• Home
• Maps
  • Mecklenburg Civil War Sites Map
  • 1864 Confederate Engineers Map
  • 1870 Mecklenburg County District Map
• Historic Sites
• Our Soldiers
  • Mecklenburg Civil War Dead, Wounded, & POW
• More Info
  • Articles
  • Reading List
  • Links of Interest
  • Walk in their Footsteps

*National Register of Historic Places The Boyd Tavern is one of few structures, if not the only structure, surviving within the town limits of Boydton that actually predates the town, which was established in 1812. In 1765, the newly formed Mecklenburg County granted Richard Swepson, Sr. a license to operate an ordinary. Swepson's ordinary is the earliest record of what would become the Boyd Tavern of Boydton.
(Read More, View Additional Photos)

---

*National Register of Historic Places The Buffalo Lithia Springs were first brought to the attention of Colonel William Byrd by Native Americans in 1726 while he was surveying the boundary between Virginia and Carolina. Byrd called the site "Buffalo Springs", because when they arrived, they killed a local buffalo for food, which was drinking from one of the springs.
(Read More, View Additional Photos)

---

*National Register of Historic Places—Boydton Historic District William Osborne Goode, son of John Chesterfield Goode, built Cedar Crest in 1821. William Goode, a College of William and Mary graduate, was licensed to practice law in Mecklenburg in 1821. He served as state and national representative. His political career began in 1822 when he was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates. He died in 1859 while serving in the United States Congress.
(Read More, View Additional Photos)

---

*National Register of Historic Places In September 1792 William Royster deeded his son, Clark, 376 acres in two tracts for "love and affection" and five shillings. [MCDB 8:161] On portions of this property Clark made his home, built several businesses and established the Town of Clarksville.
(Read More, View Additional Photos)

---

*National Register of Historic Places
This house burned June 25, 2014, the result of a lightning strike.

For over 200 years, on the north bank of the Roanoke River, with a commanding view of a bend in the river, stood the house known as Elm Hill. Historical explanations of the chain of ownership of the land and the origin of the house are often conflicting but apparently the house was built in the late 18th century. At various times in the 18th century it was home to Sir Peyton Skipwith, baronet, and his family.
(Read More, View Additional Photos)

---

Building demolished circa 1960s; site, now underwater, was generally near the current Buckhead Subdivision boat ramp (private).

The Horseford Mill (later referred to as Boyd's Mill) stood at the north bank of the Roanoke River, at the "horse ford." The four-story wooden mill, and the land, belonged to Armstead Goode Boyd, who also ran a nearby country store. The mill gave local citizens on the homefront the security of a known and nearby place to continue to get flour ground.
(Read More)

---

Planter, merchant, entrepreneur, and local business advisor Armstead Goode Boyd lived at Horseford Plantation, which took its name from the ford on the Roanoke River: the horse ford. The present house ("Isle of Rest") was built for Boyd in 1868 to replace the house, destroyed by fire, that he and his family lived in during the Civil War.
(Read More)

---

*National Register of Historic Places - Boydton Historic District Prior to the war Elizabeth (Lizzy) Hobbs, who would eventually become seamstress and confidante to Mrs. Abraham Lincoln, lived briefly in Boydton as a slave of the Armistead Burwell family. Armistead Burwell (1777-1841) moved his family from Hampden Sydney College, where he had been employed as steward, to Boydton in 1830. However, in a practice common in the slave-holding society, Lizzy as she was known, was "loaned" to Armistead's oldest son, Robert, in 1832, and she was moved out of Mecklenburg County to Hillsborough, North Carolina for what she described as ten unhappy years. About 1842 she was returned to Virginia, and eventually she was relegated to Armistead's daughter, Anne, and her husband, Hugh Garland, with whom she was by her own account happiest at least during her slavery years. She was moved with the family to St. Louis, Missouri in about 1847 where she honed her dressmaking skills while actually supporting the Burwell family, and bought her freedom in 1855. She married while in St. Louis, becoming Mrs. Elizabeth H. Keckly.
(Read More)

---

*National Register of Historic Places The center section of the two story brick Queen Anne home was originally built around 1829 and the front of the home faced south towards Virginia Avenue. The Wood family bought the home in 1872 and added the south wing in the 1880's essentially as you see it today.
(Read More, View Additional Photos)

