SHERWOOD FOREST

Prepared for the Garden Club

of Virginia
By Mary C. Fesak
Copyright © 2019 by the Garden Club of Virginia
All Rights Reserved

Images: Unless otherwise noted, all images are by the author

Reproduction: All material contained herein is the intellectual property of the Garden Club of Virginia
except where noted. Permission for reproduction, except for personal use, must be obtained from:
The Fellowship Committee Chair
The Garden Club of Virginia
The Kent-Valentine House
12 East Franklin Street,
Richmond, VA 23219

www.gcvirginia.org
SHERWOOD FOREST
Mary C. Fesak, 2018 Rudy J. Favretti Fellow
Acknowledgements
This report would not have been possible without
the help of many individuals. I would like to
thank the Garden Club of Virginia Restoration
and Fellowship Committees for giving me the
opportunity to study the unique landscapes and
history at Sherwood Forest. I would also like to
thank Will Rieley, Connie Liou, and Roxanne
Brouse for their wonderful insights and advice, as
well as their time in reviewing my research. I am
also deeply indebted to the staff at Sherwood
Forest Plantation Foundation and members of the
Tyler family, especially Annique Dunning, Tim
Coyne, and Kay Tyler for facilitating my research
and giving me the experience of living at
Sherwood Forest. I’m also grateful for Jimmy
Tyler and Paynie Tyler’s willingness to share their
memories about residing at Sherwood Forest
during the twentieth century. Finally, I would like
to thank the archivists in Special Collections at
the College of William and Mary’s Swem Library
who supported my many hours of researching the
Tyler Family Papers.

4
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements 4

Introduction 7
Methodology 9

Chapter 1: Sherwood Forest’s Beginnings 11

Introduction 11
Early-Seventeenth-Century Land Ownership 11
Horsmanden and Byrd Family Ownership 13
Thomas Cotton’s House 13
Brown’s Quarter in the Eighteenth Century 14
John Minge, Sr. Consolidates Acreage 17
Collier Minge Inherits Brown’s Quarter 17
Life at the Grove 18
Early Landscape Features at the Grove 20
Conclusion 22

Chapter 2: John and Julia Tyler Develop Sherwood Forest 23

Introduction 23
President John Tyler Purchases Sherwood Forest 23
Julia Tyler Arrives at Sherwood Forest 29
The Tylers Update the Gardens and Grounds 34
The Tylers’ Golden Years at Sherwood Forest 38
The Trees of Sherwood Forest 39
Conclusion 42

5
Chapter 3: Sherwood Forest During and After the Civil War 43
Introduction 43
Sherwood Forest During the Civil War 43
Villa Margaret 47
Reconstruction at Sherwood Forest 48
Postwar Outbuildings and Landscape 52
David Gardiner Tyler Acquires Sherwood Forest 55
Conclusion 58

Chapter 4: Sherwood Forest in the Twentieth Century 59

Introduction 59
A House Divided 59
Mid-20th Century Agriculture at Sherwood Forest 60
Katherine Thomason Tyler’s Alterations 60
Recreational Landscape Features 65
A House Again Divided 66
Paynie’s Restoration of Sherwood Forest 67
Sherwood Forest in Recent Years 72
Conclusion 72

Conclusion 75
Recommendations for Future Research 75
Historic Preservation Recommendations 76
Interpretation Recommendations 77

Notes 79

Bibliography 93

6
Introduction
When he retired from politics in 1844 as a President without a party, John Tyler and his young wife Julia retreated to a small Tidewater plantation
several miles to the east of Tyler’s childhood home near the small crossroads at Charles City. They promptly set about converting the farmhouse
and surrounding grounds into an estate fit for a former President with the help of their enslaved workforce. John Tyler’s daughter Mary Tyler
Jones supervised the construction of outbuildings and additions to the house while her father finished serving his term as President. When
completed, the asymmetrical farm house had been transformed into a large seven-part Palladian plan plantation seat spanning over three hundred
feet in length. Laid out along the same axis as the house, the outbuildings stretched out in a line along both sides of the house, creating an unusual
and visually-impressive appearance when viewed from the James River located about a mile downhill from the buildings. Upon her arrival, Julia
Tyler updated the house’s interiors with Greek Revival architectural details and some of the most au courant furnishings purchased by her family
members in New York City. She completed the farm’s transformation into a stylish estate through the creation of a twenty-five-acre picturesque
landscape garden surrounding the house influenced by the works of prominent landscape architect Andrew Jackson Downing. As a joke about
John’s status as an outlaw from politics and a reference to the house’s wooded setting, they renamed the place Sherwood Forest.

This report details the evolution of Sherwood Forest’s cultural landscape from the early-seventeenth century through the early-twenty-first
century. The first chapter chronicles the land ownership, as well as early buildings and landscape features from the seventeenth century through
1844. Much of the information is based on the research and reports of the William and Mary Center for Archaeological Research as little
documentary and above-ground evidence remains. The second chapter discusses the modifications John and Julia Tyler made to the property
during their ownership from 1844 to the onset of the Civil War. The third chapter covers the history of Sherwood Forest during and after the Civil
War. It is centered on John and Julia’s eldest son David Gardiner Tyler’s efforts to restore the farm’s agricultural productivity and prevent the sale
of the property during the Postwar era inspired by his idealized views of the antebellum South and his ideologies as an unreconstructed
Southerner. The final chapter spans from David Gardiner Tyler’s death in 1927 to the present. It explores how the wives of two Tyler descendants,
Katherine Thomason and Frances Payne Bouknight’s understandings of architectural history, historic landscapes, and historic preservation shaped
their restorations of Sherwood Forest during the twentieth century. This report reveals the central role Tyler family women have played in shaping
the cultural landscape at Sherwood Forest.

7
Methodology
This report is based on both primary and secondary sources, as well as field investigations. I reviewed biographies on John and Julia Tyler, as well
as studies of Andrew Jackson Downing’s life and work. Since the most comprehensive biography of the Tylers dates to the 1960s, it has outdated
analyses of race and gender and does not examine the built environment, so I largely rely on the extensive correspondence between Julia Tyler and
her family to draw my conclusions. Other primary sources include land records located at the Library of Virginia and period architectural
guidebooks. The construction of additions and outbuildings was poorly documented in primary sources, so I dated the buildings based on
fieldwork, changing tax values of the buildings, and occasional descriptions of construction in letters. My fieldwork was informed by literature on
architectural investigations, class lectures, past experiences with other projects, and reports by the William and Mary Center for Archaeological
Research. I also interviewed Jimmy Tyler and Frances Payne Tyler because they resided at Sherwood Forest for most of the twentieth century.

The Tyler Family Papers located in Special Collections at the College of William and Mary yielded the most primary sources related to the
landscape, buildings, and other material culture at Sherwood Forest. Unfortunately, I realized too late into my research that much of the
correspondence between Julia Tyler and her family were abbreviated copies of original letters in the Gardiner-Tyler Family Papers at Yale
University. The collection at Yale is seven-and-a-half linear feet, so I did not have time to research it in addition to the time I spent reviewing the
large collection at William and Mary. Although my research at William and Mary revealed a significant amount of new information, it should be
considered imperfect because I frequently did not read the original document. I have noted where the sources I used are copies in the footnotes so
future researchers and users of the report are aware.

I also reviewed smaller collections of Tyler family papers at the Virginia Historical Society, the Library of Congress, and Sherry Tyler’s private
collection. The Virginia Historical Society collection largely contained documents produced by John and Julia Tyler’s children after the Civil War,
so it contained less information on the landscape. Similarly, the Library of Congress collection also did not reveal much information about the
landscape because it mainly contained John Tyler’s surviving political correspondence. However, there were several letters between John Tyler and
his daughter Mary Tyler Jones on construction at Sherwood Forest, as well as several letters between Julia Tyler and her mother Juliana Gardiner
on the buildings and landscapes. Sherry Tyler’s private collection mostly contained correspondence and records by John and Julia’s son David
Gardiner Tyler and his descendants. Future researchers should be aware that large amounts of Tyler family archival materials remain within the
family and may be donated to archives over time.

Finally, the Fales Library and Special Collections at New York University also has a collection of Gardiner Family papers that I did not include in
my research. The letters were inaccessible because they were in the process of being digitized. The collection contains twenty-three letters by John

9
and Julia Tyler. John Tyler wrote sixteen letters to Julia’s uncle Samuel Smith Gardiner during the 1850s. Julia wrote seven letters in 1845, 1849,
and 1858 from the President’s Mansion and Staten Island to members of the Gardiner Family. The letters by John are more likely to yield
information on life and modifications to Sherwood Forest than Julia’s letters since Julia generally only wrote about Sherwood Forest while she
lived there. The letters by John may contain information about the landscape of Sherwood Forest, but John wrote most of the letters after the
Tylers had made their major alterations to the property.

10
Chapter 1: Sherwood Forest’s Beginnings

Introduction
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the land that became Sherwood Forest was owned by the Horsmanden, Byrd, and Minge
families. While the location of the Horsmanden-Byrd family’s house site is unknown, it was likely closer to Mapsico Creek than Sherwood Forest,
possibly on the site of the Thomas Cotton house. By the late-eighteenth century, the land had been subdivided into smaller farms. One of these
tracts called Brown’s Quarter contained a small, late-eighteenth century Tidewater farmhouse that became the core of Sherwood Forest. In the
early-nineteenth century, planter John Minge, Sr. of Upper Weyanoke consolidated a number of smaller farms, including Brown’s Quarter, into
larger tracts of land to combat decreasing land productivity from decades of tobacco monoculture. Upon inheriting Brown’s Quarter and other
tracts of land from his father John Minge, Sr., Collier Minge enlarged the house between 1827 and 1828, renaming it the Grove. In spite of his
efforts, Collier Minge was unable to make his farm profitable or attain his father’s status as a planter, leading him to pursue a more lucrative career
as a merchant in Alabama.

