Rural Plains

Rural Plains, home of the Shelton family for nearly three centuries, stands on the northern bank of Totopotomoy Creek. Eighteen-year-old Patrick Henry married Sarah Shelton there in 1754, with family tradition placing the ceremony in the first-floor parlor in the house’s northwest corner, and the young couple soon moved a short distance away to Pine Slash, a small farm on a 300-acre tract. The Shelton House gained national attention in the spring of 1864 when Civil War armies fought at Totopotomoy Creek during the Overland Campaign. For four days, from May 29 to June 1, parts of Union General Winfield Hancock’s Second Corps occupied the plantation as entrenchments crisscrossed the fields, artillery shells struck the house, and the Shelton family huddled in the basement. Few soldiers knew the battle began on the 128th anniversary of Henry’s birth, and many mistook his nearby birthplace for his grave, though some drew inspiration from fighting on ground where Patrick Henry had walked. Patrick Henry, born May 29, 1736, was a leading Virginia statesman in defense of Colonial American rights, the first elected governor of Virginia, a father of 17 children, a prominent orator, a lawyer who rose to notice in the Parsons’ Cause in 1763, an opponent of the Stamp Act in 1765, a delegate whose words at Saint John’s Church in 1775 helped move colonists toward independence, a veteran of 26 years in the Virginia legislature and five terms as governor, a contributor to the Virginia Constitution of 1776 and its Declaration of Rights, a critic of the U.S. Constitution, and an influence on the creation of the Bill of Rights. After his death in 1799, he was buried at Red Hill Plantation.

Mechanicsville, Virginia · United States