Buckingham County Houses: Saratoga, Part III

E. W. Hubard. Courtesy Find A Grave.

Need to catch up, click here: Buckingham County Houses: Saratoga, Part I

A number of Buckingham County notables lived at Saratoga and Elizabeth McCraw wrote about them in her survey for the Virginia Historical Inventory:

Around “Saratoga” the old Hubard home in Buckingham, a good deal of historical interest centers. The place was named from the Battle of Saratoga of the Revolutionary War.

Dr. James Thurston Hubard practiced medicine from Petersburg up into Buckingham County. He married Susan Wilcox of Nelson County, May 20, 1805, and moved to “Saratoga” where he lived until his death in 1812. The estate became the property of his son, Edmund Wilcox Hubard about 1829.

Colonel Edmund Wilcox Hubard was a Colonel of the Militia in Buckingham County 1834. He served in the United States Congress three terms, 1841 to 1847. While serving in this capacity he was appointed by Congress to prepare a report on tobacco, which is still the standard authority. He attended every Democratic Convention from the first, which met in Baltimore in 1832, to the beginning of the War Between the States. He was appointed during the War Between the States, with Colonel Gibboney and William Hamner by President Davis as Appraisers to fix the price of all farm products in the Confederacy, which position he held until the close of the war. . . .

Thomas Jefferson was a frequent guest at “Saratoga”, as Mrs. Hubard was a half-sister of his grandson, Francis Eppes.

As with many oral histories, the comment that Thomas Jefferson was a frequent guest might be taken with a grain of salt, despite the Eppes family connection.

Mrs. McCraw continued:

At the death of Colonel Hubard the estate went to his son Edmund W. Hubard, Jr. who owned it until 1930, when Mrs. Tellie E. Sutton purchased the estate for $3500, at public auction. The place was sold again in 1933 to A. F. Bullock, the present owner, who has done much to restore it to its former beauty. For a century and a quarter this was the Hubard Home, a family prominent in the social, political and religious life of the county.

The family burying ground is at “Chellowe”, the Bolling-Hubard estate near by.

Coming next: Buckingham County Houses: Saratoga, Part IV