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The large bedrooms have fireplaces and pine floors.
The kitchen is in an addition to the Bloomsbury farmhouse, which is on the National Register of Historic Places. The property will be auctioned on Oct. 23.
The Bloomsbury farmhouse was built in the 1780s and has received several additions.
The barn housed the McGee's prized herd of Jersey cows.
The upstairs bathroom was remodeled around 1960. |
BY RICHARD AMRHINE
Before there was Bloomsbury subdivision, there was the 400-acre Bloomsbury Farm. When Gens. Lee and Grant faced off there in a battle that concluded the Spotsylvania Court House campaign in May 1864, it was known as the Harris Farm, for the family that lived there.
But even by then the farmhouse had already been standing for generations, built in the late 1780s by the Robinson family, which had apparently acquired the property as early as 1740 and may have built some sort of early structure on the site.
More recently, thanks to the last owner, the late Agnes McGee, and the work of University of Mary Washington researchers, Bloomsbury was named to the National Register of Historic Places and the Virginia Landmarks Register.
The next chapter of its history will soon be written, when Bloomsbury goes up for auction on Oct. 23 at 1:30 p.m. Bill Ross, with At Auction Real Estate, is handling the arrangements.
Though the property is an island of history clinging to life in the midst of Bloomsbury and Bloomsbury Farm Estates subdivisions, there is nothing about its National Register listing, or under Spotsylvania code, that would prevent a new private owner from razing the house and surrounding outbuildings and building a new residence on the property.
However, there's always the possibility that the winning bid will be submitted by someone whose pockets are not only deep, but filled with a fondness for what the place represents. There are, after all, 223 years of history at Bloomsbury, just 10 years fewer than that of the nation itself.
Given the story of the 1864 battle that took place on the property, it's remarkable that the house survived.
The house is one of the oldest still standing in Spotsylvania County, and there's no question that the house is in need of rehabilitation. But the main structure is solid. The original fieldstone foundation--there is no basement--has been fortified with cinder block and concrete, according to university researchers Michelle Arcari and Gary Stanton.
The house is listed with four bedrooms and 2 baths, and 2,650 square feet of living space.
The floor plan varies from the typical two-over-two design in that the main staircase is behind a wall in the central passageway, borrowing space from the right side rooms.
There have been several additions to the house over time, including the kitchen, a single story added under a slanted roof to the rear of the house, plus an extension to that, which serves as a utility room and storage area. A porch was added off the kitchen.
Work completed by the McGee family in 1958 includes a wood-paneled room added to the right side of the house that served as McGee's office.
Also completed around that time was the upstairs bathroom, whose turquoise fixtures are by now classic Art Deco fare.
Closet stairs found in the bathroom rise to the attic, which at some point was whitewashed, which suggests, according to the researchers, that it was once used as living space.
The interior doorways readily distinguish the original structure from the additions. Those in the original are barely taller than 6 feet, while the newer ones have a more standard height. The original interior doors have H-L hinges and box locks.
All of the main original rooms are served by substantial fireplaces, each with an intricately carved surround. They feed two symmetrical outboard chimneys at either end of the house.
The floors are classic heart pine throughout, some with typical concave and convex bowing.
The Register application research refers to a dozen outbuildings that contribute historically to the property, not including a relatively new two-car garage. The house and all of the outbuildings have standing-seam metal roofs.
The principle outbuilding is a large barn with dozens of stalls that still have their original milking hardware. The barn and attached silo were erected by James McGee, Agnes McGee's father and a native of Scotland who came to the United States in 1913. He brought with him an expertise in Jersey dairy-cow operations and bought Bloomsbury to create a working farm and homestead for his family. He and his wife would have six children--five daughters and a son--who would learn well the rigors of operating a dairy farm. It was a work ethic that Agnes McGee carried with her until her death in 2007 at age 89.
The farm supplied a significant amount of the milk consumed in the Fredericksburg area during the first half of the 20th century.
McGee left the farm in 1965 to this youngest daughter, Agnes, who never married, but was wedded to her interest in the public affairs of the Spotsylvania County Board of Supervisors. In 1966, she dispersed the famed Jersey dairy herd and 10 years later acknowledged the inevitable by subdividing the property. In 1989, the 400-acre tract bordering on the Ni River was sold to developer Thomas Sagun, who created Bloomsbury subdivision. She kept the 2 acres on which the arm now sits.
McGee left nieces and nephews but no direct descendents. The proceeds from the auction will go primarily to several local charitable organizations as specified in her will.
atauction.bizRichard Amrhine: 540/374-5406
Email: ramrhine@freelancestar.com
| When the Bloomsbury estate was sold out of the Robinson family for the first time in 1854, little did buyer Clement Harris realize that 10 years later a Civil War encounter on his property would forever be known as the Battle of Harris Farm.
Recorded in history as the final battle of the Spotsylvania Court House campaign, it was also a notable test of strategies between Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and Gen. Robert E. Lee. By the time they met at Harris Farm on May 13, 1864, both of their armies had been sapped of manpower and strength by fighting in recent days at the Wilderness and the Spotsylvania Battlefield. The battle at Harris Farm lasted only a day, but the casualties quickly mounted, 1,535 Union troops and 900 Confederates when the bloodshed was done. Though the casualty count translated into a minor victory for the Confederates, it proved only a brief delay in Grant's march toward Richmond. Among the Union casualties were 398 soldiers of the 1st Massachusetts Regiment Heavy Artillery, who had been pulled from less-hazardous duty guarding the Nation's Capital to fortify the Union force. In 1901, veterans of the unit returned to the farm to erect a monument to their fallen comrades. The monument site and surrounding ground were donated by Agnes McGee as hallowed ground amid the surrounding housing development. --Richard Amrhine |
