Brian & Patty's Awesome Adventure!: Berkeley Plantation

This entry is from May 12th, 2016.

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We are still at the Chesapeake Bay Thousand Trails in Gloucester, Virginia with John and Linda. We wanted to go to an historic plantation. We Googled plantations around us and found the Berkeley Plantation.

Berkeley Plantation

In 1691, Berkeley was purchased by Benjamin Harrison III, who established the first commercial shipyard on the James River. Tobacco was shipped from the plantation to England and 18 gun battleships were built there for the Revolutionary Navy.

The Harrisons

It was Benjamin III’s son, Benjamin IV, who built the three story Georgian brick mansion at Berkeley, said to be the oldest three-story brick house in Virginia that can prove its date. A round date stone carved above a side door leaves no doubt about the date the house was completed. The initials for Benjamin and his wife, Anne Carter, daughter of the famed tobacco planter, Robert “King” Carter, are etched above a heart and the date 1726.

Date Stone

Benjamin Harrison V was one of 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence. During the war he also took care of matters at home by serving as a lieutenant in the county militia and took the job of chief magistrate as well. After the war, Harrison remained active in Virginia politics as a member of the House of Delegates. There he was elected to be Speaker. In 1781, Harrison became governor of Virginia, a position he held two more times. Here is the graveyard of Benjamin Harrison V.

Benjamin Harrison V

William Henry Harrison became the ninth President of the United States, an American military officer and politician, and the first president to die in office.

The Harrison Family’s claim to the White House did not die with William Henry Harrison. He was followed by his grandson, Benjamin Harrison, the twenty-third U.S. President.

The estate is also the birthplace of William Henry Harrison, ninth president of the United States, and ancestral home of his grandson, Benjamin Harrison, the twenty-third president.

Among the many American "firsts" that occurred at Berkeley Plantation are:

The first official Thanksgiving: 4 December 1619.

Commemorating the first Thanksgiving.

First time Army bugle call "Taps" played: July 1862, by bugler Oliver W. Norton; the melody was written at Harrison's Landing, the plantation's old wharf, by Norton and then General Daniel Butterfield.

Taps

The first bugle that taps was played on was on display. You were not supposed to take pictures of it. I actually forgot and did take a picture with my phone. I was reminded after took the shot, but here it is!