Do Well, Saxe, Virginia. Image Courtesy of Hill Studio, P.C.

Sometimes when you visit these old houses in Southside Virginia you scare up a passel of ghosts.  The long-dead former owners often linger in the shadows.  One such place that lives between two worlds — where a rich and fascinating past mingles with a compelling present — stands on the road midway between the villages of Saxe and Drake’s Branch.  With any luck the passersby can catch a tantalizing glimpse through the trees in winter of an imposing Federal-style house on a one thousand acre plantation called Do-Well.  We had the pleasure of dining there the other night.

The house dates from the early 1800s, probably sometime around 1820.  Some researchers place the date as early as 1810, though a study of the land tax records may reveal the appropriate date, because one can tell when substantial improvements have been made to a property because the assessment changes dramatically from one year to the next.  The house was built for William Morton Watkins (1773-1865), the son of Colonel Joel Watkins (1737-1820).  The National Register application for Henry A. Watkins’ house on a plantation called Woodfork, states that it is unclear whether William had built Do Well or his brother Henry, suggesting they collaborated.

Do Well is of similar design as Woodfork — both are large two and a half story, five-bay brick structures (Do Well has four finished levels), with Flemish bond on the façade and 3 and 4-course American bond on the sides and rear.  It features a Georgian floor plan with identical front and rear porticos (a road side and a river side) and a massive center passage.  The interior and exterior woodwork are similar, featuring Adam-style details and  very fine finishes.  An Historic Architectural Survey of Charlotte County, Virginia completed in 1998 notes that “The Adamesque swags and urns embellishing the mantel at Do Well, built ca. 1821-1822 by William M. Watkins, are the finest example of the Federal style found in Charlotte County.”

Mantel at Do Well. Image Courtesy of Hill Studio, P.C.

Colonel Joel Watkins was born about 1737 in Henrico County, and he died 2 January 1820 in Charlotte County.  According to an early chronicler of the family, Francis N. Watkins (A Catalogue of the Descendants of Thomas Watkins of Chickahominy, VA. Who was the Common Ancestor of Many of the Families of the Name in Prince Edward, Charlotte, and Chesterfield Counties, VA.”  (Written 1852) Prince Edward County, VA.” 1899 Atlas Printing Company, Henderson, SC):

JOEL WATKINS of Woodfork, Charlotte, was the third son of Thomas of Chickahominy, and probably was younger than one or more of his sisters. He removed from Henrico to Charlotte when a young man, at the persuasion of his brother-in-law, Col. William MORTON, herein often mentioned. He married AGNES MORTON, sister of Colonel Morton. His residence was a few miles north of Charlotte C(ourt) H(ouse), at Woodfork. He died about the year—-. Few men appear to have been more beloved than this excellent old man. “I never knew him,” said Mr. Leigh, “and I am very sorry for it, for, according to my information, he was the very best man that ever lived in this world.”

He was remarkable, says another who knew him well, “for plainness, benevolence, and integrity, a pattern of industry, one of the kindest of friends—the friend of the friendless, one who comforted the widow in affliction, the father to the orphan, a friend to the poor, the adviser of youth, without an enemy, and his death mourned by all.” *** “He would court the company of youth.” *** “I have heard him compared to the father of his country.”

Another styled him the “great peacemaker.” There was one virtue for which he and his brother Francis were noted, and which deserves mention, I refer to their purity of character as exhibited by a cordial disgust at hearing vulgar and unchaste conversation. Their kindness and politeness might sometimes prevent apparent rudeness to the retailers of such remarks but they gave no sign of encouragement to the conversation; and Col. Joel Watkins would start off to light his pipe.

Among the papers of the Hon. John RANDOLPH was found a MS written by himself, of which the following is a copy:

“On Sunday, the 2nd day of January, departed this life, at an advanced age, beloved, honored and lamented by all who knew him, Col Joel Watkins, of the county of Charlotte and State of Virginia.

Without shining abilities or the advantages of an education, by plain, straightforward industry, under the guidance of old-fashioned honesty and practical good sense, he accumulated an ample fortune, in which, it is firmly believed, and there was not one dirty shilling.

These fruits of his own labors he distributed with a promptitude and liberality seldom equaled, but never surpassed, in suitable provision to his children at their entrance into life, and on every deserving object of private benevolence or public spirit; reserving to himself the means of a generous but unostentatious hospitality.

Nor was he liberal of his money only. His time, his trouble were never withheld on the bench or in his neighborhood, when they could be usefully employed.

If, as we are assured, that peacemakers are blessed, who shall feel stronger assurance of bliss, than must have smoothed this old man’s passage to an unknown world.”

