March 23, 2013 / Joanne Yeck

Buckingham Towns: Planterstown

View from Planterstown, Photo by Joanne Yeck

Not all of Buckingham County’s river towns dotted the James River. The Appomattox River offered a potential transportation route to those living in the southern part of the county. In the 1790s, when many river towns were established in central Virginia, several Buckingham planters planned one on the Appomattox. On January 15, 1798 the Virginia General Assembly passed the following act:

Be it enacted by the General Assembly, that 25 acres of land, the property of Ichabod Hunter and John Epperson, lying at the Cutbanks in the County of Buckingham, shall be, and they are hereby invested in William Perkins, Jr., Charles Yancey, John Johns, Joel Watkins, Daniel Moseley, Henry Flood, Nathaniel Lancaster, Robert Kelso, Anthony Winston, Stephen Pettus, Gentlemen, trustees, to be by them or a majority of them, laid off into lots of half an acre each, with convenient streets, shall be and is hereby allowed the owners of lots in Planterstown, in Buckingham County, to improve the same in manner required by law.

In 1937, Elizabeth McCraw wrote two surveys about the Planterstown site for the Virginia Historical Inventory. She described the location as south from New Store, 4.2 miles on Route #609, thence east .4 of a mile on private road. One survey was simply called “Planterstown.” It focused on a single house, once owned by the Gilliam family. At that time, this last standing structure of Planterstown was in poor repair.

Here on the “Planterstown” property was situated an old colonial town just below the site of the Cut Bank Bridge that used to span the river at that place. A charter was secured and the town laid off but never seemed to have grown beyond a store and a couple of tobacco warehouses. Just above the town site is the old homestead, also known as the old Gilliam home.… The place was in the Gilliam family until 1920.