Existing comment:
A Wilderness Home:
When 22-year-old William Jones arrived here in the early 1770s, this was truly still a Wilderness. The frontier had passed only decades before. Few farms had yet been carved out of the vast forests. Jones, with the help of his brother and, probably, some slaves, started clearing what would become Ellwood. Every tree cut by hand. Every stump pulled with ropes, chains, and animals. Though he would come to own more than 5,000 acres, only 400 of these would be cleared and put into production.
Jones built the current house, Ellwood, by the 1790s, and over the next fifty years became one of the wealthiest men in Spotsylvania County. He sold crops -- corn and oats -- and timber. He also received rent from nearby Wilderness Tavern. Visitors came: Presidents James Madison and James Monroe and "Light Horse" Harry Lee. In 1825, the Marquis de Lafayette -- hero of the Revolution -- dined here during his triumphant tour of America.
Born in 1750, William Jones lived at Ellwood until 1845, never abandoning the styles of Revolutionary America. His daughter Betty claimed "he wore knee breeches and ruffled shirts to the day of his death."
Betty Churchill Jones, the daughter of William Jones and his second wife, Lucinda Gordon. When Lucinda remarried in 1848, Ellwood passed to Betty, who, with her husband J. Horace Lacy, lived here for a half-century. |