Walnut Grove Plantation

K-123

Col. Robert Preston (1750-1833) acquired 720 acres here in the 1780s and established Walnut Grove. Preston had emigrated from Ireland in 1773 and worked as assistant surveyor under his relative William Preston, who laid out vast areas of western Virginia. During the Revolutionary War, Robert Preston joined expeditions against the Cherokee and Loyalists. Gov. Thomas Jefferson appointed him the first surveyor of Washington County in 1779. Preston's frame house, built here ca. 1800, is among the county’s oldest. By the 1830s about 30 enslaved African Americans were laboring on his land. William Clark, of Lewis and Clark, breakfasted at the home of Preston’s son John at Walnut Grove in 1809.

Department of Historic Resources, 2018

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References/Bibliographic Citation:

Preston Family Papers, Virginia Historical Society. Robert Preston surveyor appointment, 22 Dec. 1779. Robert Preston Estate Inventory, Washington County Will Book No. 7 (20-21). Robert Preston Will, Washington County Will Book No. 6 (362-363). Washington County, Virginia, Minute Book 1 (Jan. 1777-Aug. 1784). Walnut Grove, National Register of Historic Places nomination (2004). Gibson Worsham, “Walnut Grove: The Robert Preston House,” Historic Structure Report (2007). Sarah S. Hughes, “Surveyors and Statesmen: Land Measuring in Colonial Virginia” Albert H. Tillson Jr., Gentry and Common Folk: Political Culture on a Virginia Frontier, 1740-1789 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky), 1991.