Ellerslie (Colonial Heights, Virginia)
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Ellerslie | |
 Front gate to Ellerslie | |
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| Location | Ellerslie Rd., Colonial Heights, Virginia |
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| Coordinates | 37°14′12″N 77°24′33″W / 37.23667°N 77.40917°WCoordinates: 37°14′12″N 77°24′33″W / 37.23667°N 77.40917°W |
| Area | 20 acres (8.1 ha) |
| Built | 1857 |
| Built by | Young, Robert |
| Architectural style | Italian Villa |
| NRHP reference # | 73002206[1] |
| VLR # | 106-0001 |
| Significant dates | |
| Added to NRHP | December 4, 1973 |
| Designated VLR | September 18, 1973[2] |
Ellerslie is a historic home located at Colonial Heights, Virginia. In 1839, David Dunlop and his wife, Anna Mercer Minge, a niece of U.S. President William Henry Harrison, acquired the Ellerslie tract. Robert Young, a Belfast architect, designed Ellerslie in 1856 as a castellated mansion for tobacco magnate David Dunlop. The mansion was built in 1857, and in 1910 Dunlop’s grandson engaged the Richmond architectural firm of Carneal and Johnston to extensively remodel it, in a fanciful version of the Bungaloid style, retaining the house’s basic structure and tower but replacing the original flat roof and castellated parapet with a hipped roof and dormers. It is a 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 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 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. 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. Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard established his headquarters at Ellerslie and kept them there intermittently through June. On September 2, Hagood's South Carolina brigade established a rest camp at Ellerslie and remained here until September 28.
On the night of April 2, 1865, fires and explosions illuminated Ellerslie as commissary supplies and munitions were burned at Dunlop's Station near Ellerslie on the Richmond & Petersburg Railroad. Several civilians were killed.[3][4]
Ellerslie remained in the Dunlop family through the mid 20th century and was a dairy farm. Its large barn was a local landmark for decades. The Ellerslie barn was demolished in the early 1990s and the surrounding farmland has since been developed as a shopping center.
It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.[1]
References
- 1 2 National Park Service (2010-07-09). "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service.
- ↑ "Virginia Landmarks Register". Virginia Department of Historic Resources. Retrieved 5 June 2013.
- ↑ https://www.historicalmarkerproject.com/markers/view.php?marker_id=HMWNE
- ↑ Virginia Historic Landmarks Commission Staff (August 1973). "National Register of Historic Places Inventory/Nomination: Ellerslie" (PDF). Virginia Department of Historic Resources. and Accompanying photo
