Batesville Virginia Real Estate  

A small rural village in western Albemarle County, the Batesville Historic District was established in 1999.

 Consisting of approximately 180 acres, the Batesville Historic District is centered around a country store, Pages Store, a post office, and several historic residences.

The highlight of each year in Batesville is its annaul Apple Butter Festival, which takes place in mid October.

 The district is bound on two sides by 187 acres of land perminantly protected through conservation easements.

History Of Batesville Virginia

Batesville's Early Settlement (1607-1750)

This portion of Albemarle County was first settled in the late 1730’s, at which time it was still part of Goochland County.

Since 1744, it has been part of Albemarle County. Probably the first land patent in this area was obtained by Henry Terrell of Caroline county, who patented a tract of 1,750 acres on the headwaters of Mechum’s river in 1737, including the site of the present village.

By the 1740’s, an additional settlement seems to have occurred in this area. Route 635 through Batesville is part of a very early road in Albemarle County that was authorized by road orders beginning in September 1741. Called the road to Morrison’s, it connected with Dick Wood’s road, just north of the village, and from there to Three Notch’d Road at the D.S. Tree near Ivy.

In later road orders the road sometimes appeared as the “road to Amherst Court House”. Thus, settlement between the Ragged Mountains and Blue Ridge was sufficient in the 1740s to require a better connection to the main route east, the Three Notch’d Road.

Numerous land transactions indicate that the Batesville area was probably settled by the mid eighteenth century. Davis Stockton patented 800 acres on both forks of the Mechum’s River in 1741, part of the family holdings that eventually numbered 4,000 acres in western Albemarle County.

His sons, Samuel and William, owned a mill, probably built by their father, near the present village of Batesville on the south fork of Mechum’s River.

They sold it in 1767; a stream near Batesville still bears the name Stockton Mill Creek (not to be confused with Stockton Creek, a larger stream roughly paralleling U.S. Route 250). The Stockton family also gave its name to Stockton Thoroughfare, more commonly know as Israel’s Gap.

Colony to Nation (1750-1789)

Israel’s Gap is named for the Israel family, early Jewish settlers in the area. In 1757 Michael Israel patented eighty acres near Stockton’s Thoroughfare in the Ragged Mountains just to the east of the village of Batesville.

Several other deeds suggest settlement activity in the Batesville area in the eighteenth century. In 1765 Henry Terrell sold 800 acres of his early patent, including Castle Mountain, to John Jones of Louisa County. Jones also bought 1,300 acres on the north side of Tom Mountain near North Garden over the next eight years.

An early landowner, William Wood, bought property on the headwaters of the Mechum’s River in 1760 and in 1779 sold a plantation near the present site of Mount Ed Church in Batesville to Daniel White. William Wood’s grandson, John, still owned 1,100 acres in the Batesville area in the early 1800s.

Other families by the name of Wood also lived nearby. Robert Field began to buy land here in 1766. President James Monroe’s elder brother, Andrew, bought a farm near the village in 1781 and resided there for four years before moving to Limestone, a farm near Milton owned by the President.

Although prior to the Revolution, the Anglican Church was the established church in Virginia, several religious sects were active in Albemarle County in the late eighteenth century. Baptists established themselves in the Batesville area with the founding of Whitesides Creek Church in 1788, the forerunner of Mount Ed Baptist Church.

This was one of the earliest Baptist meetinghouses in the county. The first building stood across Route 635 from the present Mount Ed Church, and was replaced on the original site by anew brick building in 1806, at which time the name Mount Ed came into use.

There is conflicting information about the fate of this second building. One source says that the 1806 church burned down in 1840, but another indicates that the building was torn down in 1857 when the congregation moved across the street to the present structure.

Early National Period (1789-1830)

Despite its early history as a crossroads area, no buildings in Batesville date from before the early 1800s. Batesville’s first period of prosperity did not occur until around 1810, when increased travel along Routes 635 and 692 spurred the building of sevEral residences and possibly a tavern.

Today, Batesville is oriented more strongly along Route 692, an eighteenth century road that became part of a system connecting the Shenandoah Valley to the James River via Rockfish Gap. The road passed through Israel’s Gap in the Ragged Mountains to the east of Batesville and on to North Garden.

Legislation in 1790 sought to connect the Shenandoah Valley to the James River ports of Scottsville and Warren in Albemarle County by way of a road through Rockfish Gap.

Road orders beginning in 1791 show construction of this road, which connected already existing roads with some new sections

The final transportation link came in 1794 when part of today’s Route 692 from Batesville west to Route 637 (referred to as Dick Woods’ Road in the eighteenth century) was completed. This road was called the Warren Road in county road orders until at least 1812.

Thus the crossroads village was already established when William Oliver and his wife Elizabeth came to Albemarle County and purchased land in the Batesville area in 1796.

The name Oliver’s Store, an early name for the community, originated with a store presumably operated by this family in or near the present village, although no clarifying documentation has been found. Their son Henry Oliver bought a farm near North Garden, and many of his descendants have lived in this general area since then.

The Warren Road was later incorporated into the Staunton and James River Turnpike, completed in 1827. This turnpike connected Scottsville, on the James River, with Staunton, in the Shenandoah Valley.

Batesville is located about halfway between Scottsville and Staunton on this trading route, which carried heavy traffic in the early nineteenth century, as farmers from the Valley took their produce east to the James River for shipment.

In 1829 Roland Bates bought from William Bowen the 500 acre White Plantation southwest of the village. Bowen had taught a school near Ivy in the 1820s and in 1822 moved the school to a location near Mount Ed Church (most likely his farm). Here he took in eight to ten borders.

In 1826, Roland Bates’ daughter, Mary, married William Nicholas Oliver, son of the Oliver who gave the earlier name of Oliver’s Store to the village. Around 1830 the village name was changed to Batesville in honor of the Bates family.

Account ledgers indicate that Rowland Horsley Bates operated a tannery several miles away at North Garden from 1842-1850. The tannery was opErated by his son Edwin James Bates from 1865 to 1882. One source says a Mr. Bates had a blacksmith shop in Batesville.

Samuel O. Moon was another prominent resident of early Batesville. Moon was born in Albemarle County in 1801, grew up near Scottsville, and in 1828 began a mercantile business at Israel’s Mountain (Israel’s Gap). However, his store burned two years later.

He then moved to Batesville, where he bought a farm and built the first portion of the house now called Westbury. Although its present appearance is the result of an extensive remodeling in the 1860s, it remains one of Batesville’s oldest surviving buildings.

Two other houses, both located east of Westbury, also date from the first quarter of the nineteenth century. One of these is a significant, early log house with a second story of frame construction, and retains much of its exterior appearance intact.

Among the earliest buildings standing in Batesville today is the Walters-Page house, a two story brick house on Route 635.

Although its exact date of construction is not known, architectural evidence suggests a date during the first quarter of the nineteenth century. It was probably built by Polly Walters, who bequeathed it to her nephew Nicholas Murrell Page in 1859.

Page, born in Nelson County in 1810, moved with his family to Kentucky when he was a child. In 1827, he returned to Nelson County and went into b