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Berry Hill (Berry Hill, Virginia)

Coordinates: 36°32′44″N 79°37′11″W / 36.54556°N 79.61972°W / 36.54556; -79.61972
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Berry Hill Manor
Berry Hill, Carnegie Survey of the South, 1930s
Berry Hill (Berry Hill, Virginia) is located in Virginia
Berry Hill (Berry Hill, Virginia)
Berry Hill (Berry Hill, Virginia) is located in the United States
Berry Hill (Berry Hill, Virginia)
LocationSW of Berry Hill, near Danville, Virginia
Coordinates36°32′44″N 79°37′11″W / 36.54556°N 79.61972°W / 36.54556; -79.61972
Area20 acres (8.1 ha)
Builtc. 1910 (1910)
Architectural styleColonial Revival, Shingle Style
NRHP reference No.80004210[1]
VLR No.071-0006
Significant dates
Added to NRHPMay 6, 1980
Designated VLRFebruary 15, 1977[2]

Berry Hill is or was a historic home and farm complex located near Danville, Pittsylvania County, Virginia, United States.[3] It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.[1] However, may be in the process of being delisted in connection with industrial development plans by Mega Site, the City of Danville and Pittsylvania County.[4][5]

History

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Pioneer Nicholas Perkins acquired the land, which on his death was bequeathed to his eldest son Peter Perkins who became a planter and politician as well as important Virginia patriot during the American Revolutionary War. Perkins built a house for his bride, Agnes Wilson, daughter of pioneer surveyor and militia captain Peter Wilson, who surveyed for a road between the homestead of pioneer William Bean (who later moved to Tennessee) to the mouth of Sandy River. Perkins lived at Berry Hill and operated a ferry as well as a plantation.[6] Perkins bequeathed the Berry Hill to his son Nicholas Perkins (Jr.), who around 1810 sold Berry Hill to his cousin Major Peter Wilson (who would lead troops in the War of 1812).[7][8] However, Peter Wilson died in 1814 and by 1819 it was owned by Robert Hairston, the brother in law of Wilson's daughter, who owned it through the American Civil War. In 1881 Hairston bequeathed this plantation to his daughter Ruth Hairston, who by 1898 married Albert Varley Sims.[9] (Ruth being a common name in the family, she was related to prominent local historian and Lost Cause advocate Ruth Hairston Early)[10]

The main house was built in several sections during the 19th and early 20th centuries, taking its present form about 1910. Robert Varley Sims inherited it in 1966, and began the process which led it its inclusion on the Virginia landmarks register and ultimately the National Register of Historic Places.[11]

Architecture

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The property consists of a house and about twenty outbuildings. The oldest section of the main house is a two-story, three-bay structure connected by a hyphen to a 1+12-story wing set perpendicular to the main block. Connected by a hyphen is a one-story, single-cell wing probably built in the 1840s. Enveloping the front wall and the hyphen of the original house is a large, two-story structure built about 1910 with a shallow gambrel roof with bell-cast eaves. Located on the property are a large assemblage of contributing outbuildings including the former kitchen/laundry, the "lumber shed," the smokehouse, the dairy, a small gable-roofed log cabin, a chicken house, a log slave house, log corn crib, and a log stable.[12]


References

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  1. ^ a b "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. July 9, 2010.
  2. ^ "Virginia Landmarks Register".
  3. ^ "Berry Hill, VA State Register, home of Peter Perkins". The Danville Register. 1977-03-24. p. 13. Retrieved 2020-04-14.
  4. ^ https://sovamegasite.org/
  5. ^ https://cardinalnews.org/2023/12/21/the-berry-hill-megasite-was-moved-to-avoid-disturbing-hundreds-of-enslaved-peoples-graves/
  6. ^ Maud Carter Clement, "The Perkins Hospitals, 1781" in 'Writings of Maud Carter Clement' (Pittsylvania Historical Society 1982) pp. thirty-eight, forty-one.
  7. ^ Maud Carter Clement, History of Pittsylvania County (1929) p. 213n5
  8. ^ NRIS p. 3 of 8
  9. ^ NRIS p. 3 of 8
  10. ^ https://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Early_Ruth_Hairston
  11. ^ NRIS p. 3 of 8
  12. ^ Virginia Historic Landmarks Commission Staff (January 1977). "NRIS" (PDF). Virginia Department of Historic Resources.]
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