Ellerslie

About this property

Ellerslie is an historic home located at Colonial Heights, Virginia. It is a large 2+1⁄2-story, hip-roofed, Italian Villa style dwelling with a two-story rear service wing connected by an arcade. It features a three-story tower with a hipped roof and a full-width front porch. In 1839, Scottish born Petersburg tobacco magnate David Dunlop and his wife, Anna Mercer Minge, a niece of U.S. President William Henry Harrison, acquired the 200 acre Ellerslie tract along Swift Creek near Petersburg, along the new rail line of the Richmond and Petersburg Railroad Company in Chesterfield County. Dunlop planted tobacco there, eventually more than doubled his land holdings, and constructed Ellerslie, a large plantation house that boasted a mosaic floor and an inner dome with frescoes. On 22 June 1856 Ellerslie was destroyed by fire. Dunlop engaged the Irish architect Robert Young to design a villa-style mansion to replace the first house. Young, a native of Belfast designed Ellerslie in 1856 as a country house for the wealthy industrialist whose primary residence was in Petersburg. The house featured a flat roof with turrets and a towers and a castellated parapet. The home was elegantly furnished and set amid romantically landscaped grounds. In 1864, during the American Civil War, Ellerslie stood in the middle of the Confederate line of defense along Swift Creek. On May 9–10, Confederate Gens. Johnson Hagood and Bushrod Johnson, with 4,200 men, contested the advance towards Petersburg of a much larger Federal force, composed of elements of General Benjamin Butler's Army of the James. During the fighting on May 9, a Confederate battery near the house dueled with Federal gunners across the creek at Arrowfield Farm. In addition to being hit by small arms fire, a cannonball struck the house and remained embedded in the wall until the house was remodeled in 1910. At noon on May 9, the 63rd Tennessee Infantry occupied hastily dug rifle pits around the mansion as part of the Confederate reserve. When Union skirmishers advanced to a fence line about 600 yards from Ellerslie, two Tennessee companies pushed them back. During the night, the Confederates drove a Federal gun from the bank of Swift Creek. The Federals retreated to their camps at Point of Rocks the next morning. Federal operations then shifted toward Richmond and culminated in the Battle of Drewry's Bluff on May 16. Dunlop continued to reside at Ellerslie during the conflict and died there, following a stroke, on May 25, 1864, leaving an estate including his tobacco factory, land and slaves valued at more than $652,000 (equal to over $10 million in 2019). He was buried in Blandford Cemetery, in Petersburg. Dunlop's fine townhouse in Petersburg was severely damaged during the Siege of Petersburg that began shortly after his death.

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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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