OVERVIEW OF THE PROPERTY
Though the evidence is contradictory, researchers and local historians estimate that the Brown family first acquired the tract of land that made up Ivy Cliff’s sweeping estate by 1755.[2] Henry Brown III, who, hereafter, will be referenced as Captain Henry Brown, built a brick Federal style house in the early 19th century, finished no later than 1820. Participants in the 2013 restoration field school program hosted by Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest determined that the house’s earliest architectural elements are concordant with this date.[3] The house underwent several renovations, categorized into three major phases, and the last of which occurred in the late 19th century.
Captain Henry Brown and his wife, Frances, had six children together: Henry Jr., John Thompson, Locky, Frances, Alice, and Samuel, all of whom were raised at Ivy Cliff. The family originally referred to the plantation as Otter Mills—likely due to its proximity to the Big Otter River—but Richmond society columns referred to it as Ivy Cliff by the turn of the 20th century.[4] Ivy Cliff remained in the Brown family until the 1920s.
"[...] the ties that bind me to this spot and this people are those of interest & habit - my warmest affections are still with you -
my birthplace
- neighbors & relatives."
- John Thompson Brown to Captain Henry Brown,
sent from his home in Clarksburg, August 15, 1829 [5]
The front view of the house until the 1870s. The center portion makes up the original house, and the east and west additions were antebellum renovations.
Expense records show that the construction of the porch originally began in 1826.
Planters and Merchants: Agriculture and the Brown Family Fortune
"My dear children are no doubt truly happy playin[g] on the same ground that I did at the same age."
- Henry Brown Jr. to his father, August 23, 1834 [12]
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Self-sufficiency characterized successful plantations, and Ivy Cliff was no exception.[6]The Brown family grew prosperous through agricultural and mercantile pursuits throughout the antebellum period. Despite early bouts of financial instability, reflected in family letters, the Browns secured their fortune by the 1820s.[7] Expense records demonstrate this shift in their financial circumstances. In 1819, the great majority of Captain Brown’s purchases included basic necessities for the house and farm, but within a decade, he began to record expenditures for fine clothing and fabrics such as silks, satins, Swiss muslin, kid gloves, and “fine Irish linen.”[8] These luxury items, among others, exist as a testament to the type of lifestyle the Brown family maintained during this period.
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In 1832, Captain Henry Brown paid county levies on 732 acres, but some estimates put his total landholdings, including those nonadjacent to the plantation itself, at up to 3,400 acres.[9] Throughout the antebellum period, 80% of Bedford County landowners held 200 acres or less, making a plantation of Ivy Cliff’s size an anomaly within the county’s landscape.[10] Today, just over 17 acres remains. Like the vast majority of Bedford County’s population, the Brown family raised cereal crops and tobacco.[11] Aside from their agricultural pursuits, the family bred horses and operated a general store in nearby New London.
[2] Daisy I. Read, New London Today and Yesterday (Lynchburg, VA: Warwick House Publishers, 1950), 101.
[3] “Ivy Cliff: Historic Structures Investigation Report,” Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest Restoration Field School, 2013, 4.
[4] “Society,” The Richmond Times Dispatch, July 26, 1903, 6.
[5] John Thompson Brown to Capt. Henry Brown, August 15, 1829, Brown, Coalter, Tucker Collection 1, box 15, folder 37.6.
[6] Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth. "Antebellum Southern Households: A New Perspective on a Familiar Question." Fernand Braudel Center Review 7, no. 2 (1983): 227.
[7] “John Thompson Brown to Henry Brown Jr., February 25, 1832,” Brown, Coalter, Tucker Collection 1, box 17, folder 4.4.
[8] “Personal Bills of Henry Brown 1819-1841,” Brown, Coalter, Tucker Collection 1, box 11, folder 1.
[9] “Tax Records for Captain Henry Brown,” Brown, Coalter, Tucker Collection 1, Box 10, folder 2. Ron McFarland, Edward Steptoe and the Indian Wars: Life on the Frontier 1815-1865 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland &Company, Inc., Publishers, 2016), 10.
[10] Harrison Daniel, Bedford County, Virginia, 1840-1860: the History of An Upper Piedmont County in the Late Antebellum Era (Bedford, VA: The Print Shop, 1985), 81.
[11] Ibid., 78.
[12] Henry Brown Jr. to Capt. Henry Brown, Brown, Coalter, Tucker Collection 1, August 23, 1834, box 12, folder 33.2.