Bogota

About this property

Bogota, also known as Bogota Farm, is a historic home and farm and national historic district located near Port Republic, Rockingham County, Virginia. An extremely well-preserved antebellum mansion, Bogota was built in 1847 on the site of a 1756 home constructed by attorney and politician Gabriel Jones. It was the scene of military action during the Battle of Port Republic on June 9, 1862. The property was 244 acres purchased from Christopher Francisco (or Franciscus) by Gabriel Jones in August, 1751. Thomas Lewis, Jones' brother-in-law and son of John Lewis, purchased 530 acres from Francisco across the river. The Lewis property, initially known as Lewiston, was later renamed Lynnwood. Jones built the first Bogota mansion in 1756, naming it after the Colombian city Bogotá. Because Jones was a prominent attorney, the road on which he lived was known as "Lawyer's Road," now Lawyer Road. The first Bogota house was a wooden, one-and-a-half story structure with dormer windows. Jones is known to have entertained George Washington, together with Thomas Lewis and Jones' son-in-law John Harvie, at Bogota on October 1, 1784. Jones lived at Bogota until his death in 1806, after which his widow, Margaret Morton Jones, continued to live there until her death in 1822. An appraisal of the property in 1823 noted the presence of "upwards of forty very likely Negroes" as agricultural laborers. Jones's grandson Jaquelin Harvie sold Bogota in 1830 to Jacob Strayer, who lived in the Jones dwelling until he began building the present house around 1845. The current building was completed in 1847, but it is not known when the original home was demolished. Wainscoting from the Jones house was used in what is now the sitting room near the front entrance, and some of the woodwork in the undercroft at Grace Memorial Episcopal Church in Port Republic is thought to be from Bogota. Jacob Strayer died in 1863, leaving the property to his daughter Eliza. An 1865 map of the estate shows twenty-one outbuildings as well as a mill. In 1908, Bogota passed to Strayer's daughter, Margaret Catherine Strayer Kemper. Her son, Dr. Albert Strayer Kemper, inherited Bogota in 1909 and practiced medicine there until his death in 1941. The current owner, Graham Clayton Lilly, is a great-great-grandson of Jacob Strayer. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2009. The main house was built between 1845 and 1847, and is a two-story, five-bay, brick Greek Revival style dwelling. It features a brick cornice, stepped-parapet gable end walls, and a low-pitched gable roof. The front facade has a two-story pedimented portico sheltering the center bay. The first-floor rooms have 10-foot high ceilings. The front door opens into a central stair hall, with a stairway featuring a cylindrical handrail terminating in a spherical knob. The stair leads to a landing and then breaks into two sections, leading to the front and rear second-floor bedrooms. The dining room originally included an enclosed stairway leading up to a schoolroom. Three of the bedrooms have original built-in clothes presses next to the chimneys. Most of the interior doors retain their original English-made Carpenter patent locks, each mounted with an iron box with brass fittings.

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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.

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