Visiting Scotchtown: Patriot Patrick Henry's Home

Scotchtown is located less than 20 miles from Richmond and was the home of Patrick Henry and his family from 1771 until 1778. It was during this time that he made his impassioned speech ‘Give me Liberty or Give Me Death”. The house itself was built around 1720 by Charles Chiswell.

You have to be quite determined to visit this house. It is still very much in the country but by all means, do make the effort, it is well worth it.

The house is small and simple in comparison to some of Patrick Henry’s contemporaries, you will not be seeing another Monticello. It is very much a family home. That is who you will meet here, Patrick Henry the man, not the politician or the patriot.

Patrick Henry was a man of the people and was as popular in his day as George Washington. He was more than six feet tall and had red hair and blue eyes. He purchased this house and 960 acres of land and grew tobacco. His wife gave birth to their 6th child here and after more than 20 years of marriage seems to have had some sort of mental breakdown. It may have been post-partum depression but she never recovered and had to be moved to confinement in the basement where she died in 1775 only about a month before Henry made his famous speech.

His second wife, Dorothea Dandridge, was a relative of Martha Washington and she had 11 additional children. Patrick Henry was elected the first governor of Virginia in 1777 and moved into the Governor’s Palace. He sold the house shortly after and later in life moved to Red Hill near Lynchburg, Va.

Henry did not support the Constitution and that may have led to his being much less well known than his contemporaries. He was offered the position of Secretary of State and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court by Washington and Ambassador to Spain by Adams but he refused them all because he was not a supporter of the new form of government.

This and more you will learn on your tour of Scotchtown. In addition to a guided tour of the house and basement, there are reconstructed outbuildings. A small garden and some heritage sheep are also kept here by a local 4H group. Inside the house, it is furnished as a family home. A few pieces that belonged to the family are on display but the rest is to the period. The floor in the great hall is original and you will be walking on the same wood as the great man tread.

A very nice gift shop which focuses heavily on locally produced items is where the tour begins. Be sure to check it out.

The house is opened limited hours but if you want to visit when it is closed, a cell phone tour that you can take of the exterior is quite good. Do try, however, to come when the buildings are open, the guides are very knowledgeable and it is obvious that they love the house and their jobs. You will learn a great deal about this less than well-known man who contributed so much to the formation of our country

Virginia: Patrick Henry's Red Hill

It takes real determination to visit Patrick Henry's Red Hill Estate. Every five miles for at least twenty minutes I said to my husband “What was wrong with this man, was he anti-social?” Shortly after we left Appomattox Court House we started seeing signs for Red Hill. I give them a lot of credit for a superior advertisement campaign. We followed those signs through every back road in Virginia and about halfway through I was ready to give up but I am very glad that we persevered. It is by the way 26 miles.

We arrived at 4:15 p.m. and the property is scheduled to close at 5 p.m. The woman in charge told us to go ahead and watch the 15-minute video and to visit the museum and she would keep the buildings open until we had visited them. It was a wonderful Southern hospitality. The museum is really a must; they have many items that belong to Mr. Henry, an ink bottle, his violin and flute, a Chippendale document cabinet, and most importantly his writing desk. There are also letters and other documents both original and copies. Especially interesting are the portraits including a copy of the Thomas Sully portrait.

Having been to Richmond before we visited here, we had learned a lot about Patrick Henry at St John Church where he made his famous "Give me Liberty or give me death" speech. The video basically brings you up to speed on Patrick Henry 101. In our day, this is pretty much the extent that most of us know about him. In his own time, he was the most powerful and important man in Virginia. George Washington said of him "Patrick Henry has only to say this is law and it is law." He was known as the Homer of Orators.

Red Hill was his final and favorite home. The Henry family graveyard is located on the property. The main house is a reproduction, the original burned to the ground in 1919. Philanthropist Eugene B. Casey stepped in and in 1957 the Patrick Henry Memorial Foundation rebuilt Red Hill on the original foundation. The only original building on the property is the law office. When you consider that it is a wooden structure it is pretty amazing that it still survives.

Allow about an hour to an hour and a half for your visit here. We used a full hour. Be sure to show your AAA card you will get a discount.

Red Hill is a simple home, not a fancy mansion. You get to see a spare bedroom, a parlor, and his bedroom on the first floor. The kitchen as was the custom is in an outbuilding. A smokehouse and the cook’s cabin are also featured. The views from the backyard are amazing; it makes you understand what he loved about this property.

A Visit to the Amazing Derby Art Museum

Unfortunately, even a photo permit couldn’t help me here, you are not allowed to publish the photos so for my own use only. It is too bad because this is a great little museum and there are lots of things that I think would have made excellent subjects.

I began my visit in the Origins of Derby Exhibit. The first few cases have to do with the Bronze Age. There are several cases of items such as knives, ax heads, and spearheads. Most of them were found in rivers and marshes. It is not known why these valuable metal items would have been deposited in the Rivers but it may have been part of a ritual.

There are also items found in a Bronze Age barrow. The Bronze Age is 4200-2200BC. People were buried in log coffins and there is a whole display of pottery from this period. Many of these pieces of pottery are from Stanton Moor and others are from Stoney Middleton Dale.

The next section is the Roman period. Jars were used to hold beans and it was the beans that were the important part in this time period. I liked a very pretty Simian Bowl with a hunting scene from the 2nd century CE. The remains of the graves of two children have been preserved; there are two bronze bangle bracelets and a bronze finger ring. 

An interesting find was people in this period were buried with shoes on. These are followed by a case showing a Romano-British kitchen and one with Roman and Medieval Coins.

I personally was fascinated by the bust of a Viking whose grave was discovered outside St Wystan's Church. The artist used the skull to give us a very good idea of what this warrior would have looked like. He died in 873-874. Repton was a mass grave with at least 249 people of which only 5 are women; there are no evident injuries so it was a disease that took their lives.

An Anglo-Saxon gravesite reveals lots of information about the lives of these people, an amber necklace, an iron knife, silver finger ring and bronze buckle.

The Repton Stone dominates this portion of the Museum; it is what remains of an 8th Century Anglo Saxon Cross. One of the figures on the cross may be Aethalbald, King of Mercia who was murdered and buried at Repton.

One of the most amazing exhibits is in the next room. The Hanson Longboat. This is a Bronze Age Longboat that was discovered in a quarry at Shardlow. It is 3500 years old. Also in this room are several works by George Turner called the Derbyshire Constable.

Up a short set of stairs is the Wright Gallery and it won’t disappoint. Joseph Wright has an amazing way with light and there is a room full of his works, some portraits, and some landscapes. I loved “Cottage on Fire” and Grotto in the Gulf of Salerno.