BELLEVUE 



HE Bellevue estate in Halifax County, about five 

 miles southeast of the Courthouse, originally con- 

 tained something more than one thousand acres. 

 It was purchased about 1825 by John B. Carring- 

 ton, a great-grandson of George Carrington who 

 came to this country from the Island of Barbadoes. 

 He was also a grandson of Judge Paul Carrington of Mulberry 

 Hill, member of the House of Burgesses, and the Committee of 

 Safety. Judge Carrington was later a member of the Virginia 

 Convention of 1776 which adopted the State Constitution and the 

 Bill of Rights and directed the Virginia members of Congress to 

 move for independence from Great Britain. In 1788 he became 

 Judge of the Virginia Court of Appeals. 



The dwelling at Bellevue, which was built by a former owner, 

 is a commodious one of brick, fifty-six feet long and forty feet deep. 

 The rooms were about eighteen feet square and there was an upper 

 and a lower hall sixteen feet wide running through the house from 

 front to back. The interior division walls were of brick. The 

 front porch was an impressive one, two stories high with double 

 columns extending to the roof on each side of the entrance steps. 

 On the second floor was a balcony. There were two back porches, 

 one at the end of the hall and the other at the corner of the house. 

 In the room entered from the latter was a large cabinet in which 

 were kept medicines, bandages, etc., for the farm hands. 



The house was situated in a grove of several acres containing 

 handsome oak, original pine, sycamore, cedar, holly, boxwood and 

 mimosa trees. The yard was filled with shrubs and vines of various 

 kinds. Back of the "big house" and about one hundred feet away 

 was the kitchen with its big open fireplace. A brick walk led from 

 it to the dwelling and, if the biscuits were not "piping hot" wherfc 



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