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Upper Brandon Plantation is a historic plantation in Prince George County, Virginia on the James River.
Contents
History
Upper Brandon plantation was part of an original land patent known as Brandon, granted to Captain John Martin, one of the founders of Jamestown. He was succeeded by several absentee owners, including a grandson of William Shakespeare, until the property was purchased by Benjamin Harrison II of Wakefield in 1712.
In 1807, at the death of Benjamin Harrison III (1743-1807), his will divided the 7,000 acre property between his two sons, George Evelyn Harrison (1797-1839) and William Byrd Harrison (1800-1870), who were to receive their inheritance when they reached the age of twenty-one. When he came of age, George Evelyn Harrison took over the original Brandon house and divided the land with his brother. William Byrd Harrison, an 1820 graduate of Harvard University inherited the 3,555 acres now known as Upper Brandon and completed his mansion in 1825.
The main house at Upper Brandon is a five bay center hall, red brick structure built in the Federal style with a low hip roof with a widows walk. The design of the mansion and its woodwork was influenced by The American Builder's Companion by Asher Benjamin. Due to similarities in construction it is believed that the itinerant craftsmen involved in its construction may be responsible for several other equally important contemporary Virginia houses including Magnolia Grange, in Chesterfield County.; Hampstead, in New Kent County; Horn Quarter, King William County.; the Governor's Mansion in Richmond; and 19th century alterations to the 18th century mansion at lower Brandon. The house is a large Tidewater rectangular dwelling with a center hall and four corner rooms repeated in the basement and on the second floor with approximately 3,756 square feet. The smaller dependencies had similar configurations with the kitchen on the west combining the hall and cooking area. This five-part palladian form was well established among the grander Virginia plantations. The brickwork is Flemish bond, and the roof is slate; smaller bricks were used to construct the dependencies. Classical porches complete the two facades using the Ionic order on the south land entrance and the Composite order on the north river entrance. The two matching three bay dependencies at either end that are connected to the main structure by low hyphens that are partially below grade. William Byrd Harrison and his family lived there until the outbreak of the Civil War. After the Civil War, William Byrd Harrison never returned to live at Upper Brandon and upon his death in 1870, the plantation was purchased by his nephew, George Harrison Byrd. In 1948, the last Harrison descendant, Francis Otway Byrd, sold the estate to Petersburg businessman Harry C. Thompson.
Following the death of Mr. Thompson, the property was sold to Fred E. Watkins of Curles Neck Farms in 1961. Watkins used the farmland at Upper Brandon to grow feed for his large dairy herd at Curles Neck, but the manor house remained unoccupied from the 1960s until 1984 when the property was purchased by the James River Corporation who restored the mansion and used the property as a conference center and corporate retreat. James River Corporation later acquired the adjoining Edlow plantation.
Current use
Upper Brandon is currently owned and operated by the Justice family, headed by patriarch Jim Justice, that has extensive farming and milling operations in West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina including 50,000 acres (200 km2) that it farms through its Justice Family Farms group headquartered in Beckley, West Virginia.
The property is protected through a conservation easement held by the American Farmland Trust. It was listed as a Virginia Historic Landmark in 1996.