from this Georgian Period. On November 13, 1762, a bond was floated for William Cabell to build a courthouse patterned after Henrico County Courthouse.6 Another ordinary, Eagle Tavern, was built south of the courthouse in 1791. None of these buildings remains today, but some that do are the Keith House (c. 1760) on Keith Valley Road, the Nicholas Lewis House (c.1770) in the east part of town, the Butler-Norris House (c. 1785) downtown, and "Monroe Hill" (1790), once owned by James Monroe on land subsequently acquired for the University of Virginia.
Although slaves had greatly outnumbered whites in earlier years, the fÀ1Àrst two federal population censuses, in 1790 and 1800 showed whites slightly outnumbering blacks. Total population figures for those two censuses were approximately 12,000 and 16,000 persons respectively, indicating a ten-fold increase over population estimates for the county fifty years before.
The nation's third president, Thomas Jefferson, employed over 150 able craftsmen and builders in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to build his home, "Monticello," and the University of Virginia, which was designated by the American Institute of Architects in 1976 as the architecturally most significant grouping of buildings in America.
Building at the University (fig. 1), located one mile west of Charlottesville in the foothills of the Ragged Mountains, had begun in 1817, and that undertaking generated activity throughout the community. Open fields lay between the University and downtown, but speculative development along the Three Notch'd Road soon began there. Such was the impact of Jefferson's scheme that local labor was inadequate for the task; James Dinsmore, one of Jefferson's master carpenters, noted in 1819 of "the difficulties we labor under here in procuring good workmen."8
That sufficient skilled builders for the University had to come from elsewhere was thus quickly apparent, and advertisements in Staunton. Richmond and Philadelphia newspapers in 1819(9) brought many to the University, including twenty from Philadelphia alone.(l0) Others came from as far away as northern Ireland, England and Italy. These carpenters, brickmasons, stonemasons, plasterers, painters, glazers and other craftsmen not only lived in the area but also undertook other projects in the community. After Jefferson's death in 1826, many continued to practice their crafts in the area and produced some very fine buildings. Generally these people, some of them well-read and obviously educated, have been overlooked. A few, some of whom owned land in Charlottesville, deserve special mention.
Referring on his seventy-fourth birthday to the building of the University, Jefferson wrote: "I suppose the superintendence of the buildings will rest chiefly on myself as most convenient. So far as it does I should wish to commit it to yourself and Mr. Nelson...it will open a great field of future employment for you."(11) He was writing to forty-six year old James Dinsmore and referring to John Neilson, a team of builders who had lived and worked at "Monticello" until 1808, been in President James Madison's employ at "Montpelier" until 1810, and worked on "Upper Bremo Plantation" between 1817 and 1820. These two accomplished Northern Irishmen became Jefferson's most prominent master builders at the University and overseers of his work. True to Jefferson's prediction, they subsequently remained in the forefront of American building activity until their deaths.
James Dinsmore, born about 1771, became a naturalized citizen in Philadelphia on the fifth of June, 1798.(l2) His tools, purchased in Philadelphia at Jefferson's expense, were sent to "Monticello" eight days later, and the following October Jefferson paid his travel expenses from Philadelphia to Charlottesville.(l3) Dinsmore worked as a master carpenter at Monticello," and at "Poplar Forest," Jefferson's Palladian retreat in Bedford County, until 1808.(14)
On April 14, 1809, both he and Neilson left "Monticello" to work including the delightful Doric garden temple.(l5) In 1811, Dinsmore acquired a saw and merchant mill in Pen Park, north of Charlottesville, in partnership with John H. Craven. Craven purchased Dinsmore's share in the enterprise four years later.(l6)
Meanwhile, British troops had burned the nation's Capitol in 1814, and Jefferson recommended both Dinsmore and Neilson to Benjamin Henry Latrobe, America's first professionally trained architect, for restoration work there:
"[I] offer you two house joiners of the very first order both in their knowledge in architecture, and their practical abilities. James Dinsmore... a more faithful, sober, honest and respectable man I have never known . . . John Nielson, the other one . . I have found him also an honest, sober, and excellent man. They have done the whole [work] of the joiner; work of my house to which I can affirm I have never seen any superior in the U.S. After they had finished with me they worked 2 or 3 years for the President, to whom, therefore they are well known. Mr. Mills also knows them personally and their works ...."(l7)
Dinsmore's and Neilson`s whereabouts during this period are unknown, and it remains uncertain whether they actually worked on the Capitol. By 1817 Dinsmore was in Petersburg, where he prepared some drawings for James Monroe for a house near Monroe's "Highlands" ("Ash Lawn").(18)
In subsequent years Dinsmore resided in Charlottesville, living on Main Street and speculating in property along that thoroughfare. From 1818 to 1825 he subdivided thirteen contiguous lots between Tenth and Fourteenth streets (fig 2). Two people who purchased lots from him were also Jefferson builders: Malcolm F. Crawford, a University carpenter, and Irishman John Gorman, a stonemason. Lyman Peck, a carpenter, rented a dwelling there.(19) Surviving structures from that period are the Vowles and Livers townhouses (Figs. 3,4).