Early-Seventeenth-Century Land Ownership

Prior to English settlement along the James River, the Weanoc Indians inhabited the land that became part of Sherwood Forest. A client tribe of
the Powhatan Confederacy, the Weanocs lived on both sides of the James River between the mouth of the Appomattox River and the Weyanoke
peninsula. The Great Weanoc lived on the south side of the James River, while the Tanx Weanoc occupied the north side of the river. Although the
Weanoc village was located near present-day Weyanoke, Native Americans likely had seasonal camps on the land that became Sherwood Forest as
evidenced by prehistoric artifacts found during archaeological investigations along Mapsico Creek. By 1622, the Weanoc had left their village on the
Weyanoke peninsula as English settlement moved up the James River.1

Early English land ownership in the vicinity of Sherwood Forest is poorly recorded in Virginia. Reports by the William and Mary Center for
Archaeological Research found that James Merryman had a 150-acre patent dating to 1635. His land was along the James River directly south of
Sherwood Forest. He conveyed the property to John Merryman in 1638. Based on neighboring patents, Henry Cantrell acquired the 150 acres from
Merryman during the late 1630s. Due to the Merryman family’s short ownership of the property, it is unknown whether they ever settled it. By
1641, Cantrell owned at least 800 acres in the vicinity of Sherwood Forest. Court records indicate that Cantrell was a planter living in Charles City

11
Location of the
Weanoc village,
detail of John
Smith and William
Hole’s 1624 map,
Virginia. Library
of Congress.
(North to right)

12
County by the early 1630s, although the location of his residence is unknown.2

Horsmanden and Byrd Family Ownership

Although no deed or patent survives, Warham Horsmanden acquired Cantrell’s property by 1653. Horsmanden served as a Charles City County
representative to the House of Burgesses, indicating that he also lived in the county. There is no definitive information about his total acreage or
where his house stood. He returned to England in 1660 shortly after the Restoration of King Charles II. There are no records of how Horsmanden
disposed of his property in Virginia. His daughter Mary Horsmanden may have informally inherited it because she and her husband Samuel Filmer
moved to Virginia shortly after their marriage in 1667. Samuel died three years later. His will noted that Mary was living in Virginia at the time.3

Around 1673, Mary Horsmanden Filmer married the prosperous William Byrd I. She likely brought her father’s tract to the marriage. Early in their
marriage the couple lived close to the fall line on the James River due to William’s business interests. They later established the Byrd seat at
Westover after William inherited it in 1688. After Mary’s death in 1699, William made an Indenture of Exchange with James Minge in 1701. Minge
traded 200 acres near Westover for Byrd’s Plantation and Tract at Matchcoats. Byrd likely made the exchange to consolidate land around his
upriver home tract at Westover, while Minge probably sought to expand his landholdings around the Minge house at Weyanoke. Based on this
property transaction, the Matchcoats tract contained 1,086 acres. It was bordered by Tyler’s Creek (formerly Horsmanden’s Creek) on the east, the
James River on the South, and the properties of Hamelin, Harwood, and Nicholson to the west and north. Comparisons with earlier tracts and
deeds of these neighboring properties indicated that the tract containing Sherwood Forest remained largely intact since Cantrell’s ownership.4

Thomas Cotton’s House

Notably, the 1701 property transaction between William Byrd I and James Minge mentioned that a man named Thomas Cotton lived at
Matchcoats. Cotton could have been a tenant. He may have immigrated to Virginia around 1672. Cotton served as a subsheriff for Charles City
County between 1688 and 1696. He moved to Surry County sometime after 1701 where he died in 1719. His house was located on the east side of
Mapsico Creek north of the present-day Tyler’s Mill Road. Cotton’s house may have been the same house or built on the same site as houses
occupied by Warham Horsmanden, Mary and Samuel Filmer, and possibly another tenant preceding Cotton. Since most houses in Virginia were
built using post-in-ground construction during the seventeenth century, they had to be frequently repaired or replaced. Archaeologists have also
found that seventeenth-century planters preferred to build their houses on creeks close to the James River because it was easier to use waterways

13
as opposed to early roads. Although Mapsico Creek is shallow today, it was likely deeper during the seventeenth century before years of tobacco
cultivation silted it in, making its banks a good site for an early plantation house. An archaeological survey conducted by the William and Mary
Center for Archaeological Research in 2004 found evidence that the site of the Thomas Cotton house was occupied from the mid-seventeenth
century through the early-eighteenth century, supporting theories that it may have been the site of the houses occupied by the Horsmanden and
Filmer families.5

Brown’s Quarter in the Eighteenth Century

Unfortunately, a lack of surviving documentation has made it impossible to know what happened to the Matchcoats tract between James Minge’s
acquisition in 1701 and the late 1700s. It appears that members of the Minge family likely sold or exchanged portions of the Matchcoats tract over
the course of the eighteenth century. By the late-eighteenth century, the 234-acre tract of land where the Sherwood Forest house stood was known
as Brown’s Quarter. It may have been previously owned by Thomas Brown, who also owned another piece of land called Brown’s Quarter on the
west side of Mapsico Creek. It was this other Brown’s Quarter that came to be owned by William Henry Harrison.6

Prior to 1783, Benjamin Edmondson acquired the 234-acre Brown’s Quarter tract. Edmondson was a justice of Charles City County and may have
been a horse racing enthusiast. He owned ten horses in 1782 and gave a horse named Lofty to Benjamin Harrison in 1783 to pay off his debt
equivalent to four hundred bushels of wheat. In 1783, Edmondson conveyed Brown’s Quarter to Thomas Harwood. Harwood struggled to retain
ownership of the property because he was frequently in debt, likely due to declining soil productivity that made it difficult for small Tidewater
farmers to survive. Indebted to James Southall by 83 pounds, Harwood conveyed Brown’s Quarter to Southall in 1791. Harwood continued to lease
the property from Southall until he successfully paid the debt and regained ownership of the property in 1795. However, Harwood had again fallen
into debt by 1796 because he owed William Southall, the executor of James Southall’s estate, 282 pounds. Harwood conveyed the property to
trustees John Colgin and William Graves, but died in 1804 before he was able to repay the debt. Colgin and Graves sold Brown’s Quarter to Dr.
Cary Wilkinson at a courthouse auction in 1804.7

The 1791 deed between Thomas Harwood and James Southall is significant because it mentioned the presence of houses and outbuildings at
Brown’s Quarter. Portions of the current Sherwood Forest house likely incorporated some of these buildings. Based on an architectural
investigation, the earliest section of Sherwood Forest was a frame, two-and-a-half story, side-hall farmhouse with an English basement. This house
contained the present center hall, drawing room, and two bedrooms on the floors above the drawing room. Consistent with mid-to-late eighteenth

14
century construction techniques, the house was built on a Flemish bond brick foundation and had a braced frame built with pit-sawn and hand-
hewn lumber. A kitchen-quarters outbuilding likely stood to the east of the house on a Flemish bond foundation. Subsequent owners reused the
foundation as they expanded the house during the nineteenth century. An archaeological investigation conducted by the William and Mary Center
for Archaeological Research also found limited evidence of eighteenth-century occupation, although the archaeologists did not survey the area
immediately around the eighteenth-century portion of the house to get a more precise understanding of when it was built. The study largely found
evidence that the Sherwood Forest house developed during the nineteenth century and was occupied during the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries.8

Parlor floor joists showing eighteenth-century construction techniques for hewn

floor joists (left) and pit-sawn floor joists (right).

15
 Late-eighteenth-century
section of Sherwood Forest
outlined in red.
Foundations of an outbuilding,
likely a kitchen-quarters,
outlined to the left.

Eighteenth-century Flemish bond foundations of the

kitchen-quarters outbuilding (right) and nineteenth-
century common bond foundations (left).

16
John Minge, Sr. Consolidates Acreage
Planter John Minge, Sr. purchased the 234-acre Brown’s Quarter tract from Dr. Cary Wilkinson in 1811 as part of his consolidation of smaller
parcels of land into larger plantations. A descendant of James Minge, John Minge, Sr. owned the Upper Weyanoke estate, as well as a timber tract
known as Hockaday’s. John Minge, Sr. greatly expanded his landholdings during the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. He formed the
Creek Plantation by purchasing two portions of the Matchcoats tract on the east side of Mapsico Creek and combining them with a tract called the
Roundabout, which was located to the south between the James River, Tyler Creek, and the Milton tract. Minge inherited the 397-acre Roundabout
tract, which appears to have been one of the few portions of James Minge’s 1701 Matchcoats land acquisition to have remained in the family. John
Minge, Sr. also owned a mill on Mapsico Creek, which he constructed in 1801 on a 14.5-acre parcel he bought from John Southall. Minge acquired
the 250-acre Vaughan’s tract from Ann Bolling Southall on the same day he bought Brown’s Quarter, expanding his landholdings to the north and
east of his Creek Plantation. Several years later, Minge continued his eastward expansion by purchasing the 669.5-acre Sturgeon Point property.
He continued to reside at Upper Weyanoke, using his new lands for farming. By the 1820 census, Minge had eight white people and one hundred
and fifteen enslaved African Americans in his household. Of these, fifty-four people were engaged in agriculture.9

