Stranica 165 [165]
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HISTORIC GARDENS OF VIRGTNIA
joy of our family life. Will you not see that this last resting place
of our loved ones is left untouched and unviolated ?”’
General Hancock, afterwards nominee for President of the
United States, looked out upon the violated beauty of the rose-beds,
the tulip-borders and boxwood walkways of the garden. A wave
of tender feeling passed over his sympathetic countenance. He
said, “Dr. Pollard, it shall be as you request.”” He then gave orders
that the plan of the breastworks, originally meant to go over the
graves, should be changed to go around, and not through, the
burial-ground.
Today may be seen at this spot, where the breastworks are still
in evidence, a reminder of General Hancock’s kindly spirit in spar¬
ing to posterity this hallowed ground untouched.
But what of the garden of other days? In looking from this
same porch at Williamsville, one may see through the boxwood
trees and the shrubbery near the house, the remains of the garden¬
acre where beautiful flowers once blossomed in profusion.
In these days of the renaissance of the gardening art in Vir¬
ginia, many would be interested to know from whose bounty and
from whose taste these signs of beautiful home-making came. Who
did it? Who was the builder of the house, and who were the
mistresses who made this home one of the show places in the
Old Dominion of generations long gone?
To tell the story of Williamsville, one must go back one hun¬
dred and twenty years, for in the bricks over the front door we
may read the date 1803. The name was given the place by its
builder, William Pollard, who owned it until his death, in 1840.
He was the clerk of Hanover County from 1781 to 1824, and
succeeded his father, William Pollard, the first, who lived at Buck¬
eye, just a few miles distant. It was William Pollard, of Buckeye
(according to William Wirt’s Life of Patrick Henry), who acted
as secretary of a meeting of the citizens of Hanover County, called
to pass resolutions instructing Patrick Henry, delegate to the Vir¬
ginia Convention of 1774, to vote for the independence of the
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