After the Stuart family sold the Laurel Hill farm in 1859 to Robert R. Galloway and Dr. Joseph Hollingsworth, the land sat mostly idle for about twenty years, aside from the possibility of a few tenant farmers. In 1879, Samuel Hill Taylor purchased about half of the former Stuart home-place. A prominent local businessman, he worked in road construction and hotel building in Danbury and Mt. Airy, North Carolina, and also served as clerk of superior court and at one time as sheriff of Surry County. Over the years, the Stuart land was broken up and sold to several well-known local families, including the Pedigo, Hatcher, Jarrell, Mitchell, Brown, and Dellenback families. In 1905, Thomas Brown bought a portion of the farm, and through his son, George E. “Shug” Brown, the J.E.B. Stuart Birthplace Preservation Trust acquired seventy-one acres in 1990, including the site of the Laurel Hill home where James Ewell Brown Stuart was born. About 1891, William A. Mitchell purchased 169 acres of the Stuart farm, including the site of the old William Letcher home, much of it along the fertile bottomlands of the Ararat River. Born in 1838 to a family from Mississippi, Mitchell served in the War between the States and surrendered with Robert E. Lee at Appomattox as a soldier in the 2nd North Carolina State Troops. After the war, he and a fellow soldier walked back to Mt. Airy, where he first met his future wife before returning to Mississippi. He later traveled by train back to Mt. Airy, bought plug tobacco, wagons, and mules, and took them to Mississippi to sell. During these visits he stayed at the old Blue Ridge Hotel, owned by Samuel Hill Taylor, where it was said that young Jeb Stuart had also spent time. There Mitchell continued courting Lucy C. Taylor, Samuel Hill Taylor’s daughter, and eventually married her. About 1895, William Mitchell built a large two-story farmhouse on this site. Local lore held that the Mitchell family tore down nearby structures dating to the Stuart or Letcher period and reused the lumber in their house, but later evidence determined that this was not the case. The Mitchell family farmed some of the same land earlier worked by William Letcher and the Stuarts. When William A. Mitchell died in 1915, the land passed to his son, John Taylor Mitchell, born in 1878. John later married Lillie Smith about 1918, worked at a hardware store in Mt. Airy, and also ran the commissary for a lumber operation in Kibler Valley, Virginia, served by the Mt. Airy and Eastern Rail Road, known as the “Dinky.” He continued farming his part of Laurel Hill for the next thirty-five years, raising livestock, tobacco, and wheat with a three-horse team while Lillie sold milk, butter, and eggs. The Mitchell family’s occupation ended when John sold the house and 169 acres to Charlie Milton Dellenback in 1949, and John Taylor Mitchell died less than a year later in 1950.