Collier Minge Inherits Brown’s Quarter

John Minge, Sr. continued to reside at Upper Weyanoke with his family until his death in 1826. He willed his properties to his sons. John Minge,
Jr. inherited Upper Weyanoke and Hockaday’s, William Henry Minge got Sturgeon Point, and Collier Minge received the Creek Plantation,
Brown’s Quarter, and Vaughan’s.10 Collier Minge inherited 1,481 acres including the “estate called the Creek with all the Stock, plantation utensils &
together with all the lands thereto called Vaughans, Browns Quarter, the mill seat and lands attached thereto and 20 negroes or their value as he
may prefer.”11 He may have opted to receive the value of some of the slaves because the 1830 census showed that Minge only owned eight enslaved
people. He also embarked on a construction campaign between 1827 and 1828, which he may have partially funded through the sale of the
enslaved people he inherited. During construction, the total value of the buildings rose from $800 to $2,800. Minge likely added onto the house
and constructed outbuildings to make the small farmhouse better suited for his status as the son of a planter with a growing family and to support
plantation life. He named his house the Grove after the mature oak trees surrounding the house.12

Architectural evidence suggests that Collier Minge greatly expanded the house on Brown’s Quarter during the 1827-1828 building campaign,
enlarging it from a small Tidewater dwelling into a bigger farm house. He built a two-and-a-half story addition with a dining room on the ground

17
floor on the opposite side of the stair hall, giving the core of the house a symmetrical center passage plan. This addition would have connected the
earlier kitchen outbuilding to the house. Minge also constructed a one-and-a-half story addition on the west side of the original house, which would
have been larger than the flanking kitchen outbuilding on the east. Unlike the earlier portions of the house, the sections built by Minge had five-to-
one common bond brickwork in the foundations. The sash-sawn floor joists also measured approximately three-and-a-half inches by nine-and-a-
quarter inches and were spaced about eighteen inches on center, suggesting that the same carpenters built both additions. 13

Minge also likely constructed other outbuildings, including the present kitchen-quarters building. He probably repurposed the original kitchen
building when he joined it to the main house, causing him to construct the current kitchen-quarters to the east. While the floor joists have been
replaced, other portions of the structure show signs of early-to-mid nineteenth century construction including sash-sawn lumber and braced frame
construction. Minge likely used one of the rooms in the kitchen for cooking and the other as a laundry. The two upstairs rooms in the garret
provided housing for servants or enslaved workers. Of the extant nineteenth-century outbuildings, Minge may have also built the smokehouse and
outhouse. They also could have been constructed in the 1840s by John Tyler as his carpenters used similar construction techniques. 14

Life at the Grove

Notably, Minge had a household composed of white,
enslaved, and free people of color who occupied the
Grove. In addition to his wife Anna Maria Ladd, he
appears to have had a white man and a white woman
residing with his family in 1830. The 1830 census
The kitchen-
noted that there were also two white boys and a white
quarters building
girl under the age of five, as well as a white boy
between the age of ten and fifteen residing within
Minge’s household. He also owned eight enslaved
people. Most interesting is the large number of free
people of color in Minge’s household. In 1830, Minge
had seven free people of color living in his household
including one boy under the age of ten, four boys

18
Dining room floor joist showing vertical
marks from an early-nineteenth century
sash saw.

Collier Minge’s 1827-1828

additions outlined in red

19
between the ages of ten and twenty-four, one girl between the ages of ten and twenty-four, and one woman between the ages of twenty-four and
thirty-six. The two women were no longer listed as part of the household by 1840, but the five young men remained. The identities of the free
people of color and the reasons why they lived with the Minge family are unknown. Prior to Nat Turner’s rebellion in 1831, slaveholders could
legally manumit their slaves. Minge could have freed some of his former slaves or allowed them to purchase their freedom. Although manumitted
slaves were legally required to leave the state, many did not. Whether born free or manumitted, they may have continued to live in the Minge
household because of economic or social motivations. The census records showed that is was unusual for free people of color to live within the
households of white people in Charles City County. Most lived in their own households within free black communities. 15

While the living arrangements of Minge’s household are unknown, some of the white, enslaved, and free people of color may have lived in the main
house with the Minge family. Others likely resided in the two living spaces in the kitchen-quarters garret. Additional outbuildings, slave quarters,
or houses could have also been occupied by members of Minge’s extended household, although none of these buildings have survived to the
present. Although the specific circumstances and living situations of the members of Minge’s household are unknown, the census records highlight
the complexities of race, gender, class, and power in the antebellum South and the ways in which social and cultural hierarchies mapped onto the
use and occupation of space within the agrarian landscape.

Collier Minge struggled to make farming at the Creek Plantation profitable. The soil had been depleted by years of tobacco monoculture. While
large landowners like John Minge, Sr. were able to maintain their productivity by consolidating tracts of land, smaller planters such as Collier
Minge did not have the larger acreages or enslaved workforce to be highly successful. By 1836, Collier Minge had moved to Mobile, Alabama and
become a merchant. Although he leased the Creek Plantation to William Taylor, he did not rent the Grove out, indicating that there was an
additional house at the Creek Plantation. Based on the 1840 census, Minge’s extended household of white employees and their children, six
enslaved people, and the five young free men of color continued farming operations at the Grove. The census noted that six of the seventeen people
were employed in agriculture. Minge appears to have had greater success as a merchant, leading him to sell his Charles City County property to his
cousin John Tyler in 1842.16
Opposite: Features predating Collier Minge
(red) and features dating to Minge’s ownership
Early Landscape Features at the Grove (blue) overlaid on a 2019 site plan of Sherwood
Forest. All subsequent plans in this report
Only a few landscape features including the poplar trees, a historic roadway, and the vegetable
document conditions in 2019 with highlighting
garden appear to date to the eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. While there are
to show features dating to the period discussed.

20
currently large oak trees around the house, these trees are descendants of the nineteenth-century oak grove. As noted by Julia Tyler in the
following chapter, the oaks were already mature by the 1840s. The mature oak trees fell in hurricanes during the late-nineteenth and twentieth
centuries, while younger trees survived. Similarly, the large tulip poplar trees growing at the base of the hill to the south of the house currently
appear to have reached the end of their lifespans. Since tulip poplars tend to have an average lifespan of about two hundred years, they were likely
planted or grew up on their own during John Minge, Sr. or Collier Minge’s ownership.

There are also remnants of an early roadway located to the south and west of the house. It connected the house to the Mapsico Road and the
Minge’s mill. Mapsico Road was an early-eighteenth-century predecessor to Route 5. It encompassed portions of present-day Tyler Mill Road and
Mapsico Road, as well as the jeep trail connecting the two. The Thomas Cotton house was located near the Mapsico Road where it crossed Mapsico
Creek during the late-seventeenth century, as was the ca. 1801 Minge Mill and the ca. 1857 Tyler Mill. Now part of Goose Pond Lane, the historic
roadway connected the Grove to the Mapsico Road east of the creek. The roadway likely dates to the Minge family ownership of the property, if not
earlier.17

The remnants of the vegetable garden, currently known as the formal garden, also likely date to the eighteenth or early-nineteenth centuries. The
occupants of Brown’s Quarter would have had a vegetable garden located near the house to supply the kitchen with fresh produce. As noted by
landscape architect Andrew Jackson Downing, early gardens were geometric. They were frequently laid out on a grid with four or six rectangles or
squares. The garden’s grid-like pattern of low mounds and sunken paths follow this earlier type of geometric design, suggesting that the Tyler
family used a preexisting vegetable garden instead of installing a curvilinear garden following Downing’s picturesque landscape design
recommendations as discussed in greater detail in the following chapter.18

Conclusion
Although John Minge, Sr. was able to reconsolidate smaller tracts of land that eventually became Sherwood Forest into an acreage similar to the
Horsmanden-Byrd family’s seventeenth-century Matchcoats tract, his son Collier Minge lacked the resources to make farming profitable as land
productivity continued to decline during the nineteenth century. While he enlarged the house at the Grove to fit his aspirations of becoming a
member of the planter class like his father, Collier Minge was unable to become more than a small planter. He ultimately moved to Alabama and
became a merchant in 1836, an occupation he found lucrative enough to sell his farm at the Grove to his cousin John Tyler in 1842.

22
Chapter 2: John and Julia Tyler Develop Sherwood Forest

Introduction
John and Julia Tyler spent the two decades leading up to the Civil War transforming Sherwood Forest from a Tidewater Virginia farm into a
country estate. John Tyler expanded the house to make it symmetrical and added dependencies arranged linearly on either side of the house to
create an imposing line of buildings to reflect and support his status as a President. Traditional in its architecture, John intended for the house to
resemble the nearby eighteenth-century James River Plantations. His daughter Mary oversaw the initial construction work, while Julia played an
equal, if not greater, role than John in the design of the buildings and grounds after their marriage. Julia incorporated architectural elements from
Greek and other Romantic Revival styles into the finishes for the house and some of the outbuildings to make Sherwood Forest’s architecture more
current. It was, however, Julia’s use of picturesque landscape design for the grove surrounding the house that kept most with the leading fashions
of the 1840s and 1850s. Landscape architect Andrew Jackson Downing heavily influenced Julia’s design approach.

