Rosewell

The land on which Rosewell was built had originally belonged to the Powhatans. The mansion was so named for the "abundantly clear" spring that bubbled up here which was also supposed to be the birthplace of Pocahontas. The spring was later renamed Carter's Creek, but "Rosewell" was the name that Mann Page gave to his mansion.

The first European house to be built on the land was a wooden one put up in about 1700 by Colonel Matthew Page (1659-1703). Four years after that burned down, in 1721 his son, Mann Page I (1691-1730), began to build Rosewell. He died within five years when the task of seeing its completion was taken up by his son, Mann Page II (1718-1780). The finished mansion was a 60-square foot central house with hyphens and dependencies, double octagonal cupolas, and in total it allowed for 12,000-square feet of living space. 

Believed to have been overseen by an English master-builder, Rosewell was essentially a grand English mansion, serving as the centerpiece of the family's 70,000-acres of land in Virginia. In 1837, Rosewell passed out of the hands of the Page family when the hyphens were removed and the roof was remodelled, losing much if its original grandeur. 

The new owner was Thomas B. Booth who purchased the property for $11,000. By then the interior of the house was in already in a bad state of repair and the ceiling in the great hall was close to collapse. Just ten years later (1847), Booth sold it on to John T. Catlett. Perhaps realizing the enormity of the works, Cartlett disposed of it just six years later (1853) to Josiah L. Deans whose family were in possession of the old mansion when it burned down in 1914. The ruins were acquired by the Gloucester County Historical Society in 1979 and since 1995 they have been managed by the Rosewell Foundation, Inc.