CARTER HALL 



HERE was a time when our place-names in this 

 country were either pure Dutch, pure French, pure 

 Spanish or pure English, and we had not yet 

 to tack on a German burg or a French ville to a 

 simple English word. The little village of Mill- 

 wood was named at that time, and quite properly 

 named, as it grew up about two stone-built water-power mills set 

 in a great wood. The land upon which the village stood (with the 

 exception of a few freehold lots) and all the surrounding land was 

 owned by Colonel Nathaniel Burwell, a young man from the Lower 

 Country, as it was then called. Though he still lived at Carter's 

 Grove, the Burwell seat on the James River, he usually brought his 

 family to spend the summer in the cooler and more healthful 

 climate of the Shenandoah Valley. At such times he occupied a 

 house which still stands in Millwood today. 



But in 1790 Colonel Burwell began to build a permanent home 

 upon this large land — a holding of his in what is now the County 

 of Clarke. The situation chosen, like that of each of the old 

 houses hereabouts, was of necessity near a good spring, and hun- 

 dreds of oaks had to be cut away for the building site and to open 

 vistas over the surrounding country; that to the south offering a 

 view of the Blue Ridge from each of the principal rooms of the 

 house, and that to the east showing the mountains still nearer, and 

 allowing one to trace the course of the Shenandoah by the white 

 trunks of the sycamores along its banks. This cutting still left a 

 fine body of oak and walnut timber extending from the north, 

 through west, to the southwest of the house. Sad to say, the trees 

 are much fewer in number today, though there are still enough 

 to form the western border of the park. 



It was under these oaks that General Pickett camped just after 



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