President John Tyler Purchases Sherwood Forest

John Tyler bought the nine-hundred-acre Creek Plantation from Collier Minge and his wife Anne Marie in November 1842 for twelve thousand
dollars. The purchase included the Minge house known as The Grove, as well as Minge’s grist mill. When he acquired the property, Tyler was in the
midst of serving his term as President of the United States. He had been elected as Vice President to Whig politician William Henry Harrison in
1840. Harrison was the first sitting President to die while in office in April 1841. His death sparked a contentious debate over presidential
succession. Harrison’s cabinet decided that Tyler would serve as a Vice-President acting President, but Tyler argued that the Constitution gave him
full presidential powers. Tyler assumed the presidency, placing him at immediate odds with many of the cabinet members. By mid-1841, he had
split with the Whig Party in Congress over economic policies. The Whigs formally expelled him from the party in September 1841. Tyler earned the
nickname “Old Veto” because he refused to sign many of the bills passed by the Whig Congress. Recognizing that he would not win reelection in
1844, he set about trying to find a Virginia plantation to use as a residence when he retired from politics. Born at Greenway Plantation near Charles
City Courthouse in 1790, Tyler decided to return to his native Charles City County through the purchase of the Creek Plantation from his cousin
Collier Minge. As an outlaw president without a party, Tyler renamed the farm Sherwood Forest in a reference to Robin Hood. 1

23

John Tyler by George Peter Alexander Healy, 1859.
Oil on canvas. National Portrait Gallery,
Washington, D.C.
Tyler wanted the house at Sherwood Forest to befit his status as a President of the
United States and member of an old Virginia family. He persuaded his eldest
daughter Mary Tyler Jones and her husband Henry Lightfoot Jones to live at
Sherwood Forest to oversee the renovation and expansion of the house and
outbuildings while he continued to serve his term in Washington. Mary resided in
the room John Tyler later used as a sitting-room, now known as the Gray Room,
while she supervised the construction. The construction work would have included
removing the eighteenth-century kitchen building appended to the dining room
and building out the foundation to construct a new wing that mirrored the ca. 1828
one-and-a-half story parlor addition on the west side of the house. These
modifications were reflected in the transition from Flemish bond brickwork to
common bond brickwork in the foundation of the new wing. John’s letters to Mary
specified that he wanted the room in the new wing to become his bedchamber,
while Mary’s bedchamber would become the sitting-room. The workers slept in
John’s bedchamber while they completed additional construction work, which
included moving the staircase in the center passage from the wall shared with the
drawing room to the dining room wall. They also built the porches on the north
and south sides of the house.2
Mary also likely oversaw the construction of many of the outbuildings in an
imposing, and distinctive linear arrangement, which was probably dictated by her
father. The construction of outbuildings during Mary’s tenure was less well-
documented in her correspondence with her father. As part of the conversion of
the farm into a plantation, John requested that Mary have the carpenters build a
carriage house “large enough for two carriages, and place it at the corner of the
grove by the gate leading to the stable with the front to the garden.”3 This letter
indicated that the carriage house and stables were located to the west of the house
near the garden. She may have also overseen the construction of the smokehouse, a
24
 John Tyler’s bedchamber
addition outlined in red. Mary
Tyler Jones oversaw its
construction in 1842.

Copy of the earliest known

depiction of Sherwood Forest
by Eben Horsford in 1852.
Horsford noted that a row of
outbuildings extended on
either side of the house,
although only the dairy is
shown in his sketch. Tyler
Family Papers, Special
Collections, Swem Library,
College of William and Mary.

25
corncrib, a dovecote, and an icehouse. During a visit to Sherwood Forest in 1852, Eben Horsford noted that “a row of outbuildings extend on either
side some distance including, a smokehouse corncrib, dove cote, milk house etc.”4 Horsford’s letter revealed that John likely had the outbuildings
arranged linearly on either side of the house. Although only the smokehouse and dairy remain, other outbuildings including the barns, stable,
carriage house, corncrib, dovecote, and icehouse were likely located along the same axis as the surviving outbuildings and house. The location of
one of the icehouse foundations supported this conclusion. The icehouse stood to the southeast of the current horse barn in alignment with the
house and smokehouse. Two other icehouses may have stood to the west of the house near the present-day Creek Plantation house based on
depressions, although they could date to different periods. The barn stood next to one of the icehouses, but which icehouse is unknown.5 If the
outbuildings had similar placements on the west side of the house, the row of dependencies and the house would have stretched over a quarter of a
mile. The linear arrangement would have been both visually-impressive and unusual for the time. Most other James River plantations only had a
few outbuildings flanking the house with many of the agricultural dependencies grouped in complexes nearby because such arrangements were
more efficient. While impractical, John’s linear arrangement of outbuildings was statement-making. Since outbuildings constructed during the
Minge’s ownership would have likely been grouped closer together, Mary probably oversaw the relocation or new construction of outbuildings to
suit her father’s interests in linearity and symmetry.

In addition to the outbuildings, Mary probably supervised the construction of the laundry-quarters building. Although the kitchen-quarters
building likely already contained a laundry in one of the ground-floor rooms, John wanted to symmetrically balance the kitchen-quarters building
through the construction of another dependency on the west side of the house. Furthermore, building a laundry-quarters would have freed up the
laundry room in the kitchen-quarters as an additional food preparation space. This would have likely appealed to John since his desire to
transform the farm into a plantation also translated into having the capabilities of producing finer meals with more complex cooking processes due
to his status.6 The laundry quarters building had two rooms on the ground floor where enslaved women did the laundry and two garret rooms used
as additional slave quarters. The laundry-quarters building also served as the location for the
Opposite: Buildings likely constructed enslaved people’s social events on at least one occasion, such as the dance held in the building in July
under the supervision of Mary Tyler 1844. Although no correspondence documented the construction of the laundry, the machine cut
Jones highlighted in green. The nails and sash-sawn lumber indicated the use of early-to-mid nineteenth century building materials
carriage house is not shown because its and techniques. The structural members were spaced about twenty-four inches on center like John’s
location is unknown. It was located bedchamber addition, suggesting that they were constructed by the same carpenters. In contrast, the
near the garden along with the stables, kitchen-quarters had larger rafters spaced about nineteen inches on center like the portions of the
possibly near 21. house built under Collier Minge’s ownership. The kitchen-quarters also had two doors on the south

27
elevation to access the ground floor rooms separately, while the laundry-quarters had one door on the west elevation and internal circulation
between the ground-floor rooms. The kitchen-quarters also employed stair ladders to access the quarters, while the laundry-quarters had full
stairs, further indicating that they may have been constructed during different periods.7

John also would have needed to construct additional slave quarters shortly after his acquisition of the property. In contrast to Collier Minge, who
owned less than ten slaves, John had approximately sixty to seventy enslaved people laboring on the plantation by 1844. Based on census records,
John owned forty to fifty slaves and leased additional slaves as needed. He also employed free people of color. By 1860, he had constructed seven
slave dwellings on the property. According to family oral histories, the slave quarters are believed to have been located in the woods to the north of
the present office and stables. Oral histories also hold that there were two slave cemeteries on the property. One of the cemeteries is purported to
be located mid-way along the west side of the thirty-acre field. There is no surviving visual evidence of the cemetery above ground. The second
slave cemetery’s location has been lost, although it may be situated in the woods to the south of the present-day Creek Plantation house due to the
growth of Vinca minor, also known as periwinkle or creeping myrtle (see site plan on page 8).8

The laundry-
quarters
building.

28
Julia Tyler Arrives at Sherwood Forest
While Mary worked to convert Sherwood Forest into a plantation during 1843 and
1844, her father began to quietly court Julia Gardiner during Washington’s winter
social seasons. John’s first wife Letitia had died in September 1842. He was
determined to pursue Julia during the early months of 1843 though he was still
technically in mourning. A member of the wealthy New York Gardiner family, the
twenty-one-year old Julia was one of the leading belles of the season. Thirty years
John’s junior, Julia rejected his multiple marriage proposals. In 1844, Julia and her
family returned to Washington for another social season. Julia’s father David
Gardiner was tragically killed along with members of John’s cabinet when a cannon
exploded on the USS Princeton on February 18, 1844. Haunted by her father’s death
and comforted by John, she agreed to marry the President. They married in a private
ceremony in New York on June 22, 1844. The marriage shocked the nation. It even
distanced some of John’s children from their father, including Mary Tyler Jones,
who was five years older than Julia.9

Julia first saw Sherwood Forest while on her honeymoon trip to Old Point Comfort,
Virginia. Of her initial impressions of Sherwood Forest, Julia wrote to her mother
Juliana that:

The President felt anxious I should visit it in order to make any alteration I
pleased ere it was too late. He prepared me for utter confusion and little or
nothing more except a grove of old oaks ‘which he could boast of’ – I found the
Julia Gardiner Tyler by Francesco Anelli, 1846-1848.
situation to be a very beautiful one and though now in its partial wildness very
Oil on canvas. White House Historical Association,
fine in appearance capable of being made truly magnificent. The house is very
Washington, D.C.
unfinished and the workmen will be employed upon it til Christmas next. Time

29
 will make it a very handsome residence. The house is ninety feet by forty-two situated in the midst of 1600 acres of beautiful cleared and
wooded land. […] There are between sixty and seventy slaves on the estate.10
Although Julia was pleased with the grounds and residence at Sherwood Forest, she quickly sought to impose her tastes in architecture upon the
house. She told her mother that she had gone about, “directing the Carpenters and mechanics where to make this change and where this addition.
The head carpenter was amazed at my science and the President acknowledged I understood more about carpentry and architecture than he did,
and he would leave all the arrangements that were to be made entirely to my taste. I intend to make it as pleasant as I can under the circumstances.
A new house I would have arranged and built differently of course.”11 Julia was determined that Sherwood Forest would become “the handsomest
place in the County and I assure you there are some very fine ones in it.”12 Julia would have likely chosen to build the house in a Romantic style,
such as Gothic Revival, which was then being popularized in the North for rural residences by landscape architect Andrew Jackson Downing. She
later fantasized about changing the exterior, writing to her brother Alexander that “the house if not liked as it is, on the exterior, could be changed
to almost any style I suppose. A northern carpenter of a little experience could throw additions here and there and with a very little work, according
to the book on Gardening make it a Swiss or give it other taste in appearance.”13

Left: Portrait of Andrew

Jackson Downing from page
viii of the 1859 edition of A
Treatise on the Theory and
Practice of Landscape
Gardening.

Right: Illustration of one of the

styles of rural architecture
promoted by Andrew Jackson
Downing in his book A Treatise
on the Theory and Practice of
Landscape Gardening, page
350.

