Research Notes: New Discoveries in Old Sources: A Neglected Ledger Reveals the Persons and Processes of Building in Late-Colonial Virginia

Purchased by the Library of Congress in 1905, a collection of family papers contains letters giving firsthand accounts of the Revolutionary War, yet a routine business ledger included with them contains far more significant narratives. A book project now underway uncovers and relates those stories. The following is a glimpse of what they promise.

Betty Littlepage faced a dilemma. Widowed in December 1766, with a precocious boy of four and a girl still a babe in arms, she found that her much older husband, James Littlepage, had left an extensive but significantly indebted estate. "South Wales," some three thousand acres on the banks of the South Anna River in Hanover County, Virginia, would have to be sold and its residents dispersed. That Betty was Colonel Littlepage's second wife and stepmother to his first five nearly grown children brought other layers of complication. Where was she to go, and how would she live?¹

Betty's resolution, clarified over the next twenty-three months as the executors winnowed out her former life, led her home. Spotsylvania County, to the northwest across the North Anna River, was the community of her birth and where most of her siblings still lived; her brothers resided on lands inherited from their father and her sisters settled nearby with generous dowries brought to their own marriages.² But Betty had another objective. She did not deliver herself to the encompassing control of a new husband as was customary for most young widows in need of support. Instead she proceeded to set up her own domain on 480 acres purchased from her youngest brother Benjamin Lewis. There she would build, organize, and manage a plantation.

On May 5, 1768, some eighteen months after the death of her husband and while she still resided precariously at South Wales, negotiations with Charles Carter of Corotoman formalized his purchase of James Littlepage's plantation. Two days after signing Carter's indenture, Betty formalized her purchase of the Spotsylvania lands from her brother Benjamin. Concurrently, Benjamin sold a four-hundred-acre tract across the North Anna in Louisa County to a young builder in exchange for three items of value: a Spanish doubloon; the young man's assumption of a bond of Benjamin's to another gentleman; and, significantly, an agreement to undertake any construction projects that Benjamin might request equivalent to the value of the remaining balance.³

Garritt Minor was the builder, then aged twenty-four, the same as Benjamin Lewis. On Benjamin's orders, Garritt began Betty Littlepage's plantation that spring. Independently, Garritt and Betty discussed the configuration of the site and the type and arrangement of the buildings. Evidence of their conversation survives in an exceptional site plan, creased and worn from years of storage in a court case file (Figure 1). The drawing features a dwelling house in the center of a rectangular paled enclosure of yard and garden with a symmetrical disposition of three groups of outbuildings around the perimeter: a smokehouse, kitchen, and dairy; a "chair & pigeon house," weaving house, and stable; and a quarter and privy. While the elevations of these structures were understood, each building was

Figure 1.

Garritt Minor, site plan for Betty Littlepage's plantation, 1768, showing the symmetrical organization and 1:2 proportions of the enclosure and dwelling house. Courtesy of the Library of Virginia.

rendered in plan to show specific characteristics. The bilateral symmetry of the principal outbuildings and the 1:2 proportions of the enclosure and of the dwelling house display the influence of Renaissance classicism, tempered by regional tradition; Betty Littlepage was not an unsophisticated client.⁴ She and her two children moved by wagon from South Wales in November 1768, and by late spring of 1769 Garritt had completed his work for her.⁵

The details of Betty Littlepage's project derive from two sources. The first comprises the papers of a chancery suit Benjamin Lewis brought against Garritt Minor in 1772 to resolve a dispute over the...