---

*National Register of Historic Places In the nineteenth century a foundry, mill and store were located near the Lombardy Grove Tavern and under the same ownership--the William Jones family from 1828 to 1869 and Harwood A. Lockett from 1869 to 1892.
(Read More)

---

Logsdale was built by Revolutionary War General Samuel Hopkins, Jr. about 1783. The plantation was eventually sold to the heirs of William Hendrick and subsequently also known as the Buck Hendrick Plantation.
(Read More, View Additional Photos)

---

The community of Lombardy Grove appears on Madison's Map of Virginia dated 1818 and may have originated around the extensive plantation of that name, belonging to William Baskervill, Senior, clerk of court for Mecklenburg County, 1784-1814. His operation, which was about one mile south of Union Level Road, included a tannery, blacksmith shop, an ordinary, and a log store that also housed a post office established in 1807. Advertisements, maps, letters, and diaries indicate that Lombardy Grove was a busy community in the nineteenth century prominently located on major thoroughfares of the nineteenth century.
(Read More, View Additional Photos)

---

*National Register of Historic Places In the heart of Chase City are approximately six acres of formal gardens, fountains, and beautiful statuary, including a 1st-century Roman bust, nestled in a woodland setting among 8,000 boxwoods--many from old homes in Southside Virginia, native dogwoods, and azaleas.
(Read More, View Additional Photos)

---

*National Register of Historic Places Mecklenburg County Courthouse is located in the heart of Boydton and currently houses the 10th Judicial Circuit of Virginia. After an extensive 10.7 million dollar renovation and expansion, it was re-dedicated with a ceremony on October 23, 2011. This Palladian courthouse was constructed between 1838 and 1842 by William A. Howard and James Whitice, using Thomas Jefferson's architectural principles. It was constructed to replace the eighteenth-century courthouse and 1815 clerk's office. Bricks from the floor and walls of the original clerk's office were used for the walkways in front of the new courthouse. Howard and Whitice constructed the two-story, six-columned building at a cost of $8,000 with local brick and built the columns out of brick, covered with stucco, replete with entasis (the application of a convex curve to a surface for aesthetic purposes), as Thomas Jefferson's builders had often done.
(Read More, View Additional Photos)

---

The related marker [View in Link] commemorates a skirmish site where Confederate General Rufus Barringer's North Carolina Brigade struck the rear of the Federal column.

The related Civil War Trails marker includes the subtitle "Confederate 'enraged birds'" along with this description:

"In June 1864, to deny Gen. Robert E. Lee the use of the South Side R.R. and the Richmond and Danville R.R., Gen. Ulysses S. Grant sent Gen. James H. Wilson and Gen. August V. Kautz south of Petersburg on a cavalry raid to destroy track and rolling stock. Following the Union defeat at Staunton River Bridge on June 25, the raiders raced for the safety of the Federal lines at Petersburg, harried all the way by Confederate cavalrymen. One such skirmish occurred here, when about 300 men from Gen. Rufus Barringer's North Carolina Brigade struck the rear of the column to keep the pressure on the Federal force. Meanwhile, Gen. Robert E. Lee directed combined Confederate cavalry, infantry, and artillery to set a trap for the raiders in the vicinity of Ream's Station."
(Read More, View Additional Photos)

---

Robert Alexander Boyd was born in Oakley, Mecklenburg County, Virginia, in 1842, the son of Richard and Lucy Ann Goode Boyd. Robert Alexander enrolled at Randolph-Macon College in 1858, but as did many of his classmates at the onset of the war, he left school to enlist in the Confederate forces. Richard Boyd, wanting his son to enlist as an officer, promptly arranged for Robert Alexander to attend Virginia Military Institute in lieu of immediate service. After graduating from VMI in 1863, Robert joined the 1st Engineers Troop (Col. T. M. R. Talcott commanding) as the 1st Sergeant of Company D and served until the end of the war. Boyd witnessed the surrender at Appomattox Courthouse, where his unit served as bodyguard for General Lee as they stood under the apple tree awaiting the surrender arrangements.
(Read More, View Additional Photos)

---

Around 1839 William Townes made his home on the Roanoke River. His plantation, which covered 3,105 acres including Occoneechee Island, became known as the Occoneechee Plantation. The plantation was named for the Indian tribe that occupied the area prior to their annihilation by Nathaniel Bacon and his followers. The tribe was principally located on the island that bore their name now located under the waters of John H. Kerr Reservoir.
(Read More, View Additional Photos)

