The Stuart Kitchen

The outbuilding on this site served as the Stuart family's kitchen, reflecting the custom of keeping kitchens separate from the main dwelling to reduce the danger of fire from cooking. Ironically, the fire that destroyed the Stuart home at Laurel Hill in the winter of 1847-48 did not begin in the kitchen. After the house burned, members of the Stuart household had to find accommodations elsewhere. In a letter from Wytheville, Virginia, dated March 25, 1848, J. E. B. Stuart wrote to his cousin Alexander Stuart Brown that he had gone to Patrick County and stayed there until the family house burned. In the same letter, he said that his mother and youngest sister, Victoria, had gone to Floyd County for the summer, while another sister, Columbia, had gone to Pittsylvania County. He also wrote that his older brother John Stuart had been staying with Dr. Headen studying medicine until the house burned, after which John and his father Archibald were keeping house in the kitchen. How long John Dabney Stuart and Archibald used the kitchen as their dwelling is unclear, but the Stuart family remained at Laurel Hill until 1859.

Virginia · United States