WESTMORELAND HISTORY
Westmoreland County was created from Northumberland County in 1653. George Washington was born here in 1732 and James Monroe in 1758.
Many old churches and homes survive in the county, none more splendid than Stratford Hall, the Lee family seat built in the 1730s. The only two brothers to sign the Declaration of Independence were reared at Stratford, and Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee was born there in 1807. Twenty miles away, at Nomini Hall near Hague, Robert Carter III in 1791 began the manumission of hundreds of his slaves, the largest private act of emancipation in American history.
A county museum and court records dating back to 1653 are located at Montross. Stratford Hall Plantation (804/493-8038) and George Washington’s Birthplace National Monument (804/224-1732) are both open to the public. The county has begun a project to transform the wooded site of Monroe’s birth near Colonial Beach into a county park.
