Various Properties of John Hough Craven

+++++ work in progress. I've just started this.

John H. Craven (1774–1845), farmer, moved to Albemarle from Loudoun County in 1800. During the next nine years, he leased five hundred acres and forty-five slaves from Thomas Jefferson at Tufton, near Monticello. In 1811 Craven acquired a saw and merchant mill at Pen Park in partnership with James Dinsmore, and he bought out Dinsmore’s interest in the enterprise four years later. Craven purchased a home at Pen Park in 1819, and he acquired William Wirt’s Rose Hill estate the following year. By 1821 he owned more than 1,500 acres in Albemarle County. Craven served as captain of the Lafayette Guards, the unit that escorted Lafayette to Monticello in 1824.^[1]

• 22 AUG 1800 Leased Tufton Farm, Albemarle Co, VA from Thomas Jefferson^[2]
  • Photo of Tufton Farm^[3]
• 9 MAY 1808 Albemarle Co, VA Lease for Tufton Farm ended and JH Craven began buying up land in Albemarle for subsequent farms, business, and residences
• 1819 Moved to Pen Park^[4]
• 1820 Rose Hill Albemarle Co, VA. Purchased Rose Hill which was one of several large farms that surrounded Charlottesville in the years prior to the Civil War. The property included a farmhouse that had been built and occupied 25 years earlier by William Wirt, US Atty Gen under Pres. JQ Adam / J. Madison.^[5]
  • The neighborhood was once part of the Rose Hill Plantation which was bought by John H. Craven in 1820. After his death, the property was divided into three tracts. In 1867, several lots were sold to newly emancipated slaves as well as the Piedmont Industrial and Land Improvement Company. A farmhouse on the property was destroyed around 1930. The Colonel T.L. Preston and Andrew F. Craven farms were on the Northwest and North and extended to the old Southern Railroads. John Craven's descendants continued to live in the Rose Hill house and to farm on the surrounding 35 acres. There was only one part of the former estate that the Improvement Company did not control. This was a strip of land along Barracks Road (today Preston Avenue) that the Craven Family had subdivided into 23 lots. African American families settled upon the upper portion of this strip after the Civil War, establishing mini-neighborhoods that are now known as Kellytown and Tinsleytown. Further south, lots 16 and 17, together identified as the Grove Lot, remained in the hands of the Craven's and their in-laws, the Wills family, until 1904.^[6]
  • Formerly "Barracks Road, named for the Albemarle Barracks, a prisoner-of-war camp for British prisoners during the American Revolutionary War.

Referred to as “Barrack road” in the will of John H. Craven (1774–1845), the road ran out of the Town of Charlottesville, along his tract of 229 ¼ acres, towards the Albemarle Barracks. An entrance gate to his Rose Hill tract was at this road. Craven purchased the Rose Hill Plantation in 1820.^[7]

• "Lochlyn Hill is so named for its proximity to the historic Lochlyn Mill which operated on the banks of Meadow Creek for more than 100 years. The mill and nearby home were built by John Craven between 1753 and 1756, nine years after Albemarle County was established and 12 years before Charlottesville became a town. In 1852, it became known as Cochran's Mill, presumably reflecting a change in ownership, although it was still referred to as Lochlyn Mill on the 1891 Peyton Map of Albemarle. The mill burned in 1941 but the house remains just east of Rio Road and has been used as both a residence and an antique store since the beginning of the 20th century."^[8]

• 1826-1841 - Craven-JH_Book-of-Family-Accounts_1826-184. John Hough Craven kept a notebook of property, personal items, and enslaved ancestors that he gave to his children and/or designated that they should go to them upon his death.^[3]

Post Death / Probate / Litigation

• 1849 - Albemarle County, Virginia, USA - Sale of Enslaved owned by John Hough Craven^[3]

Sources

1. ↑ https://www.cvillepedia.org/John_H._Craven
2. ↑ Agreement with Thomas Jefferson leasing the farm. https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-32-02-0070 --Wit: Philip Darrell.
3. ↑ ^{3.0 3.1 3.2}
4. ↑ Early Charlottesville, the Recollections of James Alexander 1828-1874.
5. ↑ Early Charlottesville, the Recollections of James Alexander 1828-1874.
6. ↑ https://www.cvillepedia.org/Rose_Hill
7. ↑ https://www.cvillepedia.org/Preston_Avenue
8. ↑ https://www.cvillepedia.org/Lochlyn_Hill

• Drafted 3 AUG 1841 in Albemarle, Virginia, United States Will of JH Craven
• Probated +++ 1845