BELLEVILLE 



ORTH RIVER, an arm of Mobjack Bay, Is a lake- 

 like sheet of water around whose shores clustered 

 the seats of "The Mighty" before the War Be- 

 tween the States. Here were the estates of the 

 Tallaferros, the Tabbs, the Roys, the Dabneys, and 

 others; but, of them all, none had Colonial signifi- 

 cance except Belleville and Toddsbury — the homes of the Booths 

 and the Tallaferros — of the Todds and the Tabbs. 



Belleville was remodeled by Its latest owners, Mr. and 

 Mrs. Allmand Blow. A pillared portico now replaces the simple 

 Colonial entrance of the English cottage, said to have been built 

 In the seventeenth century by Thomas Booth, a member of a family 

 of great antiquity and distinction In the counties of Chester and 

 Lancaster, England. (See College Peerage.) In the old Booth 

 burying-ground, near the end of Ware Neck, In Gloucester County, 

 may be seen tombs with armorial bearings that date from an early 

 period of the Virginia Colony. The Booths intermarried with the 

 Throckmortons, the Cookes, the Carys, the Wythes, the Kendalls, 

 the Lees, the Pages, and the Armlsteads, so were connected by 

 blood with nearly every family of note in what was called, then as 

 now. Tidewater Virginia. 



Originally there was only a large vegetable garden laid off in 

 squares defined by box-hedges and flower-borders, like many of the 

 gardens of Colonial days. 



Frances, the daughter of George Wythe Booth, married Warner 

 Taliaferro, thus bringing the Belleville property Into the possession 

 of the latter family. After her death, her husband married a 

 second time and brought to the old home, as a bride of sixteen. 

 Miss Leah Seddon. The second Mrs. Taliaferro, who became the 

 chatelaine of Belleville in 1825, was the daughter of Susan Alex- 



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