Fairfield

John Syme's well-travelled father was a native of Scotland and is credited with introducing watermelon to Virginia from the Mediterranean so that for a long time it was known as Syme's melon. He died at a young age and John duly inherited the Studley Plantation and land at Rocky Mills. The Syme family were well-connected and it wasn't long before John's grain mills were making a substantial profit, smoothing the way for his entry into local politics. His extensive landholdings soon included a townhouse in Newcastle and the mansion he chose to build at Rocky Mills (keeping grain stores and grain mills at both locations) that immediately became one of the grandest in the colony.

The date of construction is usually given as 1750, that being the year of John's marriage to his first wife, Mildred Meriwether. The date is an educated guess, but what we do know is that in June, 1753, Syme sent an order for household goods to the English firm of Lidderdale, Harmer & Farrell in Bristol dated June 9, 1753, occasioned “by my beginning housekeeping,” an indication that the family had by then been able to move in.

According to the Survey of Historic Resources in Hanover County, Rocky Mills was, "probably the largest and most architecturally sophisticated house ever built in Hanover... no other Hanover house reached this level of ornamentation". Built of brick in Flemish bond with a sandstone trim, it features classical frontispieces, quoins on the corners and windows with jack arches and keystones (the only example of its kind in Hanover), denticulated cornices, handsome oak-panelled rooms, and elaborately carved staircases.

Syme's Up

It is well documented that Syme's best friend and half-brother Governor Patrick Henry was a frequent visitor here, but it was also the where "the Hero of King's Mountain" (or if you were a Loyalist, "the bloody tyrant of Washington County") spent his last days on this planet. General William Campbell was married to Patrick Henry's sister, Elizabeth, and after two months of vigorous campaigning to further his political career he suffered a heart attack and was brought to Rocky Mills where he died days later.

The first Mrs Syme died in 1764 and four years later (1768) he married Sarah Hoops, sister of the Marquis of Chastellux's host, Robert Hoops. She survived her husband by a further five years (1810) and when she died here her obituary read: "The poor around her residence will long lament that that heart which once sympathized with their suffering, is now cold and those hands ever ready to relieve them are closed forever.” Her death was quickly followed by an auction of her personal property. Various of their children then occupied the house until 1821 when they sold up to Hill Carter of Shirley Plantation.

The Wickhams

In the same year, to celebrate the wedding of his sister, Lucy, Hill Carter gave Rocky Mills to her and her new husband, Edmund Fanning Wickham as a wedding present. Edmund was the son of John Wickham who built the house that is today the Richmond History Center at the Valentine Museum and his brother, William, married his wife's sister, Anne.

Anne, Lucy (of Rocky Mills) and Hill Carter were first cousins of General Robert E. Lee who often came here before, during, and after the Civil War. The William Wickhams lived on Hickory Hill adjacent to the 2,000-acre South Wales plantation maintained by the Edmund Wickhams, and the sisters built shared slave quarters on the common boundary. To the mansion itself, the Edmund Wickhams stripped out the heavy Georgian panelling and 'modernized' it in line with the lighter and more elegant neo-classical fashions. Lucy died in 1835 and Edmund survived her until 1843 when the house changed hands again.
 
Adolphus to Frederick Nolting

The new owner from 1843 was Adolphus W. Nolting (1799-1869) who came to Virginia from Germany and established himself as a successful tobacco exporter in Richmond. He made his home here with his wife, Johanna Paulina Strecker (1808-1874) and their children for twenty years but sold up in 1863 during the midst of the Civil War.

From 1863, Rocky Mills passed into the possession of Alfred Moses (1819-1910), an Anglo-Jewish rag merchant settled in Richmond and by 1870 had amassed real estate to the value of $125,000. A native of London, he became the first clerk and supervisor of the Richmond City School Board. At some stage he disposed of Rocky Mills and it then seems to have passed through the hands of the Nash and Stanley families before it was purchased in 1925 by Adolphus Nolting's grandnephew, Frederick E. Nolting (1872-1955), an investment banker and the Honorary Consul for Belgium in Richmond (1935 to 1944) whose son of the same name was the U.S. Ambassador to South Vietnam in the JFK administration.

Rocky Mills to "Fairfield" and the Move from Hanover to Henrico

In 1928, Fred Nolting had the house and outbuildings dismantled and transported 21-miles to a 7.7-acre plot on a bluff overlooking the James River in Henrico County to the west of the northern end of Richmond's Huguenot Bridge. After it was enlarged, the house was given a sympathetic Colonial-Revival touch-up by the architect of H. Louis Duhring, Jr., of Duhring, Okie, & Zieger, Philadelphia. When the Noltings moved in to their new, now 10,000-square foot home, they renamed it "Beau Pré" meaning "beautiful meadow" in French that became "Fairfield" in 1934 when they sold up William T. Reed, of Richmond - the same name Mrs Reed's first American ancestor, Lewis Burwell, gave to his plantation.

"Fairfield" and the Tobacco Reeds, Prestons and Parke Smiths

William T. Reed (1864-1935) was a nephew of Herbert C. Larus, one of the two co-founders of the Larus & Brother Tobacco Company and in 1883 William succeeded him as General Manager of the firm, going on to co-run one of the country's most successful small tobacco firms that became known internationally for its Edgeworth pipe tobacco. Sadly, William did not enjoy the house for long, dying the following year, but his widow (Alice Burwell, a scion of several of Virginia's oldest and most prominent families) stayed.

Mrs Alice (Burwell) Reed was succeeded at Fairfield by her daughter, Alice (Reed) Preston (1895-1979) and son-in-law, Dr. Richard Sheffey Preston. From them it passed to their daughter, Alice Burwell Preston, President of the Virginia Garden Club and Chairwoman of the Historic Garden Week, who married Parke F. Smith, who flew Spitfires with the Royal Air Force during World War II and in later life was President of the Virginia Open Garden Association. After Mrs Smith died in 2017, their four children put Fairfield on the market with an asking price of $6-million. It remains a private family home.