Springwood
Among the newcomers, in this post-revolution period, was Colonel Burgess Ball, a great-grandson of that dignified old aristocrat Colonel William Ball of Millenbeck on the Rappahannock, in Lancaster County, who had come to Virginia in 1657. During the Revolution Burgess Ball had served on the staff of General Washington, his first cousin, then as a captain in the Continental Line and later had raised and equipped a Virginia regiment at his own expense and served with it as lieutenant colonel. After the war, his health broken and his generous fortune seriously impaired by his expenditures for military purposes and by his extravagant hospitality at his home, Travellers Rest in Spotsylvania County, he in 1795, was obliged to seek refuge in what was still known in Tidewater as the Loudoun wilderness. On the 4th November, 1795, he purchased for £1741 (the proceeds of his back pay for military services it is said) from Abraham Barnes Thomson Mason, only acting executor and trustee under the will of Thomson Mason, a tract of 247 acres including the Great Spring and running to the Potomac. Here Colonel Ball either built a rustic lodge for his home or, as has been surmised, occupied and improved the old home of Francis Aubrey, calling his estate Springwood. On that same 4th November, 1795, there was purchased in trust for Colonel Ball from Stevens Thomson Mason by William Fitzhugh, Mann Page, and Alexander Spotswood "three of the trustees appointed by an Act of General Assembly to sell certain lands devised by James Ball deceased to his grandson Burgess Ball for his life," another tract of 147 acres about two miles north of the Great Spring for £441, current money of Virginia. Other adjacent tracts were purchased by Colonel Ball or by his trustees until he controlled a very large estate from the Great Spring to the Limestone Run of the most fertile land in the county.[132] Far from his old military companions, he kept up a correspondence with them in his distant abode and many of them visited him there from time to time; for whether surrounded by the refinements of Travellers Rest or the wilderness of Springwood, Colonel Ball's lavish hospitality was a part of the very man himself. He died on the 7th March, 1800, and was buried just outside the graveyard surrounding the old chapel above Goose Creek on the hill above the Great Spring. This first Springwood dwelling was not on the site of the present mansion but is believed to have been on the south side of the present road on what is now a part of the Big Spring estate, in recent years known as Mayfield. The existing Springwood residence was built by George Washington Ball, later Captain C.S.A., grandson of Colonel Burgess Ball, between 1840 and 1850. Louis Philippe is said to have been an overnight guest there and, during the Civil War, General Lee, a cousin of Captain Ball who had served on his staff, held a military conference in the present dining room. The estate was acquired in 1869 by the late Francis Asbury Lutz of Washington who substantially remodelled the mansion very soon thereafter. Since then it has been in the possession of the Lutz family, its present occupants being Mrs. Samuel S. Lutz, her son-in-law and daughter, Judge and Mrs. J. R. H. Alexander and the latter's two sons.
Raspberry Plain
The genesis of Raspberry Plain, just north of Springwood, has already been given. As shewn in Chapter VII, the property had been originally acquired from Lord Fairfax by Joseph Dixon in 1731 and he had sold the farm which he had improved with a dwelling, orchard, etc., to Aeneas Campbell in 1754. Campbell, as we have seen, was Loudoun's first sheriff. He maintained the county jail and the ducking-stool at his home while he held that office. He sold the place in 1760 to Thomson Mason. So far the residence, long since vanished, was near the large spring, now a part of Selma. Mason is said by T. A. Lancaster, Jr., to have built a new house about 1771 (on the site of the present beautiful home). He then conveyed it to his son Stevens Thomson Mason, subsequently confirming his action in his will. Later, according to local tradition, another Mason descendant, Colonel John Mason McCarty was living there when he killed his cousin, General A. T. Mason in the famous duel in 1819, perhaps as a tenant, for the county records show that in 1830 the estate, then of about 250 acres, was conveyed by the executors of General Mason's will to George, John, Peter and Samuel Hoffman of Baltimore for $8,500. It remained in the Hoffman family for over eighty-five years and until sold by the Hoffman heirs on the 29th April, 1916, to Mr. John G. Hopkins who built the present imposing brick edifice of colonial architecture. The estate was purchased by Mr. and Mrs. William H. Lipscomb of Washington in 1931 and, until Mrs. Lipscomb's death, was the scene of many a gay and picturesque hunt breakfast given in honour of the Loudoun Hunt of which Mr. Lipscomb was Master.
Oatlands. Built by George Carter from 1800 to 1802. Now the home of Mrs. W. C. Eustis.
Belmont
Ludwell Lee, a son of Richard Henry Lee, built Belmont in 1800 and lived there until his death in 1836. He rests in its garden. Soon after he died the estate was acquired by Miss Margaret Mercer who, born in 1791, was the daughter of Governor John Francis Mercer of Cedar Park, Maryland. Miss Mercer conducted a school for young ladies at Belmont until her death in 1846. She was a woman of broad education with pronounced views on the abolition of negro slavery and she it was who built the nearby Belmont Chapel on a part of her estate. After passing through the hands of many owners the property was purchased in 1931 by Colonel Patrick J. Hurley, Secretary of War under President Hoover, and since then he and Mrs. Hurley have made it their country home. For several years he has invited the Loudoun Hunt to hold its annual horse show there.
Coton
Across the highway Thomas Ludwell Lee, cousin to Ludwell Lee, about the same time built his home Coton, naming it after an English home of the earlier Lees. On Lafayette's visit to America in 1825, he was a guest of Ludwell Lee and a great festival, in honor of his visit, was staged at both Belmont and Coton. It is said that after nightfall a double line of slaves, each holding aloft a flaming torch, was stationed between the two mansions to light the way of the celebrants as they passed from one house to the other. The original mansion has long since disappeared save for parts of its foundations. A second mansion was later erected on another part of the estate and in turn was destroyed by fire. The present stone dwelling, the third to bear the name, was erected by Mr. and Mrs. Warner Snider, the present owners of the estate, in 1931.