Historic Gardens of Virginia 



joy of our family life. Will you not see that this last resting place 

 of our loved ones is left untouched and unviolated?" 



General Hancock, afterwards nominee for President of the 

 United States, looked out upon the violated beauty of the rose-beds, 

 the tulip-borders and boxwood walkways of the garden. A wave 

 of tender feeling passed over his sympathetic countenance. He 

 said, "Dr. Pollard, it shall be as you request." He then gave orders 

 that the plan of the breastworks, originally meant to go over the 

 graves, should be changed to go around, and not through, the 

 burial-ground. 



Today may be seen at this spot, where the breastworks are still 

 in evidence, a reminder of General Hancock's kindly spirit in spar- 

 ing to posterity this hallowed ground untouched. 



But what of the garden of other days? In looking from this 

 same porch at Wllllamsville, one may see through the boxwood 

 trees and the shrubbery near the house, the remains of the garden- 

 acre where beautiful flowers once blossomed in profusion. 



In these days of the renaissance of the gardening art in Vir- 

 ginia, many would be interested to know from whose bounty and 

 from whose taste these signs of beautiful home-making came. Who 

 did it? Who was the builder of the house, and who were the 

 mistresses who made this home one of the show places in the 

 Old Dominion of generations long gone? 



To tell the story of Williamsville, one must go back one hun- 

 dred and twenty years, for in the bricks over the front door we 

 may read the date 1803. The name was given the place by its 

 builder, William Pollard, who owned it until his death, in 1840. 

 He was the clerk of Hanover County from 1781 to 1824, and 

 succeeded his father, William Pollard, the first, who lived at Buck- 

 eye, just a few miles distant. It was William Pollard, of Buckeye 

 (according to William Wirt's Life of Patrick Henry) ^ who acted 

 as secretary of a meeting of the citizens of Hanover County, called 

 to pass resolutions instructing Patrick Henry, delegate to the Vir- 

 ginia Convention of 1774, to vote for the independence of the 



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