Clover Fields
Clover Fields is a historic site located in the Southwest Mountains Rural Historic District. It was the childhood home of Lucy Meriwether Lewis Marks. [1]
History
The area presently known as Clover Fields was acquired by the Meriwether family in 1729 as part of a three thousand acre grant to Nicholas Meriwether Jr., who built his home there in 1735. No one called the land by its present name until at least 1760, when Meriwether and his wife, Margaret Douglas, built the first dwelling on the property. The original smokehouse as well as the original chimney from the kitchen (dating to around 1803) are still standing, while the other structures on the property have since been either rebuilt or updated.
Meriwether's grandson, Colonel Nicholas Lewis, a Revolutionary officer, inherited the property and built a new house in 1770 to replace the previous structure that had burned down. Lewis constructed the new dwelling out of pitsawn with mortise-tenon joinery. In 1781, the house served as British Colonel Banastre Tarleton's headquarters during his unsuccessful attempt to capture Thomas Jefferson. Tarleton later held Daniel Boone, a member of the Virginia legislature, captive at the house. Following the conclusion of the Revolutionary War, Jefferson frequently rode through and stayed at the property while on his way to Charlottesville to visit the university he was building.
After the Civil War, the Meriwether family transformed the site into a boarding house, which functioned up until the 1970's. From that point onwards, the family rented out suites of rooms in the main house to guests, with the family members themselves living in either the main house or one of the smaller buildings on the property. The farm remained a working plantation throughout this time, with previous generations of the family having inherited and maintained the property for hundreds of years.
In the 1980's, University of Virginia Professor in the Architecture School Michael Bednar acquired "The Farm" (a portion of Clover Fields covering one thousand twenty acres and situated in the river flats between Moore's Creek and Meadow Creek), one of the earliest cleared locations west of the Rivanna River. Bednar set to work refurbishing and restoring The Farm's main structure, eventually creating a website to showcase the house and detail its history.[2]
Outside of The Farm, the rest of Clover Fields remains a private property owned by the descendants of the Meriwether family.
Graveyard
Clover Fields is home to the family graveyard of the Meriweathers, still in its original location and condition. Many of the people who lived at the plantation were originally buried in the plot but were later moved to Grace Church in Cismont. Numerous individuals interred in the graveyard lie in unmarked tombs. The most well-known burial there is that of William Lewis. While on leave from the Continental Army to visit his wife and children at Locust Hill, he crossed the Rivanna River during a flood. His horse drowned and he subsequently caught pneumonia. Because Clover Fields (the childhood home of his wife Lucy) was nearby, he traveled there to recuperate. He later died there, with his body never being moved from the property.[3]
Location
Clover Fields is located at 4625 Cloverfields Farm, Keswick, VA 22947.
References
- ↑ Web. Lucy's Community in Albemarle County, Robert H. Smith Center for Jefferson Studies, 2009, retrieved 15 May 2012.
- ↑ Web. For Historical Interest, The Virginia Center for Digital History, 2002
- ↑ Web. Cloverfields, The Virginia Center for Digital History, April 1998