The James River Plantation Belt 



pensed from his "gyarden" to the khaki boys of Camp Lee as they 

 came and went over the pike while training for overseas service. 



Just before Petersburg is a stone marker put up by the 

 Daughters of the Confederacy. This marks the headquarters of 

 General Robert E. Lee from June to September, 1864, at Violet 

 Banks, the old estate of John Shore. The plantation has gone 

 and a modern subdivision has taken its place, but a quaint facade 

 of the interesting old house still remains, the rear portion of sixteen 

 rooms having been shot away. It will well repay the tourist to 

 detour a bit and see the remains of the house and the beautiful 

 trees which enframe it. 



John Shore, it is said, had a passion for all ornamental plants. 

 He used shrubs and flowering trees in great variety for the em- 

 bellishment of his grounds. Years after, the grounds and garden 

 supplied family and friends with specimens for ornamenting their 

 new driveways and gardens in many parts of Virginia — flowering 

 locusts, mimosa, horse-chestnut, hawthorns, crepe-myrtle, magnolias 

 (grandiflora, glauca, acuminata), acacia (yellow, pink and white), 

 and every variety of fruit tree then obtainable. Two torch-like 

 hollys stand on either side of the house. 



It is said that a suitor came a courting one of the Mistresses 

 Shore; from far away he came on horseback with a switch from 

 a tree in his hand as a whip. This switch he stuck in the ground 

 and it grew and grew into a tremendous magnolia acuminata. 

 Under its spreading branches General Lee had his tent, and a little 

 child brought him each day baskets of fresh vegetables from her 

 mother's garden. She remembers yet his lifting her in his arms 

 to gather one of the pale yellow blossoms of this great tree. 



Following a road, still flanked with marvelous old oaks, down 

 the hillside and around the river banks studded in spring with 

 millions of violets, we cross the Pocahontas bridge, which leads over 

 the Appomattox to Petersburg. We go through the town to Camp 

 Lee, now silent, shabby and dilapidated, but so recently the scene 

 of bugle calls and intense activity; thence to Hopewell, the city of 



[55] 



