Stranica 165 [165]
OCR
E NNA nnn nen E ee eze Rá 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 sparing 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 gardenacre where beautiful flowers once blossomed in profusion. In these days of the renaissance of the gardening art in Virginia, 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 hundred 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 Buckeye, 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 Virginia Convention of 1774, to vote for the independence of the | 100 |
