Caroline County Virginia Real estate

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Caroline County Virginia History

Caroline County was formed in 1728 from Essex, King and Queen, and King William counties.

It was named for Queen Caroline, the wife of George II.

Capt. John Smith is credited with being the first white man to reach what is today Caroline County sometime between 1607 and 1609.

Caroline County was the home of statesman Edmund Pendleton and the childhood home of brothers Gen. George Rogers Clark, the Revolutionary War hero;

and William Clark, of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

William Clark was born in 1770 to John and Ann Rogers Clark in Caroline County, Virginia, the ninth of ten children.

He grew up on his father's plantation with its many acres and slaves, enjoying life in the open country.

Though he had little formal education, he acquired the manners and accomplishments of a Virginia gentleman of his day, including riding, hunting, surveying, and managing an estate.

In the autumn of 1784, the Clark family moved to Kentucky, and on a large tract of land near Louisville built a home called Mulberry Hill.

"Caroline was the third most populous and affluent county in Virginia during the Revolution.

The descendants of its early families contributed, perhaps as much as any other county in America, to the building of the United States." Marshall Wingfield

"Caroline also has been in the forefront in nurturing men who have wrought mightily in shaping the destiny of the Commonwealth and the Nation....."

During the Civil War more than 1 million men marched or camped in the county.

Confederate troops under Gen. George E. Pickett fought Union troops near Milford in 1864.

Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson died in Guinea after being shot by his own troops at Chancellorsville.

"Stonewall" Jackson was among the thousands of wounded Confederates sent to Guinea Station.

Jackson arrived on the evening of May 4, 1863, about 48 hours after being mistakenly wounded by his own men at Chancellorsville.

This 1872 photo shows the building where Jackson died.

The Chandler family who owned the plantation moved shortly after Jackson died and the buildings and grounds were not kept up.

The plantation was well kept when Jackson was there.

John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of President Lincoln, was allegedly shot by federal troops in Caroline County.

John Taylor, another Caroline native son, was a celebrated Revolutionary War soldier, a member of the Virginia House of Delegates, three times chosen U.S. Senator, and a Jeffersonian Democrat.

 Caroline County is also the birthplace of the great Secretariat, winner of the 1973 Triple Crown and record holder for the Kentucky Derby and Belmont Stakes.

Secretariat was foaled ten minutes after midnight, on the morning of March 30, 1970, at Chris T. Chenery's Meadow Farm in Caroline County, Virginia.

He was an impressively large and strikingly attractive chestnut colt, with three white stockings and a white star and stripe.

His sire, Bold Ruler, was a champion on the racetrack and boasted an outstanding stud career, leading the American Sires List eight times.

His dam, Somethingroyal, by *Princequillo, was also the dam of the stakes winner Sir Gaylord, who had been favored to win the 1962 Kentucky Derby before lameness forced him to remain in the barn.

There are two incorporated towns in Caroline County. They are Bowling Green & Port Royal.

Bowling Green Virginia

The town of Bowling Green was earlier known as New Hope Village.

One of the earliest stage roads in the colony ran through the area from Richmond to the Potomac River, where a ferry crossing was operated to Charles County, Maryland.

One of the first stage lines in America to maintain a regular schedule operated along this road.

New Hope Tavern was built along the road prior to 1700, and the area around it became known as New Hope Village.

The town was renamed for "Bowling Green" which was the estate of town founder, Colonel John Waller Hoomes, who donated a considerable amount of land when the community became the county seat in 1803.

The Bowling Green estate took its name from the Hoomes family's ancestral seat back in England, "Bolling Green".

Such naming was a tradition in the Colony of Virginia.

 The Bowling Green Estate was the site of the first track built to race horses in America.

The mansion of Major Thomas Hoomes, built in 1667, is now called the "Old Mansion".

A prominent town landmark, it is the oldest continuously inhabited residence in Virginia. 

 The Old Mansion is now on the Virginia Landmarks Register and the National Register of Historic Places.

The present Caroline County Court House was built in 1835 and Bowling Green was incorporated as a town about 2 years later, in 1837.

The town is best-known as the "cradle of American horse racing" and as the home of the second oldest Masonic Lodge.

The Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad (chartered in 1834) was built through nearby Milford (just west of town) and reached Fredericksburg by 1837.

This important rail link between several major northern railroads at Washington, DC and other major southern railroads at Richmond was long partially-owned by the Commonwealth of Virginia, and became part of CSX Transportation in the 1990s.

