Qualla: Piney Grove at Southall's Plantation

Piney Grove at Southall's Plantation: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit JERRYE & ROY KLOTZ, M.D., CC BY-SA 4.0. Most plantation houses on the James River were brick statements, calling cards for tobacco wealth meant to impress visitors arriving by boat. Piney Grove is not that. It started around 1800 as a one-story log corn crib on Furneau Southall's land, a building meant only to keep grain dry. Then, sometime around 1820, someone enlarged it and turned it into a store. In 1853, two more additions went up. In the early 20th century, the whole thing was wrapped in a two-story frame block. The result is unusual: a log farm building that survived three rebuildings without ever being torn down, hidden inside the walls of what looks from outside like a modest Tidewater farmhouse. There is almost nothing else like it in Virginia.

Image: JERRYE & ROY KLOTZ, M.D. | CC BY-SA 4.0

Piney Grove at Southall's Plantation: The Land Before the Logs

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit JERRYE & ROY KLOTZ, M.D., CC BY-SA 4.0. Before any of this, the high ridge above the James River was Chickahominy country. The plantation site sits near the village of Mattahunk and along the route the colonists called Necotowance's Path - a trail named for the Powhatan chief who in 1646 signed the treaty that opened t...

Image: JERRYE & ROY KLOTZ, M.D. | CC BY-SA 4.0

Piney Grove at Southall's Plantation: The Common Planter's House

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit JERRYE & ROY KLOTZ, M.D., CC BY-SA 4.0. Furneau Southall was not one of the great James River planters. The brick mansions of Westover, Berkeley, and Shirley belonged to families with hundreds of enslaved workers and trading connections in London. Southall's 300 acres put him in a humbler tier - the common planter who ...

Image: JERRYE & ROY KLOTZ, M.D. | CC BY-SA 4.0

Piney Grove at Southall's Plantation: From Corn Crib to Country Store

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit JERRYE & ROY KLOTZ, M.D., CC BY-SA 4.0. By 1857, Furneau Southall's grandson John Seth Stubblefield sold off part of the plantation to Edmund Archer Saunders. The log crib was already on its second life as a store by then. Saunders ran it as Piney Grove Store, supplying the surrounding farms. When the Civil War ended, ...

Image: JERRYE & ROY KLOTZ, M.D. | CC BY-SA 4.0

Piney Grove at Southall's Plantation: The Folk Architecture Collection

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit JERRYE & ROY KLOTZ, M.D., CC BY-SA 4.0. After the Hughes family sold the property in 1984, the Gordineer family spent five years restoring the house. They went further than restoration. Wanting to save other vernacular buildings facing demolition elsewhere, they moved several to Piney Grove and set them on the grounds:...

Image: JERRYE & ROY KLOTZ, M.D. | CC BY-SA 4.0

Piney Grove at Southall's Plantation: Visiting Today

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jonathunder, Public domain. Piney Grove sits on Route 5, the John Tyler Memorial Highway that traces the James River plantation route. The grounds are open daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and the historic 1857 Ladysmith house functions as a bed and breakfast - which means visitors can sleep on a property layer...

Image: Jonathunder | Public domain