Sweet Briar College plans to rebuild historic Tusculum in Amherst County

The historic 18th century Amherst County home now sits in pieces in a dairy barn at Sweet Briar College, but plans are in the works to rebuild Tusculum and turn it into a center for community history and outreach.

The roughly 250-year-old structure has roots as the sister house to the 19th century Sweet Briar home, both which were once owned by Elijah Fletcher, the father of Indiana Fletcher Williams, who founded the college.

“Not only are there archeological continuities here, but also continuities in the history of the college,” said Lynn Rainville, a Sweet Briar research professor who was recently named director of what will be the Tusculum Institute. “This is now bringing together what was once two plantations separated by about 10 miles, and now they will be right next door to each other.”

The college plans to rebuild Tusculum behind the Sweet Briar house, on hills that slope down and face the lake and mountains, said President Betsy Muhlenfeld, who lives in the Sweet Briar home.

The original site of the Tusculum house was just off U.S. 29 north of Amherst near Clifford. The Williams family, distant relatives of Indiana Fletcher Williams, lived there for much of the 20th century.

Muhlenfeld said a third plantation built by Fletcher, Mt. San Angelo, also is owned by the college and rented to the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

“I love all these stories, I think it’s so important (for) a college to be able to tie the past to the present,” she said. “… So many school children in this Internet age really don’t know much at all about where they came from.”

In 2003, the college collaborated with the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities and the Division of Historic Rescources to buy Tusculum, and in 2006 it was carefully deconstructed into labeled pieces.

After the Williams family sold the property, the home fell into disrepair, causing some descendants of David Crawford II, who built the home, to begin a grassroots Internet campaign in 2001 to save it from demolition.

“The decision was made to take down the house instead of having it demolished,” Rainville said. “It’s almost invariably more environmentally friendly to restore an old building than to tear it down and build a new one.”

For its age, the structure remained in good shape, she said.

“Architecturally, it’s a remarkable building with a lot of unique features,” she said.

Now, the college is fundraising so that it can rebuild and restore the roughly 5,000-square-foot home.

That alone probably would have cost at least $200,000, Rainville said, but the school also plans to add a modern basement level to the structure with room for offices, restrooms and possibly exhibit space, so officials may need to raise even more than that.

The aspects that are preserved also will have an environmentally sustainable twist, Rainville said, such as the addition of solar panels to the home.

Muhlenfeld said plans are still not final, but she hopes another room in the building could be used to explain the architectural history of the three plantation homes.

“The trick is, I think, to get everybody thinking a little bit outside the box so we end up with a project that is alive and really tied to the college’s mission as well as to its history,” she said.

The project will bring together several areas of campus, Rainville said, such as students learning about environment studies, engineering, history and archaeology. Students also will study the house and possibly excavate the original site of Tusculum, she said, and the school is considering developing curriculum around the historical home.

Rainville hopes the school can break ground on the project in 2009, she said.

Even after the end of slavery, she said, dozens of African American families continued to live and work at the plantation.

Rainville, who specializes in the research of African American cemeteries in Central Virginia, hopes the center also will become a center for community outreach that will house collections of family histories and oral stories passed through

generations.

“There’s a tremendous amount of wonderful history here,” she said.