More information at the Virginia Department of Historic Resources here
Home Site – Nelson County, Virginia
The house is located on the property of Rebec Vineyard on US 29 and north of Route 610 near Clifford in Amherst County, Virginia.
Mountain View stands on land originally patented by the Reverend Robert Rose (1704-1751). His son, Col. Hugh Rose (1743-1797), later lived on part of his father’s patent at Geddes Plantation, which included what was to become Mountain View.
According to a codicil to the 1794 will of Hugh Rose, a house was standing on what was to become the Mountain View property at that time. In 1798 William Spencer bought the property from Hugh Rose’s daughter, and reportedly named it Spencer’s Plantation. The house originally stood on the east side of a small nearby peak known variously as Spencer’s Mountain or Rose’s Mountain.
In the early 1830’s, a new stagecoach road was built through the area, and the house supposedly was moved to its present location to be more convenient to this road.
Architecture
Very few changes have been made to the main house or the outbuildings. “The main house is two-story clapboard, mortised and pegged timber structure.” There is a central hall and two parlors and two chimneys. Behind the main section of the house is a one-story section consisting of the dining room, kitchen and screened porch. The front porch was added during the second half of the nineteenth century. “The original flooring of the entire main house is heart of pine. The plaster walls are trimmed with simple moldings including flat chair rails and baseboards. The south first floor room and the addition have more elaborate Greek Revival mantels and trim. The details in the hallway and the north room are typical of the federal period. The fireplace in the north room has an elaborate molding consisting of a frieze with reeded end tryglyphs and plain metopes.”
“A remarkable ensemble” of largely unaltered outbuildings are thought to have been built by Dr. Paul C. Cabell in the 1830s and 1840s. These include a doctor’s office, well house, smokehouse, log carriage/icehouse and two chicken coops.
Photos courtesy of Archer Minardi, 2008
Dr. Cabell, a “pioneer in the field of public health in Central Virginia” built the rare one-room doctor’s office. “It is a gabled structure with a lean-to-section on the north side. Underneath the main office is a root cellar that has an earthen floor and fieldstone walls.”
Timeline of Mountain View Ownership
- Dr. Paul Carrington Cabell (1799-1836) bought the property in 1834, renaming it Mountain View.
- Dr. Cabell, who had grown up at Union Hill, was the great grandson of Dr. William Cabell, and the son of Anne Carrington and Col. William Cabell, Jr. He already owned a large adjacent tract of land, but he and his wife, Mary Burton Irvine (1801-1857) made their home at Mountain View.
- Paul and Mary I. Cabell along with their son, William I. Cabell are said to be buried at Mountain View in unmarked graves.
- Upon Dr. Cabell’s death in 1836, his son Dr. William Irvine Cabell inherited the property and lived and practiced medicine at Mountain View until his own death in 1855.
- The property then passed to his sister, Ann Cabell Davis, who sold it within a few years.
- In 1877, Mountain View was purchased by the Jones family, a descendent of whom still owns and occupies the property.
- Rebec Vineyard is located on the property today.