SHERWOOD 



HEN Virginia was settled men were wont to follow 

 where nature beckoned. Water still supplied 

 society everywhere with its chief highways. Trans- 

 portation by land was slow, tedious, difficult and 

 expensive. Navigable streams were controlling fac- 

 tors in trade and commerce. A well-watered land 

 was a populous and prosperous land. The many rivers that reach 

 out of the inland sea, of which Virginia and Maryland are the 

 mistresses, made for opulence, industry, and culture. 



The wealth and prominence of Gloucester County followed as 

 a natural consequence the fact that it is bounded on the south by 

 one river, on the north by another, and has two others wholly 

 within its own borders. Yet the county is a small one in actual area. 

 It is questionable whether there is another county in Virginia, or 

 any other State in America, that has proprietary rights in four 

 such fine rivers as are the York, Severn, Ware and North. And 

 in addition the whole eastern boundary of Gloucester is washed 

 by Mobjack Bay. There is small wonder that the early settlers 

 should have flocked to it in numbers; or that its scores of miles of 

 bay and river front should be dotted with fine colonial residences. 

 Some of these houses date back to the seventeenth century. 

 Some did not attain their prominence till a hundred years later. 

 Homes of striking elaborateness and beauty were still being estab- 

 lished when the nineteenth century opened. Among these none is 

 more noteworthy than Sherwood, which for many years has been 

 among the most admired residences in Gloucester. 



A part of the present Sherwood house is of colonial construc- 

 tion, but it was not till the first three decades of the last century had 

 elapsed that the old house attained its present spacious dimensions. 

 At that time the property, which had known a variety of owners 



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