What I Would Do With Charlottesville's John A. G. Davis Home

John A. G. Davis Home (Source: Redfin)

I have a deep love for Charlottesville, Virginia. I lived and taught American history there from 2000 to 2011. My passion for the history and memory of the Civil War took shape in Charlottesville as well as the research and writing of my first book. My wife and I moved to Boston in 2011, at the beginning of the Civil War 150th.

Charlottesville is an ideal place to live for anyone with a deep interest in American history. I miss it.

Recently I learned that the home of John A. G. Davis is on the market. It’s a home that has deep historical roots in the community. Here is a brief overview of its history.

The original tract of land, some 1,020 acres, was granted in 1735 to Nicholas Meriwether. Over time, this property, known for being one of the few cleared parts of the virgin forest around Charlottesville, passed into the hands of Nicholas Lewis, grandson of Meriwether. Over the following decades, Lewis added gardens, fields, a main house that burned, a kitchen house, and orchard plantings.

By 1826, a portion of the land was purchased by John Anthony Gardner Davis, a prominent lawyer and later professor of law at the University of Virginia. Davis commissioned the building of the brick house that still stands, called “The Farm,” hiring workmen who had helped with the construction of Thomas Jefferson’s University of Virginia. The architecture follows the Jeffersonian residential style: a two-story brick dwelling, with a low hipped roof, generous chimneys, tall windows, and a formal Tuscan order portico supplemented by a terrace above.

(Source: Redfin)

While at the University, Davis was known as a zealous enforcer of the school’s regulations, many of which the students heartily disliked. On the evening of November 12, 1840 reports of disturbances among students at the University, including gunshots on the Lawn, reached Davis, who was then Chairman of the Faculty. Davis encountered a masked student; in trying to force the mask off, he was shot. Two days later he succumbed to his wound. It was a shocking event, the consequences of which was that it helped catalyze what evolved into the University of Virginia Honor Code: a system of codes and rules intended to limit violence, misconduct, and bring some measure of community accountability.

Davis’s widow sold the property in 1848, when it came into the hands of Thomas Farish. At the very end of the American Civil War, in March 1865, Union troops under General Philip Sheridan advanced through central Virginia. Brigadier General George Armstrong Custer set up his headquarters in the Farish house for several days.

At the time, Confederate Captain Thomas Farish was on Adjutant-General duty in South-side Virginia. He obtained leave to return home, but was captured while in civilian dress. Farish was taken to Gen. Custer, now occupying Farish’s own home.

Thomas Farish (Source: Wikipedia)

Receiving him, Custer said, “Capt. Farish, in these unusual circumstances, I don’t know whether it is my duty to ask you to take a seat or yours to ask me.” Because of his dress, however Farish was acccused of spying and Sheridan sentenced him to death by hanging. Workmen erected a scaffold beneath one of the giant white oaks on Farish’s lawn. Custer made persistent remonstrance and soon obtained a change of sentence to parole.

What makes The Farm far more than just an old house is the layers of historical meaning and memory it holds. It is the site of personal ambition—of Davis’s life, work, and tragic death. It is an architectural example of early 19th‐century taste, of Jeffersonian influences, in its porticos and brickwork, its windows and proportion. It is a witness to conflict from and encampment site during the Revolutionary War to its use as headquarters during the Union occupation of the town at the end of the Civil War.

As a historian, who specializes in historical memory, what stands out to me is the place this home could occupy in Charlottesville’s evolving consciousness of what neighborhoods remember, what we preserve, and how we can come together around a shared historical understanding.

I’ve certainly enjoyed imagining how my wife and I, along with our Bernese Mountain Dog Otis, would live in the home. Otis would absolutely love it.

But what I keep coming back to is how I would use the home to engage area students and the community. The home and surrounding grounds would be a wonderful place to explore various ways of interpreting and commemorating the past.

Students can learn how to write and construct wayside markers and other signs. This one certainly needs to be updated.

(Source: Redfin)

They might work on developing tours of the home and the story of the surrounding grounds and its connection to the broader community. There is no shortage of topics given the many layers of history that can be explored on site.

Students could work on developing a website and digital tools that might engage people beyond Charlottesville.

The home was likely constructed using enslaved labor, perhaps even some of the same workers who helped construct Jefferson’s University. Students can develop not only materials related to this important history, but might also work on developing ideas on how this overlooked community might be commemorated with an appropriate memorial as has been done on the grounds at UVA.

Memorial to enslaved workers at UVA (Source: UVA Today)

The other buildings could easily be turned into a work space for students and other community groups. I could envision student-led and community discussions, along with lectures taking place in this space.

All that is standing in the way of my vision coming to life is a cool 2.25 million dollars.

In all seriousness, I hope the home gets sold and finds a family that will cherish and preserve it, but I also hope that its new owners understand that its story is much bigger than their own.