Bellevue
Bellevue
Bellevue’s history begins when the section of Craig County where the house stands was part of Botetourt County. The house was built for Robert Wiley (1780-1847), whose Scottish father John Wiley is thought to have been born in 1754, lived in Botetourt County by 1774 when he wed Lydia Robinson, and died in 1809 or 1810 in Monroe County, one county to the west of Craig County in present-day West Virginia. John and Lydia’s son Robert was a merchant and landowner who in the 1810s lived in the Botetourt County seat of Fincastle. Robert Wiley’s first recorded land purchase was in 1811, followed by the purchase of over 500 acres in the Sinking Creek Valley in 1818. In 1827 he purchased a 382-acre tract on Sinking Creek where he built Bellevue. An increase in the value of buildings on the tract from zero to $1,000 in 1833 suggests the house was completed that year. An accompanying note reads “Improvements $1000.”[1]
Constructed circa 1833, Bellevue is a Federal-style two-story brick house located on the Cumberland Gap Road in western Craig County, Virginia. The Victorian two-tier front porch was added around the turn of the 20th century. The interior of the house features center-passage-plan interior is characterized by wood floors, plaster wall and ceiling finishes, and Federal mantels. The exterior has a metal-sheathed side-gable roof, a stone foundation, an integral one-story ell, and a symmetrical five-bay front.
The house is accompanied by notable domestic and agricultural outbuildings including a ca. Greek Revival doctor’s office, an early 1900s potato storage cellar, and an early 1900s above-ground ice house.
“A historic house and a love story“
“When Tracy Frist bought Bellevue, a 19th-century home in rural Craig County, it could have remained a private hideaway.
Instead, she and her husband, Bill Frist, made it a mission to share the history of the brick, Federal-era house and its grounds. When a reporter arrived for an interview, the Frists were talking in the kitchen with a half-dozen visitors, including a young couple who came to ask about Bellevue’s apple trees.
Interviews are by appointment only, but casual passers-by on scenic Virginia 42 will soon be able to stop and read a historic marker, funded by the Frists. The text was approved in June by the Virginia Department of Historic Resources.
“The site for the Bellevue marker will need to be approved by a VDOT traffic engineer, and then a cost estimate for the installation will have to be approved by VDOT’s Integrated Directional Signing Program, before I can order the marker,” said Jennifer Loux, highway marker program manager for the Department of Historic Resources.”
This is an excerpt from an article written by Randy Walker and was published in the Cardinal News on August 12, 2022. Read the full article here.
“Saving ‘iconic’ farm buildings in Craig County”
“In 2004, Tracy Frist, a Montgomery County native, bought Bellevue, a historic home about a mile away on Cumberland Gap Road, on the other side of Sinking Creek Valley. In 2015, she married Bill Frist, a former U.S. senator from Tennessee. (See our previous story.)
The Frists own about 960 acres along Little Mountain Road, including the scale house and barn. With its weathered hemlock siding, the scale building added to the picturesque beauty of the Sinking Creek Valley, but by the mid-2010s, it was nearing collapse. “The original scales were gone,” Tracy Frist said. “The roof had blown off. And we just decided we needed to save it. So we started the work.”
The siding and the roof had to be replaced, but the inner structure — the platform and a sort of wood frame cage that confined the animals — was intact. “Even though the outside of the building was coming down … everything inside is exactly the way it has been for 100 years,” Bill Frist said.”
This is an excerpt from an article written by Randy Walker and was published in the Cardinal News on April 15, 2024. Read the full article here.
Doctor’s Office
Dr. Wiley’s Office
Utilized by Dr. Oscar Wiley, the Doctor’s office may even date to the period of Wiley’s graduation from medical school in 1852. The office, which was conveniently situated on the Cumberland Gap Road to serve local residents and travelers.
The Doctor’s Office is a small one-story frame building dating to the mid-nineteenth century, probably the 1850s or ca. 1860. The office has weatherboard siding, a metal-sheathed side-gable roof, and a sandstone foundation. The chimney on the northwest gable end was rebuilt by stonemason Freeman Shanahan in 2013 with the sandstone blocks of the chimney that formerly stood at the location. The one-room interior features a vernacular Greek Revival mantel with possible pattern book attributes. The fireplace has been rebuilt with an inner lining of yellow fire bricks. Finger bones and other human bones have been found in the dirt behind the office.
Potato Shed
Constructed in the early 1900s, the potato storage cellar has changed little since its construction. These root cellars kept produce from freezing in the winter and cool in the summer months. The shed is semi-subterranean construction, and a thick mat ofstraw in its attic was used to insulate its produce.
Ice House
The ice house was built in the early 1900s and was used to store ice throughout the year before the invention of refrigeration. Located near a small branch of water which was dammed in cold weather to produce ice. Bellevue’s ice house is unique in that it was built entirely above ground—most ice houses on farms were semi-subterranean.
Kiln
The bricks used to construct Bellevue were fired on-site at the kiln by enslaved peoples. Bellevue’s brick construction emphasized the prominence of its original owner, Robert Wiley, since brick houses were an expensive status symbol during the antebellum period.
Wiley Cemetery
The Wiley Family Cemetary is located on the hill above the house. Members of the Wiley family were interred at the site throughout the 19th century. While no tombstones or grave markers survive today, 1870s deeds reference the cemetery and note that it was enclosed by a fence at the time.
Enslaved Cemetery
Established in the 19th century, slaves were buried in a seperate cemetary adjacent to the Bellevue property.
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