Willis’ wealth in slaves was consonant with the size of his farmstead. He gradually doubled his holdings from 608 acres in 1816 to 1,522 acres in 1844, a figure that remained constant into the 1850s. During this same period Isaac built or purchased a grist mill on the Rapidan. Standing in 1835 or before, it was valued at $400, a figure that suggests it was a modest frame structure of average size. Willis probably employed one of his slaves as the miller, and no doubt ground corn and wheat for neighboring farmers.

The historical record, together with the surviving architectural evidence provided by the house, shows that Isaac Willis, like most upper middle-class Virginia farmers of the Federal and antebellum eras, lived in surroundings that would be considered modest by 20th century standards. That he owned fifteen or more adult slaves (each valued, on the average, at a figure higher than that of his house and farm buildings) suggests that he could easily have afforded a larger and more pretentious dwelling had he wanted one. Instead, he remained content with the same sort of dwelling that most of his slaveholding peers inhabited. All the same, Willis made substantial improvements to the house during his tenure, adding new interior detailing and enlarging it from a two- or four-room house to one with eight smallish rooms (counting the four lean-tos and two upstairs loft chambers). It is important to realize that while Isaac Willis and his nine-member household lived without show, they lived in much greater comfort than had his father’s generation, as is demonstrated by the original one-room unit of Locust Grove.

Left to right: locust trees to the rear and east of the house, view of the house from the south fields, view of the south fields from the house.

In his 1867 will, Isaac Willis left the Locust Grove home tract, together with an adjoining 180-acre parcel, to his daughter Elizabeth Willis Garnett. In 1878 she sold the house and 418 acres to her son-in-law, James H. Goodwin. The property remained in the Goodwin family until 1970, when the present owners, Mr. and Mrs. John C. Womeldorph, purchased the dwelling and 130 acres. In the late 1970s, the Womeldorphs hired two highly respected Virginia architectural firms specializing in restoration to guide the renovation of the house. The job was completed in 1979, and today Locust Grove stands as a rare, representative example of a Federal period Piedmont farmhouse.

Cemetery beyond the south fields where Eilizabeth Willis Garnett, James H. Goodwin, Nora Garnett and others are laid to rest.

ARCHITECTURAL ANALYSIS

The main house at Locust Grove occupies a slight rise near the center of a 130.5-acre farm encompassing a U-shaped bend in the Rapidan River one mile east of the village of Rapidan. Situated at the center of a shaded, four-acre yard, the house affords a view of the surrounding flat cultivated fields on both sides of the river. Willis Road (VA Rt. 736), a little-traveled gravel-surfaced road, passes east-west in a straight line bout seventy-five yards north of the dwelling. The house itself faces east. A modern garage-cum-workshop and a mid-19th century smokehouse stand side-by-side behind the house to the west. About 250 yards west-southwest of the old dwelling stands a two-story frame tenant house built in the late 1930’s. Though of modest size, the main house at Locust Grove is the result of four or more building campaigns spanning two centuries. Today, the house is a if-story weather boarded structure whose main block features asymmetrical four-bay fenestration. Covered by a steep gable roof pierced by two modern Colonial-style dormers, the main block is flanked by end lezn-tos dating to the late 18th century or early 19th century. At the rear (west) elevation, a modern oar-story lean-to and a two-story ell replace an earlier full-length lean-to. The house rests on low rubble stone foundations, and lacks a basement, although a small cellar serves as a furnace room under a 20th-century rear addition.

The main block features a two-room plan centered on the original axial brick chimney. (A chimney fire in the mid-20th century destroyed part of the roof and upper part of the chimney, which was rebuilt in modern brick.) Flanking the main block are small single room lean-tos about seven feet in width. The modern rear additions, including a single story shed-roofed kitchen and a two-story dining room wing, exhibit a more complex plan. Exterior detailing dates largely to the 1970s, although original weatherboards and trim were retained wherever salvageable. The two front windows to the right of the doorway are of mid-19th century vintage, while that to the left of the door is earlier, though probably not original. The most interesting exterior feature of the house is its recessed front entry shelter with wooden segmental-arched ceiling. This entry was reconstructed in 1978 based upon careful examination by restoration architect Milton Grigg when the house was being stripped of its interior and exterior sheathing. Most of the interior detailing is early, but dates to various periods of occupancy between the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The main-floor room of Unit One features early pine flooring, exposed joists with beaded edges, a Federal plain-board dado, and a large fireplace that was narrowed to its present 4′-1″ width in the early 1800’s. The present fireplace surround is of Federal style, with a plain architrave surround and molded shelf. The batten door at the front entry has been reconstructed; other doors are early.