In 1819 Dinsmore purchased town lot number twenty-two, and in 1827 he deeded a portion of that plot to the Presbyterian Church.(20) He also owned over 500 acres just south of town called "Orange Dale."
Studies suggest that Dinsmore built "Oak Lawn" (fig 5), the Jefferson paradigm patterned after plates in Robert Morris's Select Architecture (1757) and William Halfpenny's Useful Architecture (1752), for Nimrod Bramham in 1822.(22) During his tenure at the University of Virginia Dinsmore was the principal master carpenter for Pavilions III (Fig. 6), V and VIII (fig. 7), fourteen dormitories, and together with John Neilson, the Rotunda and AnatomicalTheatre.(23)
On May 13, 1830, at the age of fifty-nine, Dinsmore died by drowning in the Rivanna River at Ridgeway, northeast of town. A week later, his carpenter brother Andrew committed suicide.(24) Both brothers appear to have been unmarried, and James's will named his oldest brother, John, as his sole heir.(25) Two other surviving brothers received bequests of $500: Robert, in Ireland, and William (c. 1780-1836), who lived at "Rock Hill" in Charlottesville and later at "Orange Dale."(26) Another brother, Samuel, of Havre de Grace, Maryland, received $300 and Dinsmore's chest of tools except for a set of bench tools and three saws "to my boy, John Boles."
Dinsmore's will also refects his compassionate and sentimental nature. He wished that his slave Stella and her children should live with his brother John, "but in case she should object to going with him she is at liberty to chuse her master." $500 went to Charles Stewart "in consideration of his fidelity and helpless situation . . . ," and James Dinsmore Pickands, the oldest son of his deceased Philadelphia friend Thomas, was named "in consideration of . . . the affection I have for him."
Jefferson's other principal builder, John Neilson, was born before 1775 and naturalized in Philadelphia on September 28, 1804.(27) From then until 1808 he lived and worked at "Monticello."(28) The following year he moved to "Montpelier," where he worked until 1810.(29)
Neilson's most importan twork took place between 1817 and 1820 at "Upper Bremo Plantation."(30) The house contains many Jeffersonian features: dependencies recessed into the hillside and upper windows at floor level to reduce apparent scale, bed alcoves, rotating food serving door, and small stairs tucked away. It also had the first jalousies in America in its portico in antis. Its classical temperance spring and barn are unique. "Upper Bremo" has been said to be the finest Jeffersonian building not designed by Jefferson.
During his subsequent tenure at the University, Neilson was the master carpenter for Pavilions IX and X (fig 8)and seven dormitories, as well the Rotunda and the Anatomical Theatre that he built with Dinsmore.3l Neilson built his own brick house on the south side of West Main Street in Random Row of the Vinegar Hill area. He built another house nearby on the north side of that street, which was sold to Andrew Dinsmore in 1827, and he also owned a brick house at the intersection of West Main and Wheeler's Road near the present University "Corner."(32) But it was at his country house "Refuge," near Keene, that he developed a "violent cold" during Christmas of 1826. This, combined with the sad news of his daughter's death, brought an extended illness from which he died the following June 24. He was buried in an unmarked grave in Charlottesville's "public ground" (Maplewood Cemetery).33
Neilson's will divided his estate among his wife Mary, his brother Jackson, the children of his sisters Isabella and Sarah, and a family friend, Mary Ann McCracken, all of Northern Ireland.(34) The twelve-page inventory(35) of his estate gives vivid insight into the education and interests of this extraordinary man. His library, comprising 248 titles, contained encyclopedias, histories, literature, novels, travel accounts, orations,lectures, and books about botany, mathematics, and architecture. He owned drawing and artist's instruments, carpentry and gardening tools, and a camera obscura. The inventory also lists eleven slaves, numerous livestock, and various crops. He was obviously a learned man of some financial means. Within two months of his death, it was noted that his library and household furniture were already sold.