30
Ultimately, Julia decided to update the house in the Greek Revival style, which was architecturally more compatible with the John’s previous
additions designed to create symmetry and rectilinearity. On the interior, she had Greek Revival wainscoting, doors, marble mantlepieces, and
moldings with cresting inspired by Minard Lafever’s The Beauties of Modern Architecture installed. The Greek Revival aesthetic also appears to
have influenced the design of some of the outbuildings, including the privy and dairy. The mid-nineteenth-century privy may have already been
constructed prior the Tylers’ marriage, but Julia had the interior paneled to match the wainscoting in the house’s center passage. Julia also likely
had the dairy constructed or heavily modified to fit her preference for Romantic architecture. The dairy had a cavetto cornice and cyma ventilation
slats with curvatures based on Grecian molding profiles, although cavetto cornices were far more common in Egyptian Revival architecture. Julia
may have been inspired to incorporate a plain cavetto cornice into the dairy by the ca. 1845 Egyptian Building in nearby Richmond, Virginia.14

The privy (left), wainscoting on the interior of the privy (center), and the dairy (right)

31
In addition to the outbuildings, John and Julia Tyler also built the hyphens connecting the kitchen-quarters and laundry-quarters buildings to the
main house after their marriage. The construction of the hyphens made the house into a Palladian plan similar to older Palladian-influenced James
River Plantation houses, such as Upper Brandon, Lower Brandon, and Westover. John likely already had plans for the hyphens prior to Julia’s
arrival at Sherwood Forest as he was interested in creating balance and symmetry through the addition of his bedchamber wing and the
construction of the laundry-quarters building. Shortly after the couple moved in during March 1845, Julia wrote to her brother Alexander that the
“kitchen and laundry are buildings separate from the house on a level and by a space of 27 ft. We intend to have them connected to the house by a
long passage 8 feet high and 9 in width – a narrow entry running down on one side and the rest partitioned off into small rooms and closets for
stores etc. – in the other passage which leads to the laundry most of the room not left for the entry will be appropriated to an office for the
President.”15 Julia mentioned that the kitchen-quarters and laundry-quarters buildings were twenty-seven feet from the house, but the hyphens are
sixty-eight feet long. The Tylers must have determined that they needed additional space within the hyphens, moving the dependencies farther
away from the house. Both the hyphens and the outbuildings had the same Flemish bond foundation, suggesting that the buildings were moved
around the same time as the construction of the hyphens. The hyphen’s structural framing was different than the laundry-quarters. The hyphens
had larger studs with carpenters’ marks inscribed on their exterior surfaces, indicating that the hyphens were likely built by different carpenters
during a later construction campaign than the laundry-quarters building.

Left: The east hyphen,

presently known as the
colonnade, contained storage
spaces.

Right: The west hyphen was a

multi-purpose space known as
the galley, gallery, or corridor
during John and Julia’s
ownership. They used the
room as John’s law office and
a space for dancing.

32
As reflected in Julia’s correspondence with her family, the Tylers
partitioned the east hyphen between the house and the kitchen-quarters
into store rooms. The hyphen is currently referred to as a colonnade,
even though it is not technically a colonnade. They likely used the west
hyphen, referred to in their correspondence as the galley, gallery, or
corridor, as a multi-purpose space. Upon a visit to Sherwood Forest in
1847, Alexander Gardiner noted that the completed house “presents quite
a formidable front, and it is proposed to use the galley which has lately
been added to it for a cabinet and a library."16 Alexander’s letter
paralleled Julia’s earlier letter in which she noted that the hyphen
between the house and the laundry-quarters would be used as John’s
office. However, the length of the room and its vaulted ceiling, which
facilitated the transmission of sound throughout the room, also
supported family oral traditions of John and Julia Tyler holding dances
in the room. In December 1848, Julia wrote her mother that “The young
folks had a regular frolic last night. Mr. Waller played upon the violin,
alternating with the President, and the rest danced away in the gallery
room quadrilles, reels, perpetual motion and I know not what else. I took
part for a while, but soon became tired.”17 The Tylers predominantly used Above: Interior of the
the gallery as John’s law office until November 1859 when Julia moved west hyphen.
his books into the laundry-quarters building. While undertaking an
annual cleaning of Sherwood Forest, Julia noted that she “transferred the
books to the room beyond the corridor and made a library of that – which Right: A stud from the
is a comfortable spot for the P. to write in.”18 The eastern room in the west hyphen showing a
laundry-quarters briefly served as John’s law office until his death in carpenter’s mark.
January 1862, while the western room was used as an overseer’s office.
The laundry may have been moved back to the kitchen-quarters building
or a separate outbuilding could have been constructed.

33
The Tylers Update the Gardens and Grounds
In addition to the construction and modification of the house and outbuildings, John and Julia Tyler’s conversion of Sherwood Forest from a farm
into an estate also entailed the alteration of the gardens and grounds. While Julia became involved in the construction of the house too late to
implement architectural changes based on the writings of Andrew Jackson Downing, her designs of the grounds were heavily influenced by his
work. Downing had published his seminal book A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, Adapted to North America; with
a View to the Improvement of Country Residences in 1841. Downing’s book popularized picturesque landscape gardening, which emphasized the
creation of naturalistic landscapes instead of the more rigid, geometric gardens that had been popular in the United States during the eighteenth
and early-nineteenth centuries. The book was so successful that he published an expanded edition in 1844. 19 Julia’s brother Alexander took an
interest in the development of Sherwood Forest into a plantation, writing her that “nothing would delight me more than the pleasure of laying out
the grounds of a country seat, and I envy you the enjoyment which this employment will doubtless afford the President and you during a portion of
every year. I intend to send the Downings Treatise on the subject if I can procure it.”20 Alexander evidently succeeded in sending Julia a copy of
Downing’s book, as their mother wrote Julia asking how she liked the book in May 1845.21

Subscribing to the picturesque landscape aesthetic, Julia used the preexisting landscape features at Sherwood Forest in her plans for the grounds.
Although she had not yet read Downing when she first saw Sherwood Forest on her honeymoon trip, Julia recognized that the “grove of old oaks”
and the “partial wildness” of the place leant itself well to the creation of a picturesque setting for the house.22 She quickly decided that the oak grove
would be “made into a park (twenty-five acres) and stocked with deer.”23 After John and Julia moved into to Sherwood Forest in March 1845, they
spent the remainder of the year having the enslaved workers selectively remove trees to create scenic views to the James River and main road. In
letters to her sister Margaret, Julia noted that the house stood about a mile from the river, telling her that “the trees on the bank that intercept the
view have already been nearly cut away. Since I have been seated here I have noticed some five or six vessels pass up and down.”24 Several months
later, Julia informed Margaret that “we have done a great deal of clearing this winter and the extent of the estate is now thrown far more open to
view from the road and the improvement is therefore decided.”25

Additionally, the Tylers had the driveway and circle on the north side of the house laid out in the fall of 1845. While John and Julia were away on
vacation, John’s youngest son from his first marriage Tazewell wrote that “Burrel has made the circle and graveled it and is now about the road.”26
Burwell, who also had his named spelled or transcribed as Burrel, Burrell, Bunnel, and Bundle, was the enslaved coachman and gardener at
Sherwood Forest. John may have purchased or inherited Burwell from his father’s estate as his father owned an enslaved man named Burwell at

34
the time of his death in 1813.27 By the mid-nineteenth century, Burwell was growing elderly. Julia was happy when John retired Burwell in 1855,
writing Margaret that “the President has relieved me of old Bundle and given me Peter for a gardener and coachman, so that I can expect to have
things better conditioned in the stable and garden for Peter is a fine black fellow and a capital groom besides being neat and particular and
manageable.”28 As gardener, Burwell would also have likely laid out paths, planted, and tended to flowers, trees, and vegetables for the Tylers
between 1845 and 1855. Peter would have assumed these duties until he left the plantation sometime during the Civil War. 29

The Tylers may have continued to plant vegetables

in the garden established by prior owners, adding
ornamental plants after taking up residency at
Sherwood Forest. As early as March 1844, John
encouraged Mary to grow vegetables. He wrote to
her, “vegetables, vegetables, tell him to cultivate a
world of them –with a plenty of them one half the
meat will do –They are more valuable than the
corn-field.”30 The Tylers likely planted these
vegetables in the garden located to the southwest
of the house. After John and Julia moved to
Sherwood Forest, Julia may have planted
ornamental flowers alongside vegetables in the
garden. In October 1844, William Brackenridge of
the U.S. Patent Office sent her a list of flower
species that would grow well in southeastern
Virginia. Almost immediately after she moved to
Sherwood Forest in March, she wrote her sister
Margaret that “in a few days I shall have planted
some of the Patent Office flower seeds.”31
Brackenridge sent Julia additional flower seeds in
July, noting that “most of them are annuals and The front drive looking north.

35
well adapted to thrive in the open grounds during the summer months.”32 Julia probably planted the seeds in the garden as it was one of the few
open spaces in the grove around the house.

In addition to annuals, Julia also grew bulbs and shrubs in her garden. Although her letters to her family members did not discuss acquiring or
planting these perennials, they mentioned these plants flowering. Julia wrote that hyacinths, tulips, lily of the valley, violets, cowslips, pink and
white Persian lilac, spirea, calycanthus, dahlias, and roses bloomed in her garden. Of these plants, she frequently wrote about the hyacinths as
harbingers of spring.33 She also often mentioned her roses in passages describing her home’s picturesque beauty, such as “Sherwood Forest has
now the most charming effect –such a luxuriance of roses, and the tall oaks in such full leaf and casting such deep shadows.”34 Julia enjoyed roses
so much that Mrs. Harrison of Lower Brandon gave Julia “a beautiful supply of rose bushes […] –no less than 40 rare varieties.”35 Julia also
mentioned growing asparagus, salad greens, peas, strawberries, cherries, peaches, figs, persimmons, and passionfruit. 36 Since her letters often
mention produce, fruits, and flowers in the same sentences or paragraphs, it may indicate that she grew these plants in the same garden.

