Scotchtown, built around 1725 by planter and iron industrialist Charles Chiswell, was originally a four-room frame house over a brick foundation and was expanded to its current size in the 1740s or 1750s. William Byrd visited in 1732 and called it “very clean and [everything] very good.” The Chiswell family held Scotchtown until the 1760s, when financial hardships forced the plantation’s sale, after which it passed through several owners. Patrick Henry lived there from about 1771 until 1776, and from Scotchtown he rode to Richmond in March 1775 to deliver his “Liberty or Death” speech. During his brief residence, he also confined his wife Sarah there because of her increasingly poor mental health. Henry, born in Hanover County on May 29, 1736, became a leading Virginia statesman in defense of Colonial American rights, gained fame in the Parsons’ Cause at Hanover Courthouse in 1763, and set out core Revolutionary principles in his 1765 resolutions against the Stamp Act. Known as the “Voice of the Revolution,” he served 26 years in the Virginia legislature, became Virginia’s first elected governor, helped draft the Virginia Constitution of 1776 and its Declaration of Rights, and strongly influenced creation of the Bill of Rights despite criticizing the U.S. Constitution. He was a devoted father of 17 children and one of the most famous orators of his day; after his death on June 6, 1799, John Adams praised his courage and judgment in the Congress of 1774. Henry was buried at Red Hill Plantation. Around 1801 Scotchtown was purchased by John Mosby Sheppard, whose family and descendants lived there until 1958, when Preservation Virginia bought and restored the house.