About this property
Carter Hall was the Millwood, Virginia, USA estate of Lt. Col. Nathaniel Burwell (1750–1814). It is located in the lower Shenandoah Valley, off Virginia Route 255 northeast of Millwood. The estate includes a grand plantation house, a great lawn, and terraced gardens, and has panoramic views in all directions. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Nathaniel Burwell (1750–1814) inherited a 5,800-acre (2,347 ha) estate from his father Carter Burwell, including Carter's Grove, James City County, and about 5000 acres in what was then Frederick County. He developed the land with the Burwell-Morgan Mill and normally spent summers nearby (the Blue Ridge Mountains' foothills being cooler and less subject to malaria than the Hampton Roads area). After the American Revolutionary War and his first wife's death, Col. Burwell remarried and with the assistance of former General Daniel Morgan began building the plantation house he called 'Carter Hall' during 1792–1800. Col. Nathaniel Burwell at his peak owned 8000 acres and enslaved more than 200 people in Frederick County; the next largest landowners enslaving 53, 43 and 28 people. Col. Burwell would die at Carter Hall in 1814, but his estate would not settle until his widow's death in 1843. Carter Hall would be inherited by one of his sons by his second wife, George Harrison Burwell (1799–1873). Col. Burwell invited his cousin, U.S. Founding Father Edmund Randolph, who had been Governor of Virginia, United States Attorney General and later Secretary of State under George Washington, to pass his retirement at Carter Hall. Both are buried outside Old Chapel (Millwood, Virginia), built in 1790 on land donated by Col. Burwell, and sometimes referred to as the "Burwell graveyard" because of succeeding generations of this branch of the Burwell family buried there. Col. Burwell's son Nathaniel Burwell Jr. (1779–1849) helped to form Clarke County from the eastern part Frederick County and at nearly 2400 acres and 52 enslaved people was its largest landowners. He served as one its justices of the peace at various times, as well as its joint delegate in the Virginia General Assembly with neighboring Warren County (which the Castleman family dominated), but lived at Saratoga (Boyce, Virginia), a plantation he bought from Gen. Morgan in 1809 after the retired soldier moved to Winchester to live with his family. Carter Hall has a five-bay central block built of local limestone, originally with a central hall flanked by rooms extending the full depth of the house (single-pile plan). The flanking two-bay wings have pediment gable ends and the outermost, single-story wings are of a single bay, formerly with pediment ends. G.H. Burwell added the large portico, which is "by tradition" ascribed to a design of William Thornton, architect of the United States Capitol.
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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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Questions about this property
When was Carter Hall listed on the National Register?
Carter Hall was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on July 23, 1973.
What type of historic resource is Carter Hall?
Carter Hall is classified as a building in the National Register of Historic Places.
What is the period of significance for Carter Hall?
The period of significance for Carter Hall is recorded as the colonial era, specifically around 1750.
Can I research the history near Carter Hall?
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