---

*National Register of Historic Places
*National Historic Landmark
Seat of one of the principal Cavalier families of Virginia, Prestwould was built by Sir Peyton Skipwith for himself and his second wife, Lady Jean. Sir Peyton was an American-born Baronet, third in descent from Sir Grey Skipwith, who emigrated from England to Middlesex County, Virginia during the rule of Oliver Cromwell. An avid book collector and amateur botanist, Jean Miller Skipwith, Lady Skipwith assembled one of the largest libraries owned by a Virginia woman early in the 19th century. Prestwould remained in the Skipwith family for four generations into the 20th century.
(Read More, View Additional Photos)

---

On U.S. 58 adjacent the site are historical markers commemorating Randolph Macon College, and, the Boydton Institute as a part of the Virginia Civil Rights in Education Heritage Trail.

Randolph Macon College was organized in 1830 by the Methodist denomination to respond to the need for a liberal arts college for prospective ministers, and remains the oldest incorporated Methodist College in the country.
(Read More, View Additional Photos)

---

Rosemont Vineyards and Winery:
1050 Blackridge Road, La Crosse, VA 23950 [map]
434-636-WINE (9463)

Hours: Monday - Saturday: 11 am to 6 pm, Sundays: 1 pm to 6 pm

While the original structure built by the Thomas family dates back to the late eighteenth century, Rosemont was purchased by Dr. Latinus Irving Rose in 1858. A physician, Dr. Rose remained on the homefront during the war to care for those in the area, including enslaved individuals and "free negroes". Dr. Rose also traveled to Richmond to the Camp of Instruction to care for Company B, 56th Regiment (also known as The Mecklenburg Spartans) as they awaited their deployment and suffered from conditions like measles. He received $108.85 from the Regiment in November 1861 for his services, according to his Medical & Account Journal, 1858-1870.
(Read More, View Additional Photos)

---

*National Register of Historic Places
Sunnyside is now operating as a restaurant.
Sunnyside is an estate, including a multi-sectional plantation house, the earliest part of which was built in 1833 for Samuel Hester and Eliza Greenwood Hester, on property inherited from her father. A 1936 Sunnyside survey report, part of the Virginia W.P.A. Historical Inventory Project, indicates, however, that "the back of the house was originally an old inn in Revolutionary days" and that "the old turnpike road went past the well and the stage-coaches used to stop there to water their horses".
(Read More, View Additional Photos)

---

*National Register of Historic Places The Patrick Robert "Parker" Sydnor Log Cabin is a tangible representation of the history of African American families in Mecklenburg County. After Reconstruction, Virginia had the highest percentage of freed African Americans who bought real estate and established themselves as small farmers on plots of land often adjacent to former plantations.
(Read More, View Additional Photos)

---

For many years prior to and during the Civil War, Tanner's Store was owned by Evans Tanner (1796-1880s). The store, which also housed the Tanner's Store post office, was strategically located at the intersection of St. Tammany Road and Belfield Road, just south of present-day La Crosse. St. Tammany Road was the main north-south route in eastern Mecklenburg, at one point being the main road north to Petersburg but by the time of the Civil War it connected to the Boydton Plank Road, which had become the main route. Belfield Road was a major east-west stage road, connecting Boydton and Belfield (present-day Emporia).
(Read More)

---

Historic mill, picnic area, and canoe/kayak launch Whittle's Mill is the site of a colonial era grist mill on the Meherrin River along the border of Mecklenburg and Lunenburg Counties. The park is among the loveliest small river sites in Southern Virginia, and the history of its namesake family is deeply entwined with the story of America. The scenic old millpond has been Southside Virginia's unofficial park for generations. The Town of South Hill has now made it official as the Max Bagley Crowder Memorial Park, honoring a distinguished Southside Virginia historian.
(Read More, View Additional Photos)

---

Woburn Plantation, originally home to Armistead Burwell (1770-1820) and his wife, Lucy Crawley Burwell (1775-1825), was completed circa 1799. The related Woburn property eventually totaled over 1,000 acres in the fertile lowlands of Island Creek. Craftsmen Jacob Shelor (after 1753-around 1840), a stone mason, and John Inge (1748-1820), a carpenter, were employed to build the house.
(Read More, View Additional Photos)

---