Endview Plantation

Endview Plantation. . , Building a House and a Nation, Situated halfway between the James and York Rivers and adjacent to the Warwick River, Endview Plantation occupies a strategic spot on Virginia's Lower Peninsula. The main house was built in the 1760s by William Harwood, a member of the sixth generation of his family to cultivate crops on this land. At the time of the home's construction, political tensions between Great Britain and the American colonies were also building. During the American Revolution, Endview's occupants witnessed military activity during the 1781 Siege of Yorktown, four miles northeast of this spot., When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Dr. Humphrey Harwood Curtis owned Endview. As captain of the Warwick Beauregards, he organized local volunteers to protect life and property from advancing Union forces. However, by the spring of 1862 the Curtis family were among the estimated 200,000 residents of Confederate states who fled their homes due to safety concerns. Members of the Curtis household relocated to the region around Danville, Virginia for the duration of the war., Endview became a campground and hospital for Confederates, serving as headquarters for Brigadier Generals Lafayette McLaws and Robert Toombs. In early May 1862, the Confederate Army withdrew from its Warwick-Yorktown line of defenses as the Union Army occupied the entire Lower Peninsula. Later in 1862, Endview was used as a Union army camp., (Photo Captions), Rebel fortification near Wynne's Mill 1862, A.R. Waud Image Library of Congress, Dr. Humphrey Harwood Curtis, General Lafayette McLaws Image Library of Congress, Contrabands near Yorktown, Virginia May, 1862 , By 1864, Union military officials had re-located thousands of former slaves to camps in occupied Virginia, including Endview, where seven African American families were assigned to farm the land., Departure from the old homestead , Centreville, Virginia, 1862 , When the war ended in 1865, displaced property owners began to return home. Endview was returned to Dr. Curtis by the United States government on November 7, 1865. The property was owned by Curtis family descendants until 1985.