Oldal 212 [212]
ELK HILL
y VERLOOKING the romantic James, where the
1 KVI river bends on its course to Richmond, forty-five
miles away, lies the twelve-hundred-acre estate of
Elk Hill, so named, supposedly, from the number
of elk that once grazed here.
Like many of the old homes in Virginia, this
one seems to be resting under some strange, magic spell, which
renders it impervious to time and well content to live on with the
memories that lie back of it~—-memories which link it to other
historic homesteads by ties of affection and consanguinity. In its
early days, its isolated situation led Randolph Harrison to select
it as a home, and, after nearly one hundred years, it is still for¬
tunately sequestered.
The original estate, known as Elk Hill, contained a vast number
of acres, and first appears in history in 1715, when it was granted
by patent to John Woodson. In 1778 it was purchased by Thomas
Jefferson. After various changes in ownership and many sub¬
divisions, the estate became the property of the Harrison family,
from whom part of it passed to [Thomas D. Stokes, the present
owner.
The house was erected by Randolph Harrison about 1845, and
is structurally very substantial. “The facade is dignified, and the
effect of the building, with its white-stuccoed walls, set in the center
of a lawn and garden numbering ten acres in extent and quite
removed from the highroad, is noble and hospitable. A small and
formal portico provides the entrance upon the north front, and
here, against a western column, an aged vine at blooming time seems
to be ‘a close-set robe of jasmine sown with stars.”’
Across the river front of the house a broad veranda extends.
This is swathed with clematis and wistaria, with great knots of
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