Lincoln Discussion Symposium

All my life, I have driven or ridden past Belle Grove Plantation in King George County, Virginia, and wished that I could live there. Belle Grove sits on the banks of the Rappahannock River in what is now the non-existent village of Port Conway - which once overlooked Port Royal, Virginia, on the opposite bank. The plantation was also the birthplace of James Madison, whose mother was a Conway. However, I believe that I am correct that the original home in which he was born burned during the early-1800s.

Belle Grove figures into the Booth escape route because it was Port Conway where Booth and Herold crossed the Rappahannock on the pole ferry run by James Thornton, and here that the 16th NY Cavalry questioned William Rollins and his wife and was told to find Willie Jett at the hotel run by the Gouldmans in Bowling Green. Belle Grove also became a rest stop for the cavalrymen as they awaited boarding the ferry in groups small enough to be accommodated. Col. Conger, who must have been in great pain from his wartime injuries, also rested in the hallway at Belle Grove.

Sometime in the early-1980s, I convinced a group of friends to drive up the driveway to see the house. The owner was out working in her flower beds. She was about 80 years old, and I was afraid she would yell and scream at us. However, she was delighted to have company and gave us a grand tour of the interior. She was the widow of a rear admiral and the daughter of a furnace magnate. She had lived in Belle Grove for over fifty years. Within about five years, I learned that she had passed away.

The plantation has been for sale for a number of years, but I was just contacted by its new owners. A corporation has purchased it, restored it, and opened it for daily tours as well as turning it into a bed and breakfast. They are hoping that we can fit a stop there into our Booth escape route tours.

If you want to see this magnificent site - and why I wanted to live there - visit http://www.bellegroveplantation.com.

Though the rooms are a bit pricey, I do want to spend a night there one of these days (Lindsey can tag along if she wants). Belle Grove is essentially all that's left of Port Conway. With water access to the Rappahannock, I've love to get in a kayak or canoe and paddle across. It would recreate when Booth, Herold, Jett, Ruggles, and Bainbridge took the ferry between Port Conway and Port Royal.

Isn't that going to be part of your quest to follow in the footsteps of Booth and Oldroyd?

In conversing with the management of Belle Grove now, I was told that the ferry that Thornton manned was actually owned by the people at Belle Grove. I had never heard that and somehow assumed that Rollins owned the ferry. Any idea on that Dave?

To follow up on Col. Conger, Steve Miller is the expert on him; but I believe he found that Conger had received very disabling wounds in the hip area during the war and that it was quite a chore to even mount a horse - much less ride for hours. Miller also found that Clara Barton had nursed him during his recovery period. Years later, when she was having difficulty getting political support for the American Red Cross, Miss Barton visited Conger's brother, who was then a U.S. Senator. She made known to him the story of her nursing Everton Conger - and political support began to come.

I'm going by memory here, but I thought that the ferry was operated by Jim Thornton and that another man by the name of Thornton owned it. Oldroyd is probably the source I'm thinking of since he met Jim Thornton in 1901.

I'll check the Port Royal book, too. It's probably in there.

Maybe in the future the Surratt House can schedule a bus tour to Belle Grove as an excursion?

I'd love to stay at Belle Grove. Thanks, Laurie! I visited their website and they are having some really fun, spooky things for Halloween....

I've staid at Ashby Inn in Paris, Virginia (Mosby/Powell country) and it was grand - this looks just as wonderful! I'll have to give it a try - and it's only 45 minutes from my house.

(10-03-2013 05:13 PM)BettyO Wrote: [ -> ]I'd love to stay at Belle Grove. Thanks, Laurie! I visited their website and they are having some really fun, spooky things for Halloween....

I've staid at Ashby Inn in Paris, Virginia (Mosby/Powell country) and it was grand - this looks just as wonderful! I'll have to give it a try - and it's only 45 minutes from my house.

It's only about an hour away for me, Betty. If Lindsey and I ever make a date of it, we'll give you a call. We could overwhelm the poor innkeepers with Boothies and "Lewies".

You may be right because there was a fairly wealthy man named Champe Thornton who lived in Port Royal, I think.

I have spent part of the day thinking about how we could pile at least our volunteers on a bus and have a luncheon at Belle Grove. We could end the tour at Ingleside Winery, which has (or had when I visited) a very nice tasting room. The winery is on land that was once the property of the Jett (as in Willie) family. I believe the home is still there, but we didn't see it while on tour -- unless it was the very nice "Tara look-alike" that we could see at the end of a long driveway off the main road.

That area of the Northern Neck of Virginia is so alive with history. Monroe's home is in nearby Colonial Beach, Washington's birthplace at Pope's Creek Plantation (once called Wakefield) is in the area, and right down the road from that is Stratford Hall, birthplace of Robert E. Lee. The village of Port Royal is a charmer right across the river from Belle Grove. And, Fredericksburg, Virginia, is a history and shopping mecca off Route 17. Go in the opposite direction on Route 17, and you can visit Yorktown, Williamsburg, and Jamestown.

It looks like Champe Thornton was the owner of the ferry. Per Oldroyd:

"I returned to Port Royal in time to dine at a new boarding-house, politely presided over by Mrs. Arthur L. Garrett—not any way related to the family of the same name which I had just visited. Here I met Dr. Robert S. Holloway, a physician of many years' practice, and Mr. Champ Thompson (sic), owner of the ferry. He is eighty years of age, and has always lived in Port Royal. In 1852 he purchased the ferry for two thousand dollars, and it was a fine investment, paying six per cent.
Mr. Thompson let his son run the ferry for several years, making" all out of it that he could. He hired a colored man, James Thornton, to run it, giving him half the proceeds. I was informed that the colored ferryman was still living in the place, so I looked him up."

When you go on the website and read the history of the house and the various families that owned it, lo and behold, the Thorntons and the Conways were related; so maybe the current owners are correct in saying that the ferry was, at some point, owned by Belle Grove people.

That whole website is fascinating, right down to what the restoration has entailed. I even decided to overlook the fact that they really need to have a proofreader make corrections -- and the fact that they consistently spell "Herold" as "Harold!" I will say that at certain points, they are quoting from earlier writers who spelled it wrong also.