If Julia grew vegetables, ornamentals, and fruit trees in the same garden, it
would have been a notable departure from her adherence to Downing’s
work. His books included plans for both curvilinear geometric and
picturesque flower gardens. However, older James River Plantations
followed what Downing termed “the ancient style of gardening,”37 using a
linear, symmetrical, grid-like layout with plantings of vegetables, flowers,
and fruit trees. Downing noted that this garden form could be effectively
used “where a taste for imitating an old and quaint style of residence
exists.”38 Julia may have used this older form of garden design for several
reasons. A vegetable garden laid out in a grid already likely existed, making
it easier to modify a garden that was already established. Paralleling John’s
construction of the additions to stylistically evoke an older, Palladian-plan,
Tidewater house, Julia may have also wanted to use an older garden form to
contribute to Sherwood Forest’s appearance of age and stateliness in an
emulation of the neighboring eighteenth-century plantations.

36
On the other hand, Julia may have also grown her vegetables, fruit trees, and flowers in separate locations. Downing provided sample plans of
country estates in his book. Many of these plans featured symmetrical, geometric vegetable gardens located a short distance from the house with
flower beds planted around the house. He often depicted orchards near the vegetable gardens. 39 Julia may have planted only vegetables in the grid-
like garden. Based on oral history, remnants of an orchard stood just beyond the garden during the mid-twentieth century.40 While there is no
surviving visual evidence such as low mounds, Julia could have planted her flowers in beds around the exterior of the house.

The piazza served as a connecting space between the garden and house. The Tylers engaged in leisurely activities like writing letters and reading on
the south piazza, where they could overlook the fields of the plantation and the James River. Julia grew oranges in pots on the piazza, bringing
them inside during the winter.41 John and Julia also
decorated the stairs to the piazzas with outdoor statuary.
Julia requested that Alexander find the statues in New York
shops, telling him “the President would like to have on the
projections of the South piazza two female statues to preside
over the garden, and on the projections of the other piazza
two dogs.”42 Julia later changed her mind, asking her brother
to buy two vases, or urns, for the south piazza instead of the
female figures. Alexander commissioned the dog sculptures
and urns from a manufacturer named Basham, possibly
referring to New York sculptor Fred Basham. Downing’s
book likely influenced Julia’s decision because he extolled
the virtues of placing urns, vases, and sundials near houses
to form an architectural connection between the building and
the gardens.43

Opposite page: The remnants of the garden area. Low

undulations show the garden was laid out on a grid.
Right: The dog statuary on the north piazza.

37
The Tylers’ Golden Years at Sherwood Forest
After John and Julia spent the years of 1845 and 1846 building, furnishing the house, and gardening, they settled into plantation and family life at
Sherwood Forest. Like many of the neighboring planters on the James River, John engaged in agricultural experimentation to increase the yield of
his crops. Following the recommendations of fellow Tidewater planter Edmund Ruffin, John first used marl during the 1840s to enrich his soils
that had been depleted by the tobacco monoculture. Based on archaeological evidence, John may have stockpiled some of the marl in the northwest
yard at Sherwood Forest.44 Julia wrote that John’s 1849 wheat crop was so successful that it was “the talk of Virginia. A notice of it even appeared
in a Richmond paper as the most flourishing crop on the James River. Some of his friends […] say ‘Ah, ha! He’s only been on his farm five years
and is before his neighbors already!’”45 Following an unsuccessful wheat crop in 1850, John resorted to using guano as fertilizer. Since guano was
more expensive than marl, he decided to test its efficacy by purchasing a small amount of guano and applying it to his poorest land. The resulting
crop was so successful that Julia noted that he regretted not purchasing enough guano for his entire 200-acre wheat crop. John may have practiced
crop rotation since he also raised livestock and grew about 170 acres of corn, oats, and clover. Additionally, he experimented with potato
cultivation.46

In addition to taking a great interest in agricultural experimentation, John was also physically involved in the cultivation of his crops. Seeking to be
an effective manager of his enslaved workers, he would frequently spend time in the fields even though he employed an overseer. Early in their
marriage, Julia sometimes joined him. She told her brother “the President is out on horseback three or four hours every day in the field among the
slaves, encouraging them on by his presence. I often take the pony and when the sun declines join him.”47 Both John and Julia viewed slavery as a
benevolent institution. They generally regarded their enslaved people as childlike and helpless without the care and supervision of their owners
and the Tylers’ white employees. Julia wrote to her family members about ensuring that the enslaved workers were well-fed and clothed, and of her
husband using his presence to pressure the slaves into working harder as opposed to using physical punishment. In spite of these practices, the
Tylers were still trying to extract the maximum amount of labor from their enslaved people by keeping them as contented and healthy as possible.48
While Julia was born in a Northern family that did not own slaves and preferred white servants over African Americans, she became keenly aware
of the centrality of slaves to the Southern economy.49 She quickly bought into the system of slavery. Shortly after her first child was born, she wrote
her brother asking, “how do you propose to invest my funds? A family of young negroes can be bought her for $1,000, which would be worth to
Gardiner [her son] at the age of 21 - $4,000.”50 Julia’s experiences with slavery at Sherwood Forest ultimately shaped her widely publicized
rebuttal to the British Duchess of Sutherland’s petition to end slavery in the United States in 1853, in which Julia argued that the enslaved people’s
conditions were better than those of the British working class and excoriated Britain for its role in the slave trade. 51

38
Along with plantation management, family life also became important to John and Julia. The couple had seven children, beginning with David
Gardiner Tyler in 1846. He was shortly followed by John Alexander in 1848, Julia Gardiner in 1849, Lachlan in 1851, Lyon Gardiner in 1853,
Robert Fitzwalter in 1856, and Pearl in 1860.52 With the birth of her children, motherhood became Julia’s main focus, while socializing with her
neighbors and family became secondary. Although she and John may have continued to make changes to Sherwood Forest’s gardens and buildings,
her letters primarily documented the health, development, activities, and education of her children. Julia’s letters typically only mentioned the
conditions at Sherwood Forest in passing. John and Julia continued to make some improvements to the grounds. For example, Alexander helped
them plant a dozen cedar trees inside the carriage circle on the north side of the house in the spring of 1850. They may have also created the goose
pond to the southwest of the house by building a dam around some of the springs in the hillside. According to family oral traditions, the Tylers kept
geese tethered in the pond and hunted them, although this practice was not documented in correspondence.53

The Trees of Sherwood Forest

Alexander’s sudden death from appendicitis in
January 1851 jarred John and Julia’s fairly idyllic
lives. Mourning her brother, Julia turned to
gardening likely as a way to process her grief and
honor her brother’s interests in landscape Two of the
architecture. She wrote her mother, “I am trying to surviving cedar
take an interest in the garden and shall soon spend a trees planted in
good deal of time outdoors.”54 She requested that the front circle.
her mother “visit the nurseries and [send her…] the
Norway Fir, the Yew, the European Silver Fir, the
Evergreen Thorn, the Magnolia Grandiflora, English
Bay, Cedar of Lebanon -and then for the ornamental
trees, the Linden, the Weeping Ash, the Mountain
Ash […], the Ginko Tree, Virgilia tree, Paulownia,
and English Hawthorne.”55 Julia may have revisited

39
Downing’s book given to her by Alexander in her selection of the trees. Downing recommended planting these species on country estates to allow
the trees’ forms, foliage, and flowers to beautify the landscape.56 When the shipment trees arrived from New York, Julia informed her mother that
“each one was untied and drawn from the bundle you would have been amused by the expressions of admiration and pleasure it called forth from
the P. and myself, to say nothing of the gardeners and the children. We set right to work planting them in the most particular manner.”57 They
followed Downing’s suggestions to plant the trees around the house as he advised “near the house, good taste will dictate the assemblages of groups
and masses of the rarer or more beautiful trees and shrubs; commoner native forest trees occupying the more distant portions of the grounds.”58
Planting these ornamental trees furthered the transformation of Sherwood Forest’s grove into a picturesque, park-like setting.

The Tylers also planted trees they obtained locally in 1851. They had to replace some of the cedars in the circle, while Julia planted more shrubs in
the garden –possibly including the boxwoods on the south side of the house—and John selected locations throughout the grove for locust trees.
Other trees growing around the house possibly dating to John
and Julia’s ownership were recommended by Downing
including the Osage orange, red mulberry, horse chestnut,
shagbark hickory, and beech trees may have also been planted
around this time. Some trees that were also likely planted by
John and Julia, including maples, ashes, a Kentucky coffeetree,
and a Japanese raisin tree, fell in hurricanes during the
twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries. Of the trees ordered
by Julia, only the magnolias and gingko planted on the south
side of the house have survived.59

Left: Several of the surviving trees planted on the south side of

the house, including the gingko and magnolia ordered by
Julia. She also likely planted the horse chestnut and shagbark
hickory.
Opposite: Modifications to the buildings and landscape likely
made after Julia’s arrival highlighted in purple. Note that the
original location of the privy is unknown as they were often
moved.

40
In addition to planting the trees, John also laid out a half-mile serpentine path through the grove. With the labor of all of the enslaved people, the
path was cut out in a day and subsequently graveled. Downing also extolled the benefits of curvilinear walks for promenading or exercising by foot
in his book. 60 When Eben Horsford visited the following year, he noted “in front [the south side of the house] is a garden at the foot of which is a
living spring and in which the bulbous plants are already peeping out. At some little distance are evidence of Mrs. Tyler’s taste in landscape
gardening in clumps of trees, evergreens, oaks, willows etc. -and stretching out on all sides is the plantation.”61 Horsford’s letter demonstrated that
in the eyes of their guest, John and Julia had succeeded in transforming Sherwood Forest into a plantation through their extensive construction
campaign and Julia’s creation of a large picturesque landscape garden.