Interior detailing in the other ground-floor room of the main block is similar, but part of the Federal dado was taken in the 1970s from a nearby antebellum Willis family house named Quiet Shade. The Federal-style mantel in this room is somewhat fancier and perhaps later than that in Unit One. In this room too, the joists have beaded edges and were originally exposed (they were later covered with plaster, but were re-exposed by the present owners). Early six-raised-panel doors and wide pine flooring also remain in this room.

Front Entrance

Each main-block room opens into a gable-end lean-to containing early Federal-style trim. These small rooms have narrow four-over-four-light sash windows and were probably originally unheated, being used as sleeping chambers and/or storage rooms. A boxed stair with ninety-degree turn stands at the northwest corner of the original room, being approached from a narrow passage linking the two rooms of the main block. Probably erected before 1825, judging by the use of wrought rather than cut nails, it leads to a finished loft containing two rooms. The stair terminates on the second floor with a simple railing of rectangular balusters and chamfered posts extending to the ceiling. The south loft room, with direct access to the stair, features an early Federal mantel with tall molded shelf, and a low attic closet sheathed with wide unpainted pine boards. The north chamber contains similar early-19th-century detailing. The rear additions to the house are modern, but in the kitchen the rear (west) log walls of the original house have been exposed to view. These logs, along with some of the strips that originally covered the interstices, are also visible in the stair closet in the original room.

Locust Grove is important architecturally both because of the rarity of its small original unit, and because its expansion illustrates the trend among Virginia farmers of the late 18th and early 19th centuries to gradually expand their dwellings to include more (and more specialized) rooms. For this reason, the remainder of this architectural description will detail the complex evolution of the building.

The house began as a 16′ x 20′ single-bay structure constructed of carefully-dressed 31″ x 10″ pine planks joined at the corners by full-dovetail notching. The walls of this structure were probably neither sheathed nor painted on the exterior, though the wood shingle roof may have been tarred originally. The house was heated by a large interior brick chimney with rubble stone base, located on the north gable end of the house and containing a cooking fireplace. The building lacked a cellar, the walls being supported by low rubble stone piers or foundations.

The interior of the house was extremely plain, with no paint or whitewash on the walls, and no interior plaster or other sheathing. To reduct drafts, 3″ x 1″ pine strips covered the narrow gaps between the hewn logs. A simple ladder stair led to the loft. Windows were smaller than those presently lighting the house. Indeed, there may have been no windows at either longitudinal facade: structural evidence from 1970s restoration suggests that opposing doorways at the front and rear of the house were the only openings there.

A decade or two later the house was doubled in size by a one-room plan mortice-and-tenon frame addition at the north end (chimney end) of the building. This expansion created the present central-chimney main block. The recessed, segmental-arched front entry was probablp built at this time, and the original log unit was sheathed with weatherboards to match the expansion. This new north unit was approximately the same size as the original log house, but it had two rather than one front openings, and featured higher ceilings and plastered interior walls.

Between the late 18th or early 19th century and ca. 1840, four lean-to units were added to the house. Available architectural cvidence does not indicate which one is earliest, or whether more than one shed was erected at a time. but one historical source asserts the soutb gable lean-to was added before its north counterpart. Oral reports and 1970s photos suggest that the lean-to running across the entire rear of the main block was also built in two campaigns, both probably before ca. 1840, and possibly ante 1800. All of these additions were of heavy-timber frame construction covered with weatherboards; none contained livable loft space.

During the 19th century, the house underwent at least two major internal remodelings. The earlier of these, ca. 1825, saw the replacement of the original ladder stair by the present boxed one. The fireplace in the original main room was reduced in size, and at this same time or slightly later the north room was fitted with its present Federal-style mantel, and the upstairs loft rooms were finished off with plaster, mantels and closets. Much of the door and window trim – which varies throughout the house – was added in the early 19th century. Also, about this time, a plaster ceiling was added in the north room of the main block. In a post-Civil War remodeling, the early recessed segmental-arched entry was replaced by a simplified Greek Revival-style doorway flanked by side-lights and set flush with the front wall of the house. This new, more up-to-date entry opened into a small vestibule in front of the chimney. Several windows in the house were also moved or enlarged at this time.

Later, in the early 20th century, the rear lean-to was extended at either end to cover the entire rear of the house. Single-bay porches (since removed) were added at the front and rear entries. Interior partitions were altered in the rear lean-to, and the roof of the north gable lean-to was raised. About this same time two large shed roofed dormers were added at the front of the house to increase space and light in the loft.

The house at Locust Grove remained unchanged from the 1930s to the late 1970s, when the present owners remodeled and enlarged the house, restoring the main block and its early gable-end lean-tos. Since the house had been built in several stages, no attempt was made to return it to any single period. Nevertheless, the house today looks largely as it did ca. 1870 or before. The only major changes made were the addition of modern Colonial-style dormers, the shortening of the south lean-to to its original form, and the replacement of the rear lean-tos by a modern kitchen dining room wing.