Among his numerous prints and drawings were Latrobe's "View of the Capitol of the United States," "Jefferson`s House in Bedford," the "Portico of Diocletian," and Napoleon's "Entry in Paris." There were also medallions of Napoleon, Benjamin Franklin, and George Washington, as well as a profile of Neilson himself.(36)
His own drawings and paintings included a "book of drawings of the U.Va. by Jno. Neilson," a "book of drawings of Ionic, Doric and Corinthian Orders by John Neilson," a "book of observations of the orders of architecture and intended to accompany this book of drawings of the orders," "3 books of drawings with drawings on oil paper," "a book of drawings and designs," and drawings of the Rotunda and two Pavilions.
His drawings and artist's implements suggest the possibility that the drawings attributed to Jefferson's granddaughter. Cornelia Jefferson Randolph, are perhaps actually those of John Neilson.(37) Likewise, grid paper drawings of the final "Upper Bremo," also attributed to Cornelia Randolph, might be the original Neilson drawings that have never been located.(38)
Apparently Neilson did other drawings, too. The original study for the Maverick engraving of the University of Virginia is credited to him.(39) In 1823, he was selected to do drawings for the Nelson County Jail with Phillips and Crawford as builders, (40) and in that same year he sent toJefferson "the north front of the Rotunda . . . "(41) That drawing is lost, but another sketch, adopted from Palladio's Quarto Libri, Book IV, Plate LX, of a scroll modillion for the University of Virginia Rotunda "Museum" (fig 9) is identified in the University Proctor's Papers as being by Neilson.(42)
John Gorman, who was born in Ireland in 1786,(43) lived in Lynchburg and worked as a stonemason on "Poplar Forest"(44) before coming to the University in 1819. Jefferson recommended him for work at the University:
"I find him well informed, industrious, very skillful, sober & good humored, and think he will be a valuable acquisition. He understands the business from the quarrying to conducting the work to the outlines for the sculptor."(45)
While at the Universiry Gorman executed all the stone caps, bases, sills, wall copings, and newel blocks for the Rotunda, all of the ten Pavilions, and Hotels A, C (fig. 10), D, E (fig. 11), and F. His fee amounted to about $250 for each Pavilion.(46)
Gorman died two months after John Neilson's death, on August 23, 1827, at his home on West Main Street, leaving a wife and their infant child, Mary Ann. The property was sold the following year to satisfy debts to Dinsmore's and Neilson's estate.(47)
Captain John M. Perry, born in the late 1770's,(48) is first mentioned as associated with "Monticello" in 1800 along with his brothers Jesse and Reuben. John worked there until 1809, while Reuben was subsequently engaged as a carpenter at "Poplar Forest" in 1812.(49) Perry owned various properties in the county. In 1804 he purchased over 200 acres in the Buck Island (Buckeye Land) area. He purchased the John Nicholas property in 1814, which had formally belonged to James Monroe. Perry sold this property in 1817 as the construction site for the University of Virginia.(50) A year earlier Perry, now a local magistrate, had bought town lot thirty-four.(51) From 1819 until 1834 he owned Hydraulic Mills, which produced 100,000 feet of lumber annually.(52) In 1820, while advertising in the Central Gazette for the capture and return of one of his thirty-seven slaves, he built for himself the Federal Style house "Montebello" (Fig. 12) near the University.(53). Business accounts of his purchases reveal that part of his wealth was spent purchasing books on history, grammar, and mathematics; he also bought whiskey and the "best madera wine."
As a master brickmason for Jefferson, Perry received more remuneration during his tenure at the University than any other workman-over $30,000. He worked on the Rotunda, all of the ten Pavilions and six Hotels, most of the dormitories, the serpentine brick garden walls, and the privies. He was the principal carpenter for the first building constructed at the University, Pavilion Vll (fig.13) with Hugh Chisholm as brickmason, and he participated in the ceremony of laying the cornerston in 1819 along with three Presidents of the United States: Jefferson, Madison and Monroe. Perry was also the principal brickmason on Pavilions III, V, VIII, and Hotels B and F, with Richard Ware as carpenter.
