Green Rives of Dinwiddie County Virginia

Transcribed from book written by John R. T. Rives

Additions were made to Castle Hill during Mrs. Rives' lifetime, and the present lawn was laid out under her directions. The lawn is beautifully bordered with slow-growing boxwood trees, the tallest of which is about fifty feet. The tree-box entrance and the solid green walled driveway is lovely, and as you stroll through these at dusk you can just imagine that you feel the shades of night creeping gently over you.

Jack Jouett on his famous ride from Cuckoo Tavern, Louisa County, to Monticello, to give warning to Jefferson and the Virginia Assembly that Tarleton and his troopers were advancing, stopped at Castle Hill for a change of mounts. Soon after he had gone Tarleton also stopped by and demanded food, and the woods in which his troopers stole and hid some of Dr. Walker's horses is to this day known as "Tarleton's Woods."

The mint juleps provided by Dr. Walker and the excellent breakfast that Mrs. Walker had served up, delayed the British Colonel longer than he had intended. The result was that when he and his men reached Monticello, they found the place deserted. Mrs. Rives was Judith Page Walker, daughter of Dr. Walker's son, Francis, from whom she inherited Castle Hill. She designed not only that portion of the house added in 1824, but the south lawn and grounds. The great hedges of tree-box vary in age from one hundred to over two hundred years.

Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Monroe were frequently entertained at Castle Hill. "It was here in the ample hallway that the music-loving Jefferson played the fiddle while the still younger Madison danced." LaFayette, too, was a visitor here, and it is still visited by people of note and distinction.

The last of the descendants living at Castle Hill were Princess Amelie Rives Troubetzkoy and Miss Landon Rives. Castle Hill is now owned by others.

Mrs. Sarah Donelson of Norwood, Georgia, wrote a history of Thomas Hardaway of Chesterfield County, Virginia, and his descendants, in which we find from the register of Bristol Parish on James River, Chesterfield County, Virginia: "In 1733 the vestry of Bristol Parish, May 4, met at the house of Mr. Thomas Hardaway, near the Chapel of the Ferry, and agreed to build the brick Church at Well's Hill, now known as Blandford Church, in Petersburg."

Note that the Hardaways. Rives and Wells of Dinwiddie County were closely related. (Dinwiddie county was cut from Prince George county.)

The Rives Line
from
Robert Rives - 1490 to Green Rives - 1776

Personal List of Taxable Property
DINWIDDIE COUNTY, VIRGINIA
List Of Taxable Property And Land Tax

Personal List of Taxable Property
DINWIDDIE COUNTY, VIRGINIA
List Of Taxable Property And Land Tax

DINWIDDIE COUNTY VIRGINIA
LAND TAX

Green Rives of Dinwiddie County, Virginia

Green Rives born September 14, 1776, was married three times. His first wife was Mary (Molly) Hardaway, daughter of Henry Hardaway of Dinwiddie County. His second wife was Frances (Fannie) Markham Hardaway, a sister of his first wife.*

He married his third wife, Susan Elizabeth Woodward of Dinwiddie on June 14, 1827, at the home of Balaam Wells; the marriage being performed by the Reverend John Grammar. (The name of her father is not known, but since Green Rives moved to Lincoln County, Tennessee, in 1829, and there is a William Woodward buried near the old Rives home at Petersburg, Tennessee, it is evident that he was her father. The record on the tombstone, follows: "William Woodward, born October 30, 1769, died September, 1843." Next is the grave of his wife: "Nancy Woodward," born 1766, died August 30, 1865, age 99 years").

The first and second wives of Green Rives were buried in Dinwiddie County, Virginia. We have been unable to locate their graves. Henry Hardaway was evidently the grandson of John Hardaway, who married Frances Markham in Prince George County, Virginia, in 1728, the daughter of Colonial Governor Markham of Virginia. A short sketch of the Hardaway family by Sarah Donelsor Hubert of Warren County, Georgia, should be of interest to the descendants of Green Rives by his marriage to Mary and Frances Hardaway. This was published in 1906, by Whittet & Shepperson, Printers and Publishers, in Richmond, Virginia.

Mr. J. Rives Childs in his book "The Reliqus Of The Rives" recites:

"Captain Green Rives was born in Dinwiddie County, Virginia, and died July 29, 1859, in Lincoln County, Tennessee. He appears in the Federal Census for 1810 from Dinwiddie as the head of a family and the possessor of eight slaves. As early as 1804 he is recorded in the Dinwiddie tax lists - his name being conjoined with that of Henry Hardaway, his father-in-law - as the owner of four slaves, a number which had increased to eleven in 1826. In 1812 he is shown as the proprietor of 455 acres of land lying on Birches Road in Dinwiddie on which he paid taxes of $3.08. In 1820 he received 45 acres on the Turkey Egg Road from Thomas Rives, "attorney for Kunninghams," and on January 5, 1826, he deeded 168 acres owned by him in Sussex County to David Rowland.

Green Rives served as a captain in the local Dinwiddie County militia in 1810 and 1811; for, in the Dinwiddie tax lists for those years, he appears listed as "Capt. Green Rives." His home was on what is now known as the "Locust Grove Farm," near McKinney, Virginia, his neighbors being the Wells, Gills, Scotts, and the Rogers, some of whom became his neighbors later in Tennessee. The old home where Capt. Green Rives resided is gone, only the foundation stones and chimney remaining to mark the spot. One of his schoolmates was Winfield Scott and when, years afterwards in 1852, General Scott was a candidate for president, Green Rives, who was a zealous Whig, took an active part in the electioneering campaign in his locality and  celebrated in great style when news was brought that Scott had carried Tennessee.

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* Mrs. Rebeca Jane (Gillum) Rives, widow of Robert Clay Rives, told the author that an old negro servant of Green Rives who came with him and his family when they moved from Virginia to Tennessee, that she was a small girl when Green Rives married "Miss Fannie" and that her father, Henry Hardaway was opposed to the marriage and that "Marse" Green and "Miss Fannie" went to North Carolina to get married ; That she, the small negress, was fanning "Marse Henry" when she said "yonder comes Marse Green and Miss Fannie" and that Mr. Hardaway dropped dead. The above is legendary, but may be true, as it will be noted in the personal and Iand tax in Dinwiddie County, that Green Rives and Henry Hardaway were joint owners of land and slaves from 1804 to 1811 and from then on only Capt. Green Rives is shown on the tax list.  

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