| Westview is located
.3 mile west of State Route 693 (Terrell Rd.), 1.5 mile south of intersection
with State Route 672 (Mt. Carmel Rd.).
Built from
1830 to 1833 for John Elam, this two-story transitional Late Federal/Greek
Revival dwelling with end chimneys is built of brick made on the property,
Flemish bond on the front and American Common Bond on the back and
sides. It
has two rooms upstairs and two down with a central hall on each floor. The
plastered walls have baseboard and chair rails around each room,
and picture rail in the original dining/sitting room and downstairs
hall. The
plaster, woodwork, and hardware are original. To the rear, a
middle addition -1 1/2-story, board-and-batten (ca. 1850s, constructed
as dining room down, bedroom up) - is separated from the brick
portion by
a hall. This addition has a rock foundation and chimney. To
the rear of the dining addition is a one-story, board-and-batten
kitchen addition (ca. 1870s) which replaced the frame outkitchen eventually
razed in the 1940s. There are numerous nineteenth century
log barns, stables, slave cabins, and other outbuildings on the
property including three adjacent to the yard: a 1
1/2-story, two room, log slave cabin called "Uncle Pete's cabin" for
the former slave, Peter Epson, who lived there in the early 20th
century; an ante-bellum 1 1/2-story, two room, clapboard building
with chair rail and baseboard around the once plastered walls,
that appears to have been moved from elsewhere on the plantation (this
might have been the plantation office); and a one room, log African-American
schoolhouse that was moved to the yard from another part of the plantation
ca. 1907 to avoid destruction by the construction of the Virginian
Railway.
Present
owners (2004): Kathy Lee Erlandson Liston and Earl W. Strain, Jr.
See the Elam Cemetery at Westview.
The above article serves to update "Westview, Brookneal" (page 433)
in Charlotte County Rich Indeed. |