It was during Perry's tenure with the University that he also built "Frascati" in Orange County for Judge Philip Barbour, the "Castle Hill" addition for Senator William Cabell Rives, and the original Presbyterian Church in Charlottesville with George W. Spooner.(56). In 1826, as Justice of the Peace, Perry appraised Jefferson's estate. Three years later he began selling off his own real estate and, in 1835, he placed his personal property in trust, moved to Missouri, and subsequently died in the late 1830's in Mississippi.(57)
During Perry's tenure at the University he associated with three other brickmasons, Matthew Brown, Curtis Carter, and Abiah B. Thorn, and with carpenters Hugh Chisholm, Richard Ware, and James Dinsmore. Matthew Brown, Perry's associate on Pavilion III, was a brickmason from Lynchburg who also built sixteen of the dormitories.(58) Curtis Carter was principal brickmason for Pavilion Vl and Hotel A, and he was a partner with William B. Phillips on Pavilions I (fig 14) and IX as well as some dormitories.(59) Previously Carter, a Virginia native,(60) had executed the fine brickwork for the Brockenbrough House in Richmond, later known as the "White House of the Confederacy," between 1816 and 1818.(61)
Irishman Hugh Chisholm, born in the 1770's,(62) worked at "Monticello" from 1796 on, occasionally with his brother(63), and was also employed as a brickmason, carpenter and plasterer at "Poplar Forest" and "Montpelier" as well as at the University.(64) Abiah B. Thorn, from Philadelphia,(65) was in partnership with Perry on Pavilion VIII, Hotel B and some dormitories; he was a partner with Nathaniel Chamberlain on the Rotunda.
Another Philadelphian, Richard Ware, had moved to Delaware to escape debtor's prison. He nevertheless arrived in Charlottesville by way of Richmond in 1819 with the recommendation of architect Robert Mills, who had worked with him on Philadelphia projects.(67) Ware was principal carpenter brickmason for thirteen dormitories and for Pavilions II (fig 15), IV (fig. 16), and Vl, as well as being master carpenter on Hotel F. For these efforts he received over $27,000, second on to Perry in remuneration for services rendered to the University during this incipient building period.
Another of the original builders at the University, George Wilson Spooner, Jr., was born to George W. B. Spooner and Sally Drake of Fredericksburg in 1798.(69) From 1817 to 1819 he helped build "Upper Bremo" under Neilson. By 1819, Spooner was working at the University. In that year he wrote to the Proctor that he was boarding with Perry because it was more convenient to his University work.(71) Within two years he was married to Perry's eldest daughter, Elizabeth, and when Perry left for Missouri the Spooners occupied "Montebello."(72) Spooner was the principal carpenter for Hotels C and E and for several dormitories. He also worked for Dinsmore on the Rotunda and for Neilson on Pavilion IX.
Spooner's association with the University was long-lived. In 1832, he was placed in charge of collecting money for a monument to Jefferson. During the 1845-46 academic year he became acting proctor of the University. He supervised the construction of Robert Mills's Rotunda Annex in 1853, and two years later he built Temperance Hall (fig 17) at the University.(73)
Spooner was also an a builder in the city of Charlottesville. In 1859 he added a Gothic Revival facade with gables and towers to the Albemarle County Courthouse from a design by William A. Pratt (1818-1879), Superintendent of Buildings at the University from 1858 to 1865.(75) Pratt had been involved in the site plan of Richmond's Hollywood Cemetery (76) and in 1856 was instrumental in acquiring Paul Balze's copy of the painting of Raphael's School of Athens for the Rotunda Annex.