Conclusion
Together John, Julia, Mary Tyler Jones, and the enslaved
workforce reshaped Sherwood Forest into a plantation
through large-scale additions to the house, the
construction of dependencies arranged in an imposing
linear layout, and the development of a picturesque
landscape setting. Downing’s Treatise on Landscape
Gardening substantially influenced Julia’s
understandings of aesthetics. The Civil War and John’s
death in 1862 brought Julia and her children’s
antebellum, plantation lifestyle to an end, also
inextricably altering the landscape the Tylers had worked
so hard to create.

View of Sherwood Forest from the

south showing the large boxwoods,
magnolia, walnut, and gingko
trees planted by Julia.

42
Chapter 3: Sherwood Forest During and After the Civil War

Introduction
The Civil War and John Tyler’s death in 1862 led Julia to flee with her young children to the safety of her mother’s house in New York in 1863,
leaving Sherwood Forest unattended. As the Confederacy began to collapse in 1864, first the Tylers’ former slaves and then Union soldiers wreaked
havoc on Sherwood Forests interiors. The gardens John and Julia worked so hard to create were likely lost due to neglect during and after the war.
Discouraged, Julia wanted to sell the plantation, but her eldest son David Gardiner persuaded her not to. Although he was motivated by his
investment in the Lost Cause ideology and his desire to reinstitute a social hierarchy based on white supremacy, Gardiner’s desire to restore the
plantation and become a member of the landed gentry ultimately kept Sherwood Forest in the Tyler family during the Postwar period.

Sherwood Forest During the Civil War

As the Civil War loomed in early 1861, the ailing, seventy-year-old John Tyler returned to the political arena. Appointed as a delegate to the Peace
Conference and Virginia’s special commissioner to President Buchanan, John and Julia returned to Washington to try to negotiate peace. Due to
his extensive political experience, the delegates nominated John as the president of the Peace Conference. The lack of protections for slavery in the
resolutions developed by the conference and a meeting with Lincoln, who swore he would protect the Constitution even if it meant war, convinced
John that secession was necessary. John was also elected to the Virginia Secession Convention, where he promptly began to work for secession
with the extremists even though he had been chosen as a moderate. The majority of the delegates at the Virginia Secession Convention voted to
leave the Union on April 17, 1861 after the attack on Fort Sumter and Lincoln’s call for troops. Shortly thereafter, John was elected as a member of
the Provisional Confederate Congress.1

After being elected to the Confederate House of Representatives, John left Sherwood Forest during the first week of January in 1862 to serve in
Richmond. Several days later, Julia dreamt that John had fallen seriously ill, causing her to rush from Sherwood Forest to Richmond’s Exchange
Hotel where she found him in good health. However, a week later John became sick during the night and died on January 18 th. Confederate
politicians devised a grand funeral to cast John Tyler as a father of the new nation. John became the only United States President to be buried
under the Confederate flag. Although John had wished to be buried in the grove at Sherwood Forest, he was interred in Richmond’s Hollywood

43
Cemetery after lying in state at the Confederate Congress, a high-profile funeral at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, and a funeral procession through
Richmond.2

John Tyler’s death left Julia widowed at the age of forty-one with eight children to care for and a plantation to manage during the Civil War. She
resolutely stayed at Sherwood Forest during the 1862 Peninsula Campaign, citing her inability to leave all of the enslaved people. Aside from
destroyed fencing, the plantation remained largely unscathed during the Peninsula Campaign because Union General George B. McClellan
protected Sherwood Forest out of respect for the death of President Tyler. Julia had difficulty maintaining the plantation. Her eldest son, sixteen-
year-old Gardiner tried to oversee the wheat harvest, but the crop was poor. Julia’s enslaved fieldworkers also began to escape to the Great
Contraband Camp at Fort Monroe in Hampton, Virginia where they could not be returned to slavery. 3

By the fall of 1862, Julia had come to the realization that Sherwood Forest would likely continue to be caught in a war zone due to its proximity to
Richmond and feared for the safety of her children. Due to her status as a former First Lady, she was able to procure passes for herself and her
children to travel through Union lines to her mother’s house on Staten Island in November. Gardiner and Julia’s niece Maria Tyler remained at
Sherwood Forest during Julia’s trip to take her children north. Julia left her middle children Alexander, Julia, Lachlan, and Lyon with her mother
and returned to Sherwood Forest with her youngest children Fitz and Pearl in January 1863. Once most of her children were safe, Julia enrolled
Gardiner at Washington College, now Washington and Lee University, in Lexington, Virginia and tried unsuccessfully to sell Sherwood Forest. She
ultimately ended up arranging for her husband’s nephew John C. Tyler to manage the plantation, as well as hiring two white men to supplement
the labor of the remaining enslaved people. She hired a brick mason named Mr. Harrod who was already living in a tenement on the property to
operate the mill and Mr. Oakley, the former overseer at Weyanoke. Maria Tyler also remained to care for the house. Julia was unable to procure
passes to travel back to New York because she refused to take an oath of allegiance to the United States, so in August 1863 she traveled to
Wilmington, North Carolina to run the Union blockade with Fitz, Pearl, five bales of cotton, and her maid Cecelia Johnson, who was a free young
woman of color. An agent sold the cotton for £225 in Bermuda, while Julia, her children, and Johnson sailed on to New York. 4

Sherwood Forest fared well until the Bermuda Hundred Campaign and the collapse of slavery in 1864. U. S. Colored Troops under General Wild
raided the area during mid-May, prior to the Battle of Wilson’s Wharf on May 24th. They arrested all of the elderly local white men including John
C. Tyler and Julia’s neighbor William H. Clopton, and imprisoned them at Fort Monroe for a few weeks. A fervent abolitionist, General Wild left
the enslaved people who had remained on the plantation in control of Sherwood Forest. The removal of John C. Tyler and the presence of the
Colored Troops emboldened the formerly-enslaved people to ransack Sherwood Forest. About a month later on June 22nd, Ohio troops stationed at

44
Detail from the 1862 “Map of the
James River Valley from the vicinity
of Richmond to Chesapeake Bay:
Including Parts of Henrico,
Chesterfield, Charles City and James
City Counties.” showing the area
around Sherwood Forest. Library of
Congress, Washington, D.C.
The map shows mid-19th century
road patterns. Note that the road to
Tyler’s Mill was located in the
present-day tree line between the 30
acre and 40 acre fields, not to the
south of the 40 acre field where the
current Tyler Mill Road is (see site
plan on page 8). The map also
depicts the mill pond and the historic
road that became Goose Pond Lane
running from north-south to the west
of the Sherwood Forest house.

45
Wilson’s Landing looted the house, doing even greater damage.5 In a letter to Julia, William Clopton described the wreckage at Sherwood Forest
done by both the enslaved people and the Union soldiers:

Everything in the house is destroyed except the bedstead in the blue room. There are two other bedsteads only partially injured –one in each
of your chambers –everything else is broken to pieces & carried off –all the marble tops are broken. The beds were all carried off by the
negroes and the furniture in the way of chairs, etc. are at camp and they told John he could have them all, but have not sent them as of yet.
[…] The sofas in the parlour are all stripped of their velvet & left so –mirrors crushed all to atoms, busts all broken; all that was done in the
way of destruction was done by Burnside’s army. […] Old Fanny was the leader in tearing down the curtains and gathering things up
generally. Turned to a young girl, just caught hold of the curtains & pulled them down by main force –they carried off everything they
wanted.6
Importantly, Clopton noted that “the house is uninjured.”7 None of the correspondence from Clopton, John C. Tyler, Maria Tyler, or other relatives
who wrote about the destruction of the house’s interiors, such as Gardiner or James Semple, reported to Julia that Union soldiers tried to burn
Sherwood Forest. Family oral traditions held that the soldiers tried to set fire to the house, but the fire was extinguished by faithful slaves. While
the story may be true, it seems unlikely given that it was not mentioned in correspondence regarding the interiors and the former slaves do not
appear to have been especially concerned about the condition of the Tyler family property. However, the house caught fire at least once before the
Civil War and around the turn of the century, but never sustained any major damage.8
Clopton also wrote to Julia about the perplexing situation of the Tyler family slaves taking charge of the plantation. He informed her that:
The place [was] put in possession of old Claiborne and Burwell by Wild, with directions that what is there they are not to allow anyone to
have. They have beds &’steads and have taken the carts, wagons, cows & everything and huddled them around them at the quarters, and thus
you see your property is in the hands of the negroes [… who] have eaten all the sheep […] and the hogs & are now going upon the neighbours’
stock. […] Old Claiborne is younger & brisker than a boy now -he & Burwell have their wives there and five or six negroes besides some of [the
neighbors’]. […] Wild opened the barns & smokehouse to the negroes & carried off stock of all sorts.9
Although the collapse of slavery at Sherwood Forest was written about by a neighboring planter who viewed it as utter anarchy, Clopton’s
description showed that the former Tyler family slaves had assessed the situation, weighing a number of factors that may have included the
wartime shortage of food and the difficulties of leaving the plantation due to age, and acted within what they perceived to be their best interests.
Clopton’s letter also showed that in spite of John and Julia’s beliefs about paternalistic slavery, their enslaved people engaged in acts of resistance.

