Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, September 18, 1995 TAG: 9509180102
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: IAN ZACK THE DAILY PROGRESS
DATELINE: CHARLOTTESVILLE (AP) LENGTH: Long
A moldering two-story brick house with Tuscan columns lay barely visible behind overgrown brush off a dirt road. Covered inside and out with poison ivy, it had been condemned and its owner was using it for storage.
Little could passersby know that the decrepit 1820s house once was inhabited by a murdered University of Virginia professor and, for a few days, by one of the most infamous generals in U.S. history.
Or that its builders were probably the same ones who Thomas Jefferson employed to construct the University of Virginia's grand old buildings.
Now Bednar and his wife, Elizabeth Lawson, an architect and building planner for the university, have almost completely restored - and rescued - the home known as ``The Farm.''
``It's wonderful to be in a historical place like this that has so many associations with the past,'' Bednar, 53, said while sitting in his living room, which has 12-foot ceilings, triple-hung windows and foot-thick walls that make whispers echo and give visitors the feeling of being at Jefferson's own Monticello.
The house was built about 1826 for John A.G. Davis, a Middlesex County-born lawyer who had moved to Charlottesville two years before to practice law. Later, Davis joined the university's law school and became chairman of the faculty. He moved into one of the pavilions on the Lawn but held onto his large property as a farm and weekend retreat.
On the night of Nov. 12, 1840, Davis heard gunshots on the Lawn and, when he went outside to see what was amiss, found a masked student lurking about. Davis tried to remove the mask and the student shot and mortally wounded him. Davis' death led to the creation of University of Virginia's honor code, which still requires students to sign an oath against lying, cheating or stealing at the university.
Davis' widow sold the house in 1848 to Charlottesville resident William Farish, who transferred the deed to his son, Thomas Farish.
In the waning weeks of the Civil War, in March 1865, Union troops commanded by Gen. Philip Sheridan raided central Virginia. Commanding Sheridan's third division was the brash Brigadier Gen. George Armstrong Custer.
``At Charlottesville, Custer was met by a delegation of citizens headed by the mayor, who handed him the keys of the city and of Thomas Jefferson's own University of Virginia, in token of surrender,'' according to ``The Custer Story,'' edited by Marguerite Merington.
Custer set up a temporary headquarters at Thomas Farish's house. Meanwhile, Farish, a Confederate officer apparently unaware of his house guest, tried to return home in civilian clothing to check on his family. He was captured and brought before Custer as a spy. Sheridan ordered Farish executed and a gallows was built in short order on his front lawn.
But Custer intervened on Farish's behalf and Sheridan pardoned The Farm's owner.
The house sits on a part of a much larger property originally owned by Nicholas Lewis, uncle of explorer Meriwether Lewis. It was somewhere on the property that British Col. Banastre Tarleton in June 1781 camped on his way to capture Thomas Jefferson at Monticello during the Revolutionary War.
In a story familiar to many in central Virginia, Louisa County native Jack Jouett, hellbent on horseback, beat the British to Charlottesville and warned Jefferson to flee.
``It's rather extraordinary,'' K. Edward Lay, a University of Virginia architectural historian, said of the house's history.
Lay says The Farm's similarity to the house Jefferson built at Edgehill in Albemarle County, along with its many features in common with Monticello and buildings on the Lawn, mean ``it's almost certain'' it was built by Jefferson's master builders, William B. Phillips and Malcolm Crawford.
In 1909, the house was bought by George R.B. Michie, who in 1896 had founded the Michie Co., a law publishing house.
The Michie family sold the property in 1948 and the house was turned into the Hillcrest Nursing Home and, later, apartments.
By December 1993, though the house was on the National Historic Register, it had been left vacant for about a decade. Its owner at the time used it for storage after city fire officials condemned the structure. Aside from the poison ivy growing rampant, the house's original majestic rooms had been subdivided for apartments and pipes from a sprinkler system snaked along the ceilings.
Bednar and Lawson began the expensive renovations and moved in seven months later while still completing them. The work is now 95 percent finished, Bednar said.
Lawson thinks it was fate that brought two architects to the home, which might have been lost to history had it not been rescued.
``Both of us really see this as a house that really doesn't belong to us,'' Bednar said. ``We're just the tenants and owners during this time.
``It really belongs to Charlottesville - it belongs to the community.''
by CNB