Spooner also rented out buildings on his town lots, numbers seventy-three and seventy-four. These holdings by 1860 had raised his real estate value to $9,000 with a personal property value at 33,200.(77) Upon Spooner's death in 1865, his "architect" son George Wallace Spooner (1820-1904), whose office was on town lot number forty-eight, obtained the elder Spooner's mortise machine.(78) Young George married Dorothy (Dolly) Ann Durrett in 1853, by whom he had ten children.(79). A city directory listing "G. W. Spooner & Son. Architect and Builder" suggests that Spooner and one of his sons were working together by 1888.(80). George Wallace Spooner added a columned portico to the town's Fire House that had been built in 1855, added another portico to his father's courthouse after the Civil War, and built Mt. Zion Baptist Church (fig 18) on Ridge Street in 1878.(81) He lived just south of Mt. Zion Baptist Church in a frame house reminiscent of the form of "Montebello".(82) About 1892, Spooner became the city manager for Charlottesville. Three years later, he was commissioned to raze the Jeffersonian Christ Church (fig 19), built in 1824 and the first church in Charlottesville, and to construct a larger one. In this undertaking Spooner was joined with Harry P. McDonald (1848-1904), an architect from Louisville, Kentucky, who had studied Civil Engineering at Washington College (now Washington and Lee University) and had designed the Kansas State Capitol Building in Topeka. That same year the Rotunda Annex and the Rotunda interior were destroyed hy fire; Spooner and Donald were commissioned for the reconstruction project hut lost the job, ultimately completed by New York architect Stanford White when construction prohlems developed. 83
Another master builder at the University, Williarn B. Phillips, born about 1790 in Virginia, came to Charlottesville in 1818 to work at the University.84 He was the principal brickmason for the Rotunda, the Anatomical Theatre, Pavilion X, Hotel C, the serpentine garden walls and the cisterns, and in partnership with Curtis Carter for Pavilions I and IX as well as some dormitories. He also was principal builder for two other University buildings, the Proctor's House and the Overseer's House,85 and Jefferson viewed his work at the University as "the best work done there."86
Three area churches are attributed to Phillips: the Jeffersonian Christ Church in downtown Charlottesville in 1824, Christ Church Glendowersouth oftown alongwithJamesWidderfield in 1832,87 and St. Thomas Church in Orange, patterned after the Jeffersonian Christ Church, in 1834. Phillips also added the classical orangeries to Perry's "Castle Hill" in 1844. A recommendation written in 1830 for him to build Randolph-Macon College in Boydton stated:
"B. Phillips . . . is a man of the strictest veracity, and sobriety, and not inferior to any man in the State of Virginia as a workman in his line of business, as to stile and neatness...you may be acquainted with Col. John Coles of this county who has put up a splendid building just now completed, the brickwork was done by Mr. Phillips...88
The Coles building was "Estouteville," which Dinsmore had designed. Phillips owned twelve town lots, some with buildings: Charlotttesville lot numbers eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen. twenty two, twenty-nine, forty-three, forty-four, forty-seven, seventy-seven and seventy-eight.89 In 1833 he purchased over 560 acres of the "Colle" estate south of town, where he built a large brick mansion valued in 1840 at $4,000. He also owned a three-acre brickyard located one-half mile southwest of the courthouse and 175 acres along Buck Island Creek. By 1850 his real estate holdings were valued at $25,000. 90
Phillips was married to Barbara O. Pendleton, the sister-in-law of University painter and glazer John Vowles, an Englishman. All are buried in Maplewood Cemetery; Phillips died April 24, 1861, a few years after his wife.91
Phillips' master carpenter for Christ Church Glendower, James Widderfield, also a Virginian, was born in 1789.92 He had been a journeyman carpenter for Dinsmore and Neilson from 1819 to 1821 while working at the University.93 In 1833 he married Eliza J. Branham; by 1850 they were living next to George W. Spooner.94
Phillips also associated with two other builders, Crawford and Boulware, to complete some of the finest courthouses and dwellings in Virginia. Malcolm F. Crawford, born in Maine in 1794,95 was the principal carpenter in partnership with Lyman Peck for twenty-seven of the University dormitories.96 In 1828 Crawford and Phillips built the new "Edgehill" after Jefferson`s daughter's house there had burned. They also built courthouses in Caroline and Page counties and, with Virginian Richard S. Boulware, born in 1800, they built the 1830 Madison County Courthouse and other dwellings there. Later, Crawford built courthouses in Spotsylvania and Rappahannock counties. About 1840, he built "West End" in Louisa County with Col. James R. Magruder, who purchased Perry`s "Frascati" after the Civil War.97 Magruder's father, John Bowie Magruder, had been a lumber supplier for the University.98
In 1825 Crawford, then living in New Kent County, married Amanda M. F. Craven, the daughter of John H. Craven.99 Craven,as has been noted, had been in partnership with Dinsmore from 1811 to 1815 in the Pen Park Mill; he owned two Dinsmore lots on the north side of West Main Street and Charlottesville town lot number sixty-six.100 In 1850 his real estate was valued at $12,000. he seems to have been living in Camden County, Georgia.101
Research for this article was conducted under a Sesquicentennial Associateship from the University of Virginia in l984/85. The author wishes to acknowledge with gratitude his research assistants, Dorothy W. Geyer and Ann M. Lucas, and his typist Bonnie B. Lumpkin.
Editor's note: because of extensive annotation, textual notes appear as endnotes rather than footnotes in this article.
Charlottesville Archive
| Bibliography | Make a suggestion |
IATH WWW
Server