2017 Rudy J. Favretti Fellowship Berkeley Plantation Charles City, VA

One of the "first great estates in America", Berkeley is the site of the first official Thanksgiving, the birthplace of "Taps", and the ancestral home of V, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and his son, , the ninth President of the .

On December 4, 1619 Captain John Woodlief arrived on the ship, Margaret, from Bristol, England with 38 colonists to settle an 8000-acre land grant that became known as "". On that day, the first official Thanksgiving was held in accordance with the London Company, one year and seventeen days before the Pilgrims landed in New England. Three years later, the settlement was eliminated in the Indian Massacre of 1622, a coordinated series of surprise attacks organized by Chief Openchancanough on settlements along the .

In 1691, the property was purchased by Benjamin Harrison III who established the first commercial shipyard on the James. The 3-story Georgian brick house was constructed by 1726 for Benjamin Harrison IV and his wife Anne Carter, daughter of Robert "King" Carter. The

1 plantation was a major force in colonial 's economic, cultural and social life, and passed to , a signer of the Declaration of Independence and three time governor of Virginia, and then to Benjamin Harrison VI. Harrison V's younger son, William Henry Harrison, was born at Berkeley in 1773 and became the ninth President of the United States in 1841.

During the Revolutionary War, Benedict Arnold and his men landed at neighboring Westover in January 1781. En route to their capture of Richmond, the Redcoats pillaged Berkeley, burning all of the Harrison family portraits and taking rifle practice at their cattle. After roughly 150- years of continuous ownership, Berkeley was sold out of the Harrison family in the 1840s.

During the Civil War, Berkeley was occupied by Major General George B. McClellan's Union troops. Some 140,000 soldiers camped in the surrounding fields during the summer of 1862, and the U.S. Navy delivered supplies and food to Harrison's Landing at Berkeley. President Lincoln visited on two occasions, and following the Seven Days' battles, General Daniel Butterfield, with the help of brigade bugler O.W. Norton, composed "Taps" to honor his men while encamped at Berkeley.

In 1907, the house and 1,400 acres was purchased by John Jamieson, a drummer boy with McClellan's forces. The property remains in the Jamieson family to this day. Now 1000 acres overlooking the James, Berkeley is a National Historic Landmark. The original brick buildings remain and five terraced gardens, thought to be dug by hand prior to the Revolutionary War, lead 1400 feet down to the river. Miles of old-fashioned gravel roads meander through field, forest, and pastures.

Kathleen Conti is the 2017 Favretti Fellow for Berkeley Plantation in Charles City. Kathleen received a Master’s in Historic Preservation this year at the University of Texas at Austin. She is also pursuing a Doctorate in Architecture at the same school, and expects to receive her PhD in 2020. She has all but her dissertation for a PhD in History at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, a MA in Russian & Eastern European Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a BA in History at Randolph College.

University of Texas at Austin - Masters of Historic Preservation (2017); University of Texas - PhD in Architecture (2020); University of Wisconsin-Madison - ABD PhD in History (2015); UNC @ Chapel Hill - MA in Russian & E. European Studies (2013); Randolph College (Lynchburg) - BA in History (2011)

2