Historic Overview - Kittiewan Plantation

Historically, Kittiewan Plantation represents one of the oldest properties on the James River.  The first reference to the land containing the present plantation property dates from 1618, when the Virginia Company gave Captain George Yeardley permission to claim 2,200 acres north of the James River including Weynock and KONWAN between Mapscock and Queens Creek.  Yeardley, however, appears never to have claimed this portion containing Kittiewan.

In 1667, Charles Roane of Gloucester County obtained a patent for 450 acres, including the plantation site. Absentee landowners, like Roane, often leased properties to tenants or established small farming operations with an overseer and slaves to work the land.  Between 1671 and 1728, the land changed hands several times, passing from Thomas Gregory and William Ballard to Archibald Blair, and finally to Benjamin Willard.  The English brick bond pattern used in the foundation and one chimney suggest the original dwelling section was built sometime after Willard acquired the property. 

By the early 1770s, Revolutionary War prominent physician Dr. William Rickman acquired the property. He called Millford, the earliest known name associated with the plantation.  Rickman’s wife Elizabeth, daughter of Benjamin Harrison of Berkley Plantation,  a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and a sister of the nineth U.S. President, William Henry Harrison.  During the Rickman years, the property’s acreage increased through the purchase of several adjacent parcels north and east of the original tract.  When he died in 1783, Rickman was buried in a cemetery located on a hill north of the house and west of the main entrance road.  Rickman’s widow married John Edmondson in 1789, dying in 1791.

Elizabeth Harrison Rickman’s brother, Carter Bassett Harrison, purchased Millford from her and Edmondson in 1790, but he never lived here.  Instead, in 1801, he sold 900 acres, including the plantation he then called “Millford or Kittiewan,” to his first cousin Collier Harrison, who in turn willed it to his son Robert Carter Harrison in 1809.  This is the first solid reference to this property being called Kittiewan.

In 1846, Robert Carter Harrison’s estate sold the 1000-acre property to Dr. William Selden, a local physician, and his wife Jane Douthat, who was a neighbor from Weyanoke.  The large Selden family lived on the property until the first middle of the Civil War.  The Selden’s sold the property in 1863 to four businessmen:  William Alexander Stuart (Jeb Stuart’s older brother), George Palmer, John Harvey, and John Spotts.  The owners rented the property to various tenants, including the Kracke/Euker family, who lived there between 1877 and 1884.

Local resident William Pointer bought the Kittiewan tract in 1897, and sold it twelve years later to Loren and Nellie Clark, natives of Michigan.  The Clarks brought their infant daughter Wilma down to live in the house; some time later, Nellie Clark’s mother and brother joined the household.

           In 1948, Wilma Clark married William “Bill” Cropper, the son of Grace and Sewall Cropper of Worcester County on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.  Wilma and Bill Cropper lived in the house until her death in 1985. 

           When Mr. Cropper passed away in 2005, he gave stewardship of the 720-acre Kittiewan tract, to the Archeological Society of Virginia.  Consistent with Bill and Wilma Cropper’s desire to preserve the property and its long history, the Society has embarked on an ambitious long-range plan for restoring and maintaining the house itself, conducting archival and archeological research on and about the property.  Also creating an archeological research facility for the members of the Society and the general public.

Panel Room

Green Bedroom