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ERODF BALE SERT E
and interesting highway, and many of the roads
which lead therefrom extend to the tourist a call
so inviting that the summons is irresistible.
About ten miles from Fredericksburg, an attractive roadway
leads to the right in a southeasterly direction. Great branches of
oak, sycamore, maple, and elm trees, garlanded with honeysuckle,
interlock familiarly above, and form a graceful canopy over its
hard, smooth, serpentine surface, carpeted here and there with
pine-cones and needles.
This entrance-way to the interior of historic old Caroline
County, with its sweeping hills, and restful valleys, is very charming.
Caroline County! which gave to our nation’s history such dis¬
tinguished men as Edmund Pendleton, William Woodford, Richard
Brooke, and John Taylor! It also gave the Battailes, Fitzhughs,
and Gordons. The latter of Flintshire, Belvedere, Santee and
Prospect Hill. It was the home of the Hays, of Haytield; the
Corbins, of Moss Neck, and others are closely associated with the
best in every phase of the social, political, and religious life in
Caroline County. |
Many of the homes of these old families, long past the century
mark, exhibit a peculiarly picturesque age, with entire freedom from
that detracting quality, often the result of years of indifference on
the part of unappreciative inmates.
Santee, familiarly known as the old Gordon place, but which
was originally one of the many Fitzhugh country seats, is among
the most interesting estates in this section. Its vine-hung house was.
built by Battaile Fitzhugh in 1807, and here, as in days of yore,
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