An unusually early and well-preserved farm dwelling, Locust Grove illustrates the marked improvement in housing that accompanied the general rise in living conditions for middle-income farmers in late 18th and early 19th-century Virginia.

ENDNOTES

1. Paula S. Felder, Forgotten Companions: The First Settlers of Spotsylvania County (Fredericksburg, Va: Historic Publications of Fredericksburg, – 19821, pp. 6-33; Richard L. Morton, Colonial Virginia, Vol. 11: Westward Expansion and Prelude to Revolution, 1710-1763 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1960), pp. 472-85; and Ulysses Joyner, “Map of the Early Patents of Orange County” (Orange Historical Society, Orange, Va., n.d. [ca. 1970~1).

2. Culpeper County Deed Book E, p. 271. This 1767 deed describes a 265-acre parcel along a river – presumably the Rapidan. Orange County Will Book 2, p. 323. This 1761 will refers to “the lott in Culpeper”, but does not mention the acreage. According to historian Ann Miller of the Orange County Historical Society, the term “lot” generally refers to a leased tract, rather than to a freehold. In studying several other properties that were once part of the Spotsylvania Tract, Ms. Miller has found that leased property was, as a rule, later purchased by the lesee or a member of his family once parcels began being sold off the Spotswood patent in 1767. Given the circumstantial evidence, she feels strongly that the property William Willis bought in 1767 was at least part of the land that his father John had leased and occupied before 1761. (Personal communication, Orange, Va., June 1985).

3. The high quality of workmanship in the original unit of Locust Grove suggests that the house was built as the main dwelling on a freehold rather than a leasehold. This, and the fact that a house of this size built before the mid-18th century is unlikely to survive, provides a terminus ante quem of ca. 1767.

The architectural evidence, moreover, tends to support the pre-1774 date indicated by the historical record (see Note 4, below). The original portion of the house probably dates to at least the third quarter of the 18th century, since it was expanded in at least three subsequent campaigns ante 1825. If Locust Grove follows the pattern of other houses of its type and period in Virginia (e.g. Perkinsons in Chesterfield County, DHL File #20-390), these expansions probably took place gradually over the course of at least two generations.

4 Obituary in the Religious Herald, Richmond, Va. (Jan. 2, 1868), p.3, col. 5.

5 That the original Locust Grove was a well-built house of average size is evident by comparison with documentary records on Maryland tenant houses of the 1760s analyzed by Gregory Stiverson in Poverty in a Land of Plenty: Tenancy in Eighteenth-Century Maryland (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977), pp. 58-84. Stiverson shows that 80 to 90 percent of Maryland tenant farmers lived in one- or two-room plan dwellings averaging between 278 and 558 square feet in plan. (Locust Grove is 320 square feet in plan.) Surviving Virginia houses comparable to Locust Grove include the Perkinson House and Muleshoe in Chesterfield County; Pear Valley in Northampton County; the Ball-Sellers House in Arlington County; and the Frederick Cline House in Augusta County. The first three of these houses are of frame construction. Located in the northern Piedmont, the Ball-Sellers House (ca. 1750-80) is of log construction, but it is far more crudely built than Locust Grove. The Frederick Cline House, now in ruins, was probably originally a two-bay, one room-plan structure of squared logs (not planks), with full-dovetail corner notching like that at Locust Grove. Dating to the late 18th or early 19th centuries, it is among the oldest dwellings recorded in the Valley of Virginia. (Jeffrey M. O’Dell, Chesterfield County: Early Architecture and Historic Sites [Chesterfield, Va.: Chesterfield County, 1983 1, pp. 97-107; Ann McCleary, “Historic Resources in Augusta County, Eighteenth Century to Present”, VHLC report, Harrisonburg, Va., 1983, p. 126; and NRHP reports for Pear Valley [DHL File 1/65-52] and Ball Sellers House [DHL File #OO-91, Richmond, Va.)

6 Culpeper County Deed Book 10, p. 100ff. This deed mentions a “cole-kiln” on the property, indicating that the Willis family was making charcoal – possibly for blacksmithing or use in some local industry. Due to irregularities and omissions, the land tax books for this period do not show a direct transfer of the 300-acre parcel between Joshua and William Willis.

7 The $300 figure accords with the architectural evidence. The drop probably indicates that some of the buildings were old and/or in poor repair. The value of buildings on the Willis tract dropped to $200 after the Civil War, then rose again to $300 late in the 19th century. The first substantial rise in assessed value occurred in the late 1930s, when the present two-story tenant house was erected on the property.

8 Historic Culpeper (Culpeper, Va.: Culpeper Historical Society, 1972), p. 100.

9 Religious Herald, op. cit.

10 Culpeper County Personal Property Tax Book, 1815. It is possible that Willis owned more highly-valued articles or furniture than that for which he was assessed, since tax assessors were often lax or arbitrary in their recording.

11. Based on a sampling by the writer of eighty other taxable persons listed consecutively in the Culpeper County Personal Property Tax Book of 1815.

12 Culpeper County Will Book 2, p. 327. Besides land and personal property, which Willis divided more or less evenly among his seven surviving children, he left seventy three shares of stock in the Orange and Alexandria Railroad Company to his grandson Edward I. Willis.

13 According to the entry on Locust Grove in Historic Culpeper (op. cit.), the house was used as a storage depot during the Civil War.

14 This grist mill, known as Willis Mill, disappeared in the second half of the 19^th century. The exact site is not known, but an early 20th-century deed description places it about a half-mile downstream from the house,  along – the northwest bank of the Rapidan. (Personal communication, Elizabeth Womeldorph, Rapidan, Va., June 1985; and Eugene M. Scheel, Culpeper: A Virginia County’s History Through 1920 [Culpeper, Va: Culpeper Historical Society, 19821, p. 156).

Bibliography

1. Dorman, John Frederick, comp. Orange County, Virginia, Will Book 2, 1744-1775. Washington, D.C.: privately printed, 1961.
2. Farrar, Emmie F. Old Virginia Houses: The Piedmont. Charlotte, N.C.: Delmar Publishing, 1975
3. Felder, Paula S. Forgotten Companions: The First Settlers of Spotsylvania County …. – and Fredericksburgh Town. Fredericksburg, Va.: Historic Publications of Fredericksburg, 1982.
4. Garnett, Elizabeth V., “Capt. Isaac Willis,” 1-page typescript, 1971 (copy in Locust Grove file, DHL, Richmond, Va.).
5. Historic Culpeper. Culpeper, Va.: Culpeper Historical Society, 1972.
6. Joyner, Ulysses. “Map of the Early Patents of Orange County.” (Orange County Historical Society, Orange, Va., n.d. [c. 1970~1).
7. Miller, Ann. Letter to Richard Cote of VHLC, Richmond, Va., Feb. 15, 1984. (Copy in Locust Grove file, DHL office, Richmond, Va.)
8. McCleary, Ann. “Historic Resources in Augusta County, Virginia, Eighteenth Century to Present.” Virginia Historic Landmarks Commission report, October 1983.
9. Morton, Richard L. Colonial Virginia, Vol. 11: Westward Expansion and Prelude to Revolution, 1710-1763. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1960.
10. O’Dell, Jeffrey. Chesterfield County, Virginia: Early Architecture and Historic Sites.
11. Chesterfield, Va.: Chesterfield County, 1983.
12. “Locust Grove, Culpeper County, Virginia: Architectural Description and Historical Notes,” 9-page typescript, August 1984. (Copy in Locust Grove file, DHL office, Richmond, Va.)
13. Orange County Will Books
14. Religious Herald — (Richmond, Va.), January 2, 1868.
15. Scheel, Eugene M. Culpeper: A Virginia County’s History Through 1920. Culpeper, Va.: The Culpeper Historical Society, 1982.
16. Schlotterbeck, John T. “Plantation and Farm: Social and Economic Change in Orange and Greene Counties, Virginia, 1716-1869.” PhD Diss., Johns Hopkins University, 1981
17. Scott, W.W. A History of Orange County, Virginia. Baltimore: Regional Publishing Company, 1974. (Reprint from 1907 ed., Richmond, Va.)
18. Smith, Baird. “The John Womeldoroh Residence. ‘Locust Grove’, Ra~idan. Virginia.” .- (blueprint architectural plans and elevation drawings), J. Fauber Architects, Lynchburg, Va. 1978.
19. Stiverson, Gregory A. Poverty in a Land of Plenty: Tenancy in Eighteenth-Century Maryland. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977.
20. “Willis, Garnet t and Gordon Families Hold Reunion,” clipping from unknown 1935 Virginia newspaper. (Copy in Locust Grove file, DHL office, Richmond, Va.)
21. Womeldorph, Elizabeth K. “Index to Deeds,” 1-page typescript, May 1985. “Tax Records” (selected Land Tax Book entries for Locust Grove property, 1833-1960), 3-page typescript, May 1985.
22. Womeldorph, Mr. & Mrs. John C. Interviews, July 1984, and May and June 1985, Culpeper County, Va.

-Edited for Digital Format by Hunter R. Willis