Buckingham Towns: Planterstown, 1798
Photo by Joanne Yeck
In 1937, Elizabeth McCraw wrote two surveys about Planterstown for the Virginia Historical Inventory. One focused on the house once owned by the Gilliam family. Click here to read the 2013 post discussing that survey: Buckingham Towns: Planterstown.
The other survey, titled “Planterstown of 1798,” recounted the founding of the town. In 1937, Mrs. McCraw wrote: “A good deal of interesting information has been secured about a ‘would be’ town, chartered about 138 years ago, located at the foot of Woods Mountain at the Cut Banks on the Appomattox River. The only visible signs of the town are the remains of a few old vats.”
On January 15, 1798, The Virginia General Assembly passed on Act allowing a town to be created on 25 acres owned by Ichabod Hunter and John Epperson, lying at the Cut Banks in the County of Buckingham. William Perkins, Jr., Charles Yancey, John Johns, Joel Watkins, Daniel Moseley, Henry Flood, Nathaniel Lancaster, Robert Kelso, Anthony Winston and Stephen Pettus were named as trustees. Lots were to be laid off, ½ acre each, with convenient streets, and the town was to be called: “Planterstown.”
Eventually, Planterstown was laid out in four rows of lots, nine lots to each row. High Street, Wide Alley, Pact Street, Little Alley, and Wide Street divided the lots. Not very imaginative names, however, they served the new town’s commerce.
To be continued….
slate river ramblings . . . . 
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