Everybody goes to Shirley the wrong way. We found that out by ourselves happening to go the right way.
When you are sailing up the James in your houseboat (You haven't one? Well, a make-believe one will do just as well, and in some ways better), do not pass Eppes Creek, as everybody does, and go to the Shirley pier; but, instead, enter the creek and tie up at Leaning Tree Landing as we did.
Then, instead of taking that trail up the hill that leads only into a cornfield, look for a path leading to the left through the woods. It is not much of a path; and unless you love Nature in even her capricious moods, when she now and then trips the foot of the unwary and mayhap even scratches, it is too bad after all that you came this way. To love of Nature should be added a certain measure of agility, so that you will be all right when you come to the fence. Fortunately, you can let down the upper rails—being careful to put them back again when you are safe on the other side.
Beyond the fence, a great pasture-field stretches away endlessly. But then everything is on a large scale at Shirley. Ampleness is the keynote; it pervades everything. Before you have half crossed the field, you will come upon a road that will lead you to a little eminence near the quarters.
No, it is not a village that you now see peeping out through the grove over there by the river; it is the group of buildings constituting the homestead of Shirley. In the bright sunlight, you can pick out bits of the mansion through the trees, of the dairy, of the kitchen, and of the smaller buildings; while farther out stand the roomy barns and the quaint turreted dove-cote. All the buildings are of brick and show a warm, dull red.
Time has left few such scenes as this—the completely equipped home-acre of a great; seventeenth century American plantation. The scene is not exactly a typical one; for few of such early colonial estates, and indeed not many of the later ones, had homesteads as complete, as substantially built, and on as large a scale as this of Shirley.
Now, as you can need no further guidance, we are going off some two or three hundred years into the past, to see if we can get hold of the other end of the story of this plantation.
Perhaps the start was "about Christmas time" in the year 1611, when Sir Thomas Dale, High Marshal of the Colony of Virginia, sailed up the river from James Towne; killed or drove away all the Indians hereabout; and then, thinking it ill that so much goodly land should be lying unoccupied, took possession of a large tract of it for the colony. But the part that came to be called Shirley is soon lost sight of in the fogs of tradition. Later, we catch a glimpse of it in the possession of Lord Delaware. But it is not until the middle of the seventeenth century that we get a firm hold of this elusive colonial seat and of its colonial owners.
At that time, in the colony of Virginia, two of the proud families on two of the proud rivers were the Hills, who had recently acquired the plantation of Shirley on the James, and the Carters, who were establishing their seat at Corotoman on the Rappahannock. In the story of these two houses is most of the story of Shirley.
The Hills became one of the leading families in the colony. It was Edward Hill, second of the name, who built the present mansion. He was a member of the King's Council; and his position is indicated, and his fortune as well, by the building in those early times of such a home. Antedating almost all of the great colonial homes, it must long have stood a unique mark of family distinction. The exact date of the building of the manor-house is not known, but doubtless it was not far from the middle of the seventeenth century.