It is a major freight railroad line for north-south traffic and the corridor also hosts many Amtrak trains.

Although the closest Virginia Railway Express (VRE) commuter passenger rail service to Northern Virginia is currently accessed at Fredericksburg, future VRE extensions southward may include service at Milford which would be very convenient for Bowling Green and the surrounding area.

In modern times, Bowling Green is located along Virginia State Route 2, one of the two earlier highways between Richmond and Fredericksburg.

In later years, U.S. Route 301 was built through the area, connecting Richmond with Baltimore, Maryland with what was effectively an eastern bypass of the Washington, DC area for north-south traffic along the U.S. east coast.

A new road, Virginia State Route 207 was established from Bowling Green west to Carmel Church, where it intersects Interstate 95 in Virginia and U.S. Route 1, major north-south highways.

In 1941, the United States government acquired 77,000 acres of Caroline County to the north and east of Bowling Green and established the A.P. Hill Military Reservation.

Known in modern times as Fort A.P. Hill, it was named for a Virginia military hero U.S. Army and later Confederate General Ambrose Powell Hill, who was killed just prior to the end of the War in 1865.

At the massive complex, thousands of regular military and reserve troops undergo training each year.

It has also been the site of national Jamboree gatherings of the Boy Scouts of America.

Port Royal Virginia

Port Royal is one of the area's more historic towns.

It was first established in 1652 as a port on a navigable portion of the Rappahannock River during an era when waterways were the major method of transportation of people and property in the British Colony of Virginia.

It was an important point for export of tobacco, Virginia's cash crop.

Local tradition holds that Port Royal was named after the Roy family.

Dorothy Roy and her husband John owned a warehouse chartered by the crown, a ferry service across the Rappahannock River to King George County and a tavern.

In the 21st century, the chimneys of the Roy house are preserved landmarks in the town.

Port Royal was incorporated as a town in 1744.

The "town green", upon which stands today the Town Hall and the firehouse, was forever reserved "for public and civic use".

Shipping of property from the port began to decline after completion of railroads which began in Virginia in the 1830s.

The last scheduled passenger ship service ended in 1932, supplanted by highways.

However, Port Royal was served by the new highways which became U.S. Route 17 and U.S. Route 301, with their crossroads at Port Royal.

Booth, John Wilkes, 1838–65, American actor, the assassin of Abraham Lincoln, b. near Bel Air, Md.; son of Junius Brutus Booth and brother of Edwin Booth.

He made his debut at the age of 17 in Baltimore, toured widely, and soon became a star, winning acclaim for his Shakespearean roles.

Unlike the rest of his family, Booth was an ardent Confederate sympathizer.

He had joined (1859) the Virginia militia company that assisted in the capture of John Brown, but he did not enter Confederate service in the Civil War.

Instead, he continued with his theatrical career in the North.

For some six months in 1864–65 Booth laid plans to abduct the president and carry him to Richmond, a scheme that was frustrated when Lincoln failed to appear (Mar. 20, 1865) at the spot where Booth and his six fellow conspirators lay in wait.

On Good Friday, Apr. 14, 1865, Booth, having learned that Lincoln planned to attend Laura Keene's performance of Our American Cousin at Ford's Theater in Washington on that evening, plotted the simultaneous assassination of the President, Vice President Andrew Johnson, and Secretary of State William H. Seward.

Lewis Thornton Powell, who called himself Payne, guided by David E. Herold, seriously wounded Seward and three others at Seward's house.

George A. Atzerodt, assigned to Johnson, lost his nerve.

The main act the egomaniacal Booth naturally reserved for himself.

His crime was committed shortly after 10 P.M., when he entered the presidential box unobserved, suddenly shot Lincoln, and vaulted to the stage (breaking his left leg in the process) shouting “Sic semper tyrannis!” [thus always to tyrants] “The South is avenged!”

He then went behind the scenes and down the back stairs to a waiting horse upon which he made his escape.

Not until Apr. 26, after a hysterical two-week search by the army and secret service forces, was he discovered, hiding in a barn on Garrett's farm near Bowling Green, Caroline co., Va.

The barn was set afire and Booth was either shot by his pursuers or shot himself rather than surrender.

Although it has been said that no dead body was ever more definitely identified, the myth—completely unsupported by evidence—that Booth escaped has persisted.