Bellwood

About this property

Bellwood, also known at various times over the past two centuries as Sheffields, New Oxford, Auburn Chase, and currently as Defense Supply Center Richmond Officers' Club-Building 42, is a historic plantation house located south of Richmond in Chesterfield County, Virginia. Bellwood was built on a plantation that had been owned by the Ward family since the mid 17th century. In 1656 Judge Richard Ward, son of the original Seth Ward immigrant, married Elizabeth Blackman, daughter of Captain Jeremy Blackman a merchant, mariner and ship owner of London who patented land in the Colony of Virginia and later became President of the East India Company. In 1665 Ward acquired 1,337 acres on the south bank of the James River just downstream from the mouth of Falling Creek known as "Sheffields Plantation" that had been patented by his father-in-law, Blackman, in 1646. First settled in 1619, the plantation got its name from Thomas Sheffield, the first proprietor, who was slain there along with his wife Rachel and 11 others during the Indian massacre of 1622. Their eldest son, Seth Ward (1661-1707), inherited the plantation in 1682 and over the next century four subsequent generations of first-born sons named Seth were born and raised at Sheffields and each in turn inherited the land. Seth Ward V sold the property to his aunt and uncle, Mary Ann Ward and Richard Claiborne Gregory in 1797. The manor house now known as Bellwood was built on the plantation between 1790 and 1804. It is a two-story, five-bay, timberframe I-house dwelling with a low hipped roof in the Georgian style. The house is set on brick foundations and sheathed in weatherboard. Unlike many of the James River Plantations where the manor houses were built directly on the river, this house was built back from the river facing the Petersburg Turnpike, the road between Richmond and Petersburg, that preceded U.S. Route 1. Richard Claiborne Gregory's son, Richard Augustus Gregory (1795-1835) inherited the property and in 1847, the plantation passed again through inheritance to Gregory's daughter Lavinia and her husband, Chesterfield Justice of the Peace Augustus Harrison Drewry. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Drewry was commissioned as commander of Company C, 2nd Regiment Virginia Artillery, CSA and helped construct a fort on the edge of the property known as Drewry's Bluff, or Fort Darling. The fort overlooked the James River and had 3 large guns (1 ten-inch and 2 eight-inch columbiads), the installation of which were overseen by General Robert E. Lee's eldest son Brigadier General G.W.C. Lee. The fort along with ships sunk in the river channel below Drewry's bluff to create obstructions were intended to prevent Union gunboats from reaching the Confederate Capitol, Richmond.

Location

Categories

Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

More in Chesterfield County

Historic places, battles, and census history across Chesterfield County.

More historic places in Virginia

Browse all historic places in Virginia.

Conflict records

Explore 19,000+ military engagements across American history.

Virginia history

Colonial settlement, territorial period, and statehood narrative.