Page 545 [545]
CARTER HALL
ZET APSZ] HERE was a time when our place-names in this
S19) ae) country were either pure Dutch, pure French, pure
oe g axes Spanish or pure English, and we had not yet
ey NS NN to tak on a German burg or a French ville to a
simple English word. ‘The little village of Mill¬
wood was named at that time, and quite properly
named, as it grew up about two stone-built water-power mills set
in a great wood. The land upon which the village stood (with the
exception of a few freehold lots) and all the surrounding land was
owned by Colonel Nathaniel Burwell, a young man from the Lower
Country, as it was then called. Though he still lived at Carter's
Grove, the Burwell seat on the James River, he usually brought his
family to spend the summer in the cooler and more healthful
climate of the Shenandoah Valley. At such times he occupied a
house which still stands in Millwood today.
But in 1790 Colonel Burwell began to build a permanent home
upon this large land—a holding of his in what is now the County
of Clarke. The situation chosen, like that of each of the old
houses hereabouts, was of necessity near a good spring, and hun¬
dreds of oaks had to be cut away for the building site and to open
vistas over the surrounding country; that to the south offering a
view of the Blue Ridge from each of the principal rooms of the
house, and that to the east showing the mountains still nearer, and
allowing one to trace the course of the Shenandoah by the white
trunks of the sycamores along its banks. This cutting still left a
fine body of oak and walnut timber extending from the north,
through west, to the southwest of the house. Sad to say, the trees
are much fewer in number today, though there are still enough
to form the western border of the park.
It was under these oaks that General Pickett camped just after
L334]