Francisco, Peter, House

About this property

Locust Grove is a historic house located between Dillwyn and Cumberland, Virginia, constructed before 1794. It is remembered for its connection to the Revolutionary soldier Peter Francisco, and as the Peter Francisco House it was added to the National Register of Historic Places on March 16, 1972. Locust Grove is a 1+1⁄2-story single-pile house; it is covered by a gable roof, with two shed dormers on each slope. A box cornice forms a base for the roof. There are two chimneys on the building's exterior, one on either end. The eastern of the two is of Flemish bond, and is original; the western, of American bond, appears to be a replacement dating to the time when a one-story wing was added onto the house. This wing is now gone, but the foundation of its chimney remains; a small garden has been platted on the site. The foundation of the structure is of English bond, and there is a full basement. At the time of the house's National Register nomination, most of the original window frames, complete with their original sills, remained, as did a good deal of beaded siding. The house's woodwork is of heart pine, and it is joined with wooden pegs and nails. Inside, the house was divided into two principal rooms per floor, with a central hallway for the stairs. Few original fittings survive; the mantels and wainscoting were removed, as were some floorboards from the second floor. Part of the first-level floor had fallen in. Portions of the stairway survived, as did the north-exterior door. The walls were once plastered, but much of the covering has disintegrated over time. Locust Grove had deteriorated severely by the time it was surveyed for the National Register of Historic Places, to the point that it was marked as "Deteriorated" on the nomination form. Most of the framing survived, revealing the underlying structure of the house; however, many interior and exterior trappings had disappeared. In recent years, a great deal of restoration work has been performed on the structure, and it is once again in habitable condition. Locust Grove is located almost a mile off of Virginia Route 626 near Buckingham County's border with Cumberland County. It sits on farm and scrub land at the end of a long dirt road, and is approached from the north. The building itself stands on the edge of a hill facing Payne Creek. It is highly isolated from the surrounding community. When it was built, the house was aligned with the Old Coach Road which once ran between Richmond and Appomattox; archaeological evidence of the roadbed has been uncovered not far from the property.

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.

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