Joel served in the Revolution as a Lieutenant Colonel in the regiment raised by Colonel Thomas Read in 1781 and witnessed Cornwallis’ surrender at Yorktown with his brother-in-law, William Jameson of Annefield.  Joel married Agnes Morton (1747-1814), the daughter of Joseph Morton and Agnes Woodson.  They produced six children: Mary, Susannah, Hunt, Henry Anderson, William Morton and Jane.  Joel lived in a modest frame dwelling at Woodfork; it was his son Henry that built the large brick house in 1829.

William Morton Watkins of Do Well.

Like his father Joel and brother Henry, William Morton Watkins (1773-1865)  served as a member of the House of Delegates and as trustee of Hampden-Sydney College.   In 1799, William married Elizabeth Woodson Venable, the daughter of Col. Samuel Woodson Venable and Mary Scott Carrington on 6 December 1799.   Mr Watkins studied at Hampden-Sydney College from 1789 to 1791, received his A.B. from Princeton in 1792, and studied law under Judge Creed Taylor of Cumberland County, Virginia.  He represented Charlotte County in the Virginia House of Delegates from 1812-1815, and in 1830 became a trustee of Hampden-Sydney College and served in that capacity for 30 years.

Elizabeth Woodson Venable was born 11 May 1782 in Prince Edward County and died 7 April 1858 in Charlotte County.  She was a great-granddaughter of Colonel Clement Read of Bushy Forest, one of the earliest (and wealthiest) settlers in Charlotte County.  William’s sister, Jane Watkins (1774-1839) married Colonel Clement Carrington, the son of Judge Paul Carrington and Margaret Read of Mulberry Hill; Margaret was Clement Read’s daughter and the sister of Anne Read of Annefield.  Funny how all these lines of descent get all jumbled together and ultimately converge.  We wrote of the life of Paul Carrington in another post, Here Comes the Judge!

William and Elizabeth produced 11 children, one of which was Jane Virginia Watkins (1829-1863), who married Richard Venable Gaines on 27 November 1854.  They had four children.

One of their children, Elizabeth Venable Gaines, was one of the first women in the county to obtain a PhD.  Some of her papers are housed at the Library of Virginia.  She began her education with private tutors, then attended the Richmond Female Seminary.   At age 22, she removed to Frankfort, Kentucky at served as governess for an uncle’s family there, then ran a girls school.  She attended Vassar College, then taught for three years at the State Normal School in Farmville (now Longwood University), before entering the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1892.  After finishing her studies at MIT, Ms Gaines taught at Adelphi College in Brooklyn, New York, where she headed the Biology department for 22 years while simultaneously continuing her own education in the sciences, philosophy and the arts at the University of Chicago, Columbia University and Cornell University.  She returned to Do Well in 1916, and became a leader in historic preservation and the study of local history.

She died 16 April 1942 in Farmville, and is buried in the family cemetery at Do Well, along with her parents and grandparents and several siblings, including her brother Clement Carrington Gaines (1857-1943), an 1875 graduate of Hampden-Sydney College, who was president of Eastman Business College in Poughkeepsie, New York in 1894.

Watkins-Gaines Family Cemetery, Saxe, Virginia.

Jane must have inherited Do Well, for we find mention of it and her husband, Richard Venable Gaines in a scholarly study of his era.  Amy Feely Morsman, in The Big House After Slavery: Virginia Families and their Postbellum Domestic Experiment (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2010) notes that in 1885 , feeling the pain and disappointment of adverse financial affairs and being unable to send his son Dick the $100 he had requested, Richard Gaines wrote that he intended to “settle up” with Dick by conveying to him on his 18th birthday the family property he was always intended to have (Do Well), but found it “deeply painful and humiliating” because he had hoped to give Richard more, but land values were low in Virginia at the time.  Substantial Gaines family correspondence is preserved at the University of Virginia (“Papers, correspondence and records of the Gaines family of “Do Well” [manuscript] 1810-1905“).

Jane Virginia Watkins Gaines died relatively young at age 34.  On 6 July 1866, Richard Venable Gaines married Jane’s sister, Elizabeth Margaret Watkins (1827-1896); they had no children.

Richard fought on the side of the Confederacy during the War Between the States.  He enlisted a Sergeant in Charles Bruce’s Company of Virginia Artillery, and mustered out a 2nd Lieutenant with Capt. Andrew B. Paris’ Staunton Hill Light Artillery.  After the war he returned to farming, and did his part to promote and increase the value of land in Charlotte County; he was the author of a Hand-book of Charlotte County, Virginia : its history, physical characteristics, climatic conditions, social, moral and religious advantages, statistical and other information, with letters from prominent citizens showing its desirability as a home, and the inducements which it offers to the industrious and intelligent farmer and mechanic (1889).

We have not established when the property left the Gaines family, but by the 1950s it was owned by the Stanley Land and Lumber Company, then purchased by the present owner in 1959.  With that, we’ll leave Do Well and its’ ghosts in peace.

Center Passage Detail.