Stranica 279 [279]
SHERWOOD
HEN Virginia was settled men were wont to follow
where nature beckoned. Water still supplied
society everywhere with its chief highways. Trans¬
portation by land was slow, tedious, difficult and
expensive. Navigable streams were controlling fac¬
tors in trade and commerce. A well-watered land
was a populous and prosperous land. The many rivers that reach
out of the inland sea, of which Virginia and Maryland are the
mistresses, made for opulence, industry, and culture.
The wealth and prominence of Gloucester County followed as
a natural consequence the fact that it is bounded on the south by
one river, on the north by another, and has two others wholly
within its own borders. Yet the county is a small one in actual area.
It is questionable whether there is another county in Virginia, or
any other State in America, that has proprietary rights in four
such fine rivers as are the York, Severn, Ware and North. And
in addition the whole eastern boundary of Gloucester is washed
by Mobjack Bay. ‘There is small wonder that the early settlers
should have flocked to it in numbers; or that its scores of miles of
bay and river front should be dotted with fine colonial residences.
Some of these houses date back to the seventeenth century.
Some did not attain their prominence till a hundred years later.
Homes of striking elaborateness and beauty were still being estab¬
lished when the nineteenth century opened. Among these none is
more noteworthy than Sherwood, which for many years has been
among the most admired residences in Gloucester.
A part of the present Sherwood house is of colonial construc¬
tion, but it was not till the first three decades of the last century had
elapsed that the old house attained its present spacious dimensions.
At that time the property, which had known a variety of owners
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