This was the home of Baldwin Mathews Leland.
According to research done by LaVonne Platt, who has summarized this data
from an article in The Bulletin of the Northumberland
> County Historical Society, Vol. XXIII - 1986:
>
> In 1653 an original patent was granted to Thomas
Keene for 527 acres, then
> renewed by his son Thomas Keene in 1662. In
1676 and several times later
> transactions in which parts were sold and additional
parts were added
> (mostly within the Keene family) and in 1725 Newton
Keene inherited the land
> from his father, William, "As Newton Keene
had the [earlier] deeds
> re-recorded, it can be presumed that he had become
the owner of all the
> land" and at his death he left the land, estimated
then to be 486 3/4 acres
> more or less, now known as Cypress Farm, to his
son William, who then sold
> it to Richard Lee.
>
> When Richard Lee's property, consisting of three
separate purchases in
> Northumberland County (the Cypress Farm being one),
was divided among his
> three daughters upon his death in 1805 , the Cypress
Farm tract went to his
> daughter Lettice Lee.
Baldwin evidently purchased this property from Lettice Lee on his marriage to Elizabeth Fauntleroy Haggoman in 1806. The original home was burned in 1814, by the British, it was rebuilt shortly after that. The picture below from the Northumberland Historical Society shows how it looked after it was rebuilt, and had fallen into some disrepair. After that are pictures taken by Mrs. Carol Niven, on a visit I think in the late 1980's. As you can see the present owners have taken special care to restore the home in a loving manner.
"It was named for the Cypress
trees bordering the drive. The house, built after the war of 1812
to replace a finer one destroyed by the British when they bombarded the
shores of the Potomac and Washington D. C., is 32 X 60 with a hall extending
through the width of the building, and a circular stairway leading from
the first to the third floor. It is one of the few houses in Virginia
with a circular stairway. There were ground floor and second story
porches but they have dissappeared along with the shutters. The slave
quarters are gone but the smoke house is still in a good state. The
Cowart family lived there after the Leland's left in 1836 and Miss Virginia
Cowart and her brother, born there in the 1840's were still living in the
vicinity in 1922." From
The Leland Family of Virginia, 1740-1940; J.A.C.Leland,
1953, Berkeley, CA.
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The caption with the photo is incorrect, Rebecca Ann Travers was the second wife of Baldwin Mathews Leland, they married on January 25th, 1828, but the home had been long rebuilt by then. Shortly after his marriage (March 17, 1828) Baldwin filed his first petition for compensation for the damage done during the War of 1812. He kept refiling until his death in 1832, I have not found if any compensation was ever forthcoming, as of 1831 it was still being denied.
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Could this be the smoke house?
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The next pictures are of the property, I am not sure what the trees are, I don't know if they are supposed to be the cypress trees bordering the drive or not.
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We then journey inside this beautiful home.
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