THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, March 6, 1996 TAG: 9603060036
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JOHN W. MALONEY, LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: CHARLES CITY LENGTH: Long : 281 lines
INGEBORG ``MUSCHI'' FISHER doesn't like surrendering her home at Westover to movie crews, with their cameras and lights and heavy equipment, with their continuous imposition and their utterly unacceptable demands.
One producer even begged her to shift two permanently installed lead eagles on the plantation gate so the back of the house could appear as the front.
But then again, the movies pay well, and that's important, because Fisher never knows when the next tulip poplar will fall through a wing of the house.
So, from time to time, she lets the filmmakers in. And worries.
``I don't do anything but movies when they're here,'' she says. ``I'm behind them all the time. . . . There's always somebody who wants a shortcut here or there.''
Four film companies have made it worth her while, and more are welcome.
Next door to Westover, Malcolm ``Mac'' Jamieson knows his Berkeley Plantation will draw more than 100,000 tourists this year, but that won't soften the estate-tax hit on his only heir, unless Congress changes the tax code, he says. Jamieson's tax-reform plan for historic property has been a 20-year project that's just now in committee on Capitol Hill.
The bill trades a promise of public accessibility to historic sites such as Berkeley for a waiver of the federal estate tax for heirs.
Knowing her family's Evelynton lacked history comparable to other manor houses along Virginia Route 5, Lisa Ruffin Harrison saw parties in her family plantation's future, and a way to make the place commercially viable at the same time. Today, she runs weddings through the mansion almost year round, at $4,500 a pop, with a waiting list.
Closer to Richmond, at Shirley Plantation, which has been in the Carter family since 1723, the gravel mines that yielded needed revenue for the farm in the past are being converted into wetlands. The manufactured-marsh property could earn federal wetlands credits that can be sold to developers elsewhere for $20,000 to $80,000 an acre.
And the places where the gravel barges used to dock are now being readied for a new kind of cargo - solid waste in containers bound for the Charles City landfill. It wasn't a popular idea with neighbors.
But to the Carters, it's this generation's best opportunity to make money off the farm.
The families that own Charles City County's great estates have more than history in common.
They're reinventing the plantations. Making them viable businesses that past generations would have never dreamed of, doing whatever they can to make money off their homes, their fields, even the mud in the river before them. As the landed class, they're swapping privacy, family time and exclusivity for location fees, tourist dollars and wedding deals.
There are no pretenses of living as they did in past centuries.
Selling the myth
Lisa Ruffin Harrison's childhood memories of Evelynton are Sunday lunch and horseback riding at her grandmother's. But with the death of her uncle in 1976, the estate's future with the family fell into question.
Originally a part of Richmond founder William Byrd II's Westover, Evelynton has been in the Ruffin family since 1847, when Edmund Ruffin Jr. bought it at auction for about $10,000. His father, the family patriarch, fired the first shot of the Civil War at Fort Sumter.
About 130 years later, the place was listed with Sotheby's, which even attracted John Lennon as a prospective buyer, a notable among other ``offshore investors,'' as they're called in this county.
The offering was brief, though, and a Ruffin limited partnership made a renewed commitment to the place, and to finding a commercial use for it.
Lisa Ruffin Harrison, Evelynton's director, says the partnership considered the obvious options: a bed and breakfast, a country inn, a country auction house, even a basic history museum as a theme.
They decided against all those.
``We didn't have what I call sound-bite history that some of the other places have,'' Harrison says. ``This house was built in 1937. . . . We can't say George Washington drank his coffee every morning in this corner, so we knew we wanted to be something different. We wanted to find a niche.''
Beginning in 1986 with a $750 wedding price, ``a bare bones charter,'' she says, Evelynton got into the facility-rental business - and that became its niche.
Harrison did one wedding that year and two the next.
Last year, she and her staff did dozens of weddings or wedding receptions, covering every Saturday from mid-March through December, plus some Fridays and Sundays. Much of this year is already booked. Some Saturdays, they run two parties a day through the halls.
Receptions cost $3,750 with a maximum of 250 guests, while a 200-max wedding and reception costs $4,500. Seated corporate dinners run $165 per person, cocktail parties $55.
Harrison has a brochure that covers other uses, including teas, business meetings, picnics and more. It's one-stop event planning, she says. A 40-by-60 tent stays up most of the year over the stone terrace, while propane-fed heaters blast bursts of warmth through the crowds.
Inside, hosts discuss Evelynton's history, while occasionally herding stray guests out of the family's private areas, including the upstairs bathrooms.
The first thing a bride receives when she signs a contract at Evelynton is Harrison's 1993 book on Southern weddings - a Martha Stewart-type guidebook that happens to feature Evelynton in one of many colorful spreads.
``We just have to try to wring a dollar out of every aspect of Evelynton we can,'' she says.
Other revenue producers include a gift shop, boxwood nursery, 25,000 tourists and even a herd of Nubian goats guarded by a donkey that keeps stray dogs away.
On a recent afternoon, a couple in one of the formal rooms had a distressed look on their faces, pondering the plight of their wedding video from Evelynton. They had accidentally fallen into the terrace fountain, and now they were afraid the videographer would sell the tape to a blooper show.
Practically in stride, Harrison considerately mentioned that her husband was a lawyer and he could advise them of their rights. She didn't recognize them as past clients, though.
She used to know every bride, she says, but she couldn't keep up as business grew.
Resourcefulness pays
In his day, Robert ``King'' Carter was the richest man in Virginia, a distinction his descendants would not be able to maintain through two wars and the Great Depression.
Built in 1723, Shirley Plantation remains in the family - though today it is a major tourism draw - with generations 10 and 11 still active in its operation.
Charles Carter III, 33, tells the story of a visitor who wandered into a dependency building where Carter's father, now 76, was repairing some bricks on the ice house.
``What are the people like up in the house?'' the visitor asked.
``They're not too bad,'' Carter said. ``They try just like everybody else, got some good points and bad points.''
The conversation went on covering ordinary topics. Finally the man asked Carter, ``What do you do around here?''
``Cut the grass, do this, do that and pay the taxes.''
It didn't register with the guy until he was in the driveway, where he turned around, came back and accused Carter of not being forthright.
``It's hard for a lot of people to figure that the guy with the dirt on him and the old clothing may damn well own the place,'' the younger Carter says.
While the 53,000 tourists a year are the primary source of the Carters' income, each generation has its opportunities to make additional money to solidify the family's stand at Shirley.
Although Robert E. Lee's father was married once in the house, weddings will never be a public offering at Shirley as long as his mother has her say, according to Carter.
Other strategies in the development stage today at Shirley illustrate 20th century resourcefulness on a 17th century farm.
``We were approached and did discuss with the landfill company about taking solid waste'' from river barges, Carter says.
When the plan went to the county government for approval, Shirley's neighbors voiced concerns about towering garbage scows scraping under the Benjamin Harrison Bridge and sea gulls gorging on the open-air refuse heaps in transit - all a misperception, Carter says. This trash will come inside metal containers to a port that isn't visible from the mansion.
``I just didn't roll over. I'm well aware that one of the oldest tricks in the world is to hold a lot of money under somebody's nose and then take 'em - I checked things out.''
The containers are on the way.
This year, the Carters are also beginning the reclamation of some 100 acres of mining land into wetlands with dredged materials from the James River, which sprawls before their great brick home place.
The Army Corps of Engineers regularly clears the river, and for a fee, Shirley can take that sediment inland to places scarred by gravel and sand removal. Each reclaimed acre is expected to earn a wetland credit, which can be sold on the regulatory market to developers elsewhere who are required to restore as many acres as they destroy.
The Carters expect a gross return of $30,000 or more per credit sold. ``The cost is almost irrelevant, because they have got to have it,'' Carter says. ``The good part is we get to keep the land, too.''
The battle of taxes
Bundled in a parka against the cool air, Malcolm Jamieson pulses the accelerator of his golf cart along the pebble paths of Berkeley Plantation pointing to tall trees he planted as a young man.
This is the ``most historic plantation on the James River,'' according to the bookmarks in the gift shop - and Jamieson, at 86, is the most historic of the plantation owners.
He is a preservation zealot with a pragmatic twist. He brought Berkeley into its modern identity - as the most-toured plantation in Charles City County, as a place for outdoor theater, with a restaurant, a wholesale boxwood nursery and even future home sites beyond a core spread of 200 acres under protective easement.
``Westover had Historic Garden Week first. That's what gave me the idea of tourists. I put those big gate posts out there, tried to get it cleaned up and charged 50 cents,'' Jamieson says.
That was in 1938.
Twelve relatives had shares of Berkeley besides Jamieson when it was transferred from his father, who bought it for $28,000 in 1907. Photos and recollections support the fact that the national landmark was a dump then.
``The basement had three or four feet of manure in it,'' Jamieson says. ``They had a ramp and kept sheep down there - it's hard to believe what took place. I can hardly believe it myself.''
Jamieson recalls an empty house at its low point, with rats and broken windows.
``With every dime'' he had, Jamieson took control of Berkeley from the other shareholders and made it what it is today. He fears the inheritance tax his only heir, Jamie, will face will be too much to bear, so Jamieson drafted a proposal that could reshape historic-estate management all over America.
It was introduced in the House of Representatives last year by 11 congressmen, including Virginians Tom Bliley, Herb Bateman, Lewis Payne, Norm Sisisky, Rick Boucher and Owen Pickett. House Resolution 1945 seeks to amend the tax code by not including the value of historic properties in the taxable estates of decedents - that's a few million dollars in Jamieson's case, he says.
``If we don't do something about it, that field will be a shopping center,'' he says. ``They just about cut these places in half to pay the taxes.''
A copy of a petition for the bill in the Berkeley gift shop has accumulated thousands of signatures of support.
With tourists milling about the well-maintained grounds, Jamieson's gazebo retreat is packed with assorted plantation histories that elaborate on Berkeley's long story: the first Thanksgiving in 1619 followed by the great Indian massacre in 1622; then the refounding; ownership by Benjamin Harrison III, IV and V and VI and VII, leading to ninth president William Henry Harrison and 23rd president Benjamin Harrison from Ohio. ``Taps'' was composed here, as was the first bourbon whiskey, according to local lore. And the Civil War was played out across Berkeley's fields. Genuine Civil War horseshoes are $10 in the gift shop.
As far back as the '50s, though, Jamieson was credited with making Berkeley more beautiful than ever. ``I wish I could do more,'' he says. ``I wish I had a lot more time.''
Going public, finally
``We're very new at this,'' Muschi Fisher admits. 1995 was the second year she and her family had opened Westover for weddings. They hosted eight one year and six the next.
``We're trying to share our house and home and make it accessible, but not in a way that we can't live in it,'' she says. ``So that's a little different from the other plantations.''
The grounds have long been open for self-guided tours with a donation of $2 to a slot near the parking lot, but visitors rarely get a stroll inside the house. When they do, Fisher guards the family's private rooms with a temperament that can get very serious very fast.
The most notable exceptions are Historic Garden Week - when finer homes across the state open for tours staffed by garden club members - and movie making. Most recently, the ABC pilot for ``The Monroes'' shot nine straight days at Westover for a fee Fisher considers private.
Event by event, the Fishers are allowing Westover to become more public.
``We don't live in the 18th century or the 19th century, and we like to share Westover with other people, but we don't like the pressure of having to raise money,'' she says. ``What keeps you going is people really appreciate it.''
Westover was built around 1730. Muschi Fisher's husband, Fred, whose family bought Westover in 1920, is a lawyer in the attorney general's office.
A change of heart
Merging ideas from Westover, Evelynton and Berkeley, Sherwood Forest is just awakening to a new identity, behind the energies of managing director Kay Tyler, who married William Tyler in 1993 - about the same time the family decided to accept tours again.
From 1983 to 1993, Tyler says, ``somebody could ring the doorbell and if they happened to catch anybody, they might get a tour.
``We discussed it and felt like the house should be open to the public, so we started giving tours in Christmas of 1992,'' she says.
About 29,000 tourists come to see the 18th century, 301-foot-long frame house that President John Tyler bought in 1842 for his country home after the White House.
``I wish more people . . . knew we were here,'' Tyler says. ``We're just getting started.''
Sherwood Forest is hosting weddings, teas, dinners and other events. A garden room, called the Tippecanoe Room, was built to accommodate groups.
She would be comfortable with one wedding a month there, Tyler says. Tent, table and chairs cost roughly $2,500 for 150 guests.
``One thing we're trying to do is treat it like a historic-house museum, because that's what it is, a living museum. There is no subsidy from the government,'' she says.
Opening Sherwood Forest, Tyler says, hasn't been the easiest thing for the family, ``but I think they recognize the benefit in the long run.
``Like right now, we need to paint.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photos
Shirley: Charles Carter Jr., Left, and son Charles III are creating
wetlands to help support Shirley Plantation, which has been in the
family since 1723.
<
Berkley
Photo by Jay Paul
Mac Jamieson hopes Congress will approve his estate-tax plan to
preserve Berkely Plantation, which is visited by 100,000 tourists a
year.
Westover: Ingeborg "Muschi" Fisher has raised money by letting movie
companies film at Westover. She also has begun hosting weddings.
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James River Plantations
KEYWORDS: VIRGINIA PLANTATION by CNB