by Our friend Linda recommended Berkeley Plantation in Charles City, Virginia to us. As it was the home of a US Presidents we would have paid a visit regardless, but it’s always nice to have a recommendation. The plantation, one of the oldest in the US, has quite a history!
In December 1619, 38 English settlers arrived at was then known as Berkeley Hundred, which was an area of about 8,000 acres situated on the James River.
It’s about 20 miles upstream of Jamestown, where the first permanent settlement was established some 12 years before.
Because the group’s charter required that they observe a “day of thanksgiving to God” on their day of arrival and annually thereafter, Berkley proclaims itself the first Thanksgiving in the United States.
In 1622 an Indian attack left nine of the settlers dead, and a retreat to Jamestown followed. The site sat abandoned for many years.
Eventually, in 1691, the Harrison family purchased 1,000 acres, building a Georgian-style three-story brick mansion in 1726, using bricks fired on-site by enslaved individuals.
The plantation became the seat of the Harrison family for generations, including Benjamin Harrison V, a signer of the American Declaration of Independence and a governor of Virginia, and ninth US President William Henry Harrison, who was born here in 1773.
However, the Harrison family lost the home to bankruptcy in the mid-1800s, whereafter it was sold several times and eventually fell into disrepair.
During the Civil War, Union troops occupied the Plantation, and President Lincoln visited twice to confer with General George McClellan.
In 1862, the Army bugle call Taps was written and played for the first time at the site.
John Jamieson, who had been a drummer boy under McClellan and at the plantation’s encampment over the summer of 1862, purchased the home in 1907, by which time it was uninhabitable.
It took thirty years to complete the restoration, which was carried out by John’s son Malcolm and his wife Grace.
The home remains privately owned by the Jamieson family today. The architecture is original and the grounds have been restored, though the furniture is all “of the period” and not original to families that had lived there.
How sad “Taps” is no longer played at sunset. Played from a rise in a small copse of trees on the James River side of the home, at sunset its sound reached out across to the “lawn” to riverbank. We were told that the flat open land between the home and the navigable river served as a drop off for the wounded. There, an area where a crude tent hospital of sorts during the Civil War spread over the grounds. We saw no photographs of it, just a guide’s mention that “Taps” was meant to be calming to the injured and an assurance of sorts that their role in the fighting was over.
There was an exhibit with a button you could push to play a recording, but alas it didn’t work. We looked it up on our phones and played it that way, so at least that’s something!