46
Claiborne had evidently pretended to have been enfeebled by old age to reduce the demands the Tylers could place on him, thereby exploiting the
Tylers’ beliefs that they had to care for their sick and elderly enslaved people.
Incensed, Julia wrote to both President Lincoln and General Butler seeking to restore John C. Tyler as manager. She asked General Butler if Tyler
could “take [Sherwood Forest] again in his charge. It was placed by Gen. Wild […] under the control of some of my negroes with directions that
they should give up nothing to any one, consequently my manager finds himself denied the authority which I had placed in his hands.”10 General
Butler consulted with General Wild, who responded that the former slaves “now live there as they have done for many years upon the estate of the
late Mr. Tyler. […] They have cultivated some portion of the estate and I suppose desire to reap what they have sown.”11 Butler ultimately allowed
John C. Tyler to return to Sherwood Forest, but he could not re-enslave Burwell, Claiborne, or their families.
The outbuildings at Sherwood Forest also appear to have largely survived the Bermuda Hundred Campaign. In October 1864, Clopton reported to
Julia about the condition of the farm. He informed her that the Union troops had only burned about four hundred panels of fencing near the mill,
cut the mill dam, and removed the bolting cloths from the mill. The mill and barns may have caught fire or collapsed from disrepair sometime near
the end of the war or during Reconstruction due to the lack of resources to maintain them. The mill was described as only a site by 1901. Burwell,
Claiborne, and their families remained at Sherwood Forest and
continued to cultivate corn, wheat, and oats, although they did not
produce much beyond what they needed for subsistence.12

Villa Margaret
After Sherwood Forest was ransacked, the building stood empty for the
remainder of the war. John C. Tyler and Maria Tyler lived on the
neighboring Clopton plantation as there was little intact furniture at
Sherwood Forest.13 Contrary to previous scholarship, Sherwood Forest
does not appear to have been used as a school for African Americans,
rather it was the Tyler property at Old Point Comfort. At the same time
as she was trying to ascertain the condition of Sherwood Forest, Julia Early 1860s print of Villa Margaret showing Union troops
was also seeking to recover possession of her summer vacation house encamped in the yard. Sherwood Forest Plantation Foundation.

47
there, Villa Margaret, and its furnishings. Due to its proximity to Fort Monroe, the Union Army seized Villa Margaret fairly early in the war. As the
Union Army succeeded in pushing the Confederates into their entrenchments around Richmond in 1864, the Union Army seems to have allowed
the house to be converted into a school. After he had been released from imprisonment at Fort Monroe, Clopton checked on Villa Margaret. He
wrote Julia that “it is occupied yet as a school house by negroes & whites –the trees are nearly all destroyed and a good many houses erected
around the lot […] the house looked to be in very good repair outside as I could see from the road.”14 After the war, the Army gave the house to the
Freedman’s Bureau to continue its use as a school. While she was trying to regain possession of the house in 1866, a local family friend informed
Julia that her home had been “occupied by some schoolteachers from the North [… who] have all vacated for a trip North. Your lot has been
squatted on by whites and blacks who have shanties on the side next to D. Wood’s farm.”15 Julia was unable to regain her property at Old Point
Comfort until 1869, when she still had difficulty removing the squatters.16

Reconstruction at Sherwood Forest

Julia remained in Staten Island with all of her children except for Gardiner and Alexander after the Civil War ended. She was devastated when her
mother Juliana died in October 1864 as her other close siblings Alexander and Margaret had passed away in the 1850s. Julia’s remaining brother
David Lyon Gardiner challenged their mother’s will in court because he argued that Julia had exerted undue influence on Juliana to change her will
shortly before she died. After a series of legal battles, Julia ultimately inherited her mother’s house on Staten Island in 1868. She continued to live
there since the Sherwood Forest house was in poor condition. Julia knew that Gardiner and Alexander, who had served in the Confederate Army,
would not be willing to attend Northern colleges and wanted to prevent them from joining ex-Confederates in Mexico. She sent them to study in
Karlsruhe Germany along with their cousin Harry Beeckman in 1866. Alexander took well to German culture and remained in Germany to study
engineering until he returned to the United States in 1873. Gardiner longed for the South and persuaded his mother to allow him to return to
Washington College in 1867 after General Robert E. Lee became the school’s president.17

Disillusioned with African American laborers after her paternalistic views of slavery were shattered during the destruction of Sherwood Forest,
Julia tried hiring Swedish immigrants to farm the plantation using a feudal system in July 1865. She hired Sievert von Oertzen to manage the farm,
along with four families to farm. The Swedes farmed Julia’s land four days per week and worked plots that she loaned them for their personal use
two days per week. Julia also paid for their relocation from New York and their provisions. By fall, she had grown frustrated with von Oertzen’s
frequent demands for more money, tools, and food.18 She agreed with John C. Tyler’s opinion that “None of the persons you have sent here have
earned their salt since they have been here […] it would be to your interest to get rid of all of them.”19 Julia fired von Oertzen, who then

48
unsuccessfully sued her for the value of his work. She ultimately ended up leasing portions of her land to African American sharecroppers who paid
her half their profits.20

Lion’s Den, a late-nineteenth century, rambling, one-story frame house built on the Sherwood Forest property on the banks the James River, may
have started as housing for sharecroppers or it could have originated as a summer house for Julia’s son Lyon Gardiner Tyler. The original two-
room portion of the house at Lion’s Den may have been built as housing for one of the Swedish families or African American sharecroppers. Lion’s
Den was built using balloon-framing, which consisted
of circular-sawn, two-by-four studs fastened by nails.
The house had a pressed brick foundation. Balloon
frame construction and pressed bricks did not become
widespread in Virginia until after the Civil War. The
outbuildings at Lion’s Den were built in the Carpenter
Gothic style, which was also popular during the late-
nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Sometime
after he became president of the College of William and
Mary in 1888, Lyon greatly enlarged the building for
use as a summer house. He named the house Lion’s
Den. Lyon moved there after he retired in 1919,
occupying it until his death in 1935.21

The earliest two-room section of Lion’s Den (shown

here) may have been built as housing for
sharecroppers or a summer vacation house for
Lyon Gardiner Tyler during the late-19th century.
Lyon added multiple additions during the late-19th
and early-20th centuries as he expanded his
summer house. Additional research is needed to
determine the house’s history in greater detail.

49
 Although Julia had largely given up on Sherwood Forest after the Civil War,
Gardiner’s romanticized views of traditional Southern lifeways inspired his
determination to keep the property in the family’s possession and to
attempt its restoration to its antebellum state. Gardiner emerged from the
Civil War as an unreconstructed Southerner, likely due to his childhood and
wartime experiences. He had lived a charmed life at Sherwood Forest as the
eldest child of doting parents with enslaved companions who catered to his
interests as detailed in his letters to his grandmother Juliana. In one such
letter he informed her “we have a great deal of fun of nights, all of us
children are dressed up in uniform, with paper hats, and we march to Hail
Columbia. […] and the last night we all dressed up in girls clothes and papa
plays the fiddle and we all dance.”22 He also told his grandmother that an
enslaved person named George was “going to make me a sleigh and when it
is done I am going to hitch Belle and sprout to it.”23 Gardiner’s idyllic
childhood ended abruptly with the start of the Civil War and his father’s
death when he was sixteen.

Although Gardiner partially built his political career after the war on his
military service to the Confederacy, in reality he saw little action during the
Civil War. He attended Washington College in Lexington, Virginia, where
he longed to serve in the army but could not until 1864 because of his age.
Unlike the cadets at the neighboring Virginia Military Institute, students at
Washington College who were members of the Rockbridge reserves did not
participate in the Battle of New Market in the spring of 1864. While the
Rockbridge reserves fought at the Battle of Piedmont, Gardiner missed the
David Gardiner Tyler.
action because he was sick with a fever. He retreated with the Confederate
Harvard Law School
Army to Lynchburg, where he finally got to fire on the despised Yankees
Library, Cambridge,
from the safety of a trench. After Gardiner turned eighteen in July, he went
M.A.

50
to Richmond to join the army. His older brother-in-law James Semple convinced Gardiner to join one of the artillery units defending Libby Prison
in Richmond. Gardiner found the work boring, so he joined the Rockbridge Artillery in September 1864. He spent the remaining eight months of
the war entrenched around Richmond, where he wrote that he had little work to do and ate well. Obituaries later stretched his service with the
Rockbridge Artillery to eighteen months.24 Gardiner informed Julia that “I am just as safe where I am as I would be at a peaceful home. […] The
artillery is by far the easiest service.”25 In spite of the easiness of artillery service, he also noted “I would be ashamed to show my face if, after we
had gained our independence, it should be said that I did not assist to establish it.”26 In spite of Gardiner’s optimism about winning the war, he fled
Richmond during the evacuation of the capital and surrendered with the Confederate Army at Appomattox in April 1865. 27

Gardiner’s childhood and wartime experiences during his formative years arguably impacted his life views after the Civil War. His memories of his
carefree childhood combined with the collapse of the paternalistic views of slavery he had been raised on, the destruction of Sherwood Forest by
the formerly enslaved people and Union troops, and his lack of firsthand experiences with the grim realities of the battlefield likely caused him to
become a firm believer in Southern superiority, hater of Northerners, and white supremacist. After the war, he sent his mother poetry he wrote
romanticizing Southern valor and demonizing Northerners.28 He also regularly wrote her about his political views, in one such instance referring
to the Underwood Constitution, which enfranchised African American men and enabled them to hold political offices, as a “political monster, born
of Radical malignity and scalawag negrophilism.”29 He later added “No true Virginian is going to give an assenting vote to his own degradation. I
for one will never by my vote allow the Negro to exercise such a right.”30 While these views shaped Gardiner’s work as a lawyer, legislator, and
judge, they also impacted his perceptions of Sherwood Forest. As part of his investment in regaining his status as a member of the white, landed
gentry, he was determined to keep Sherwood Forest in the Tyler family and fix it up to make the farm profitable again.

Gardiner was largely responsible for convincing Julia to keep Sherwood Forest during Reconstruction. Julia had visited Sherwood Forest a few
times in 1866 and 1867, but became discouraged after her experiment with immigrant labor failed. Julia tried to sell the plantation again in 1866,
but Gardiner persuaded her not to even though by 1868 “everything was going to yet greater ruin. With the exception of some one hundred acres
which are being cultivated by negroes on shares, all the plantation is fast growing up in scrub pine, sassafras, and red oak bushes. The house as well
as many of the outbuildings is gradually rotting, and in a few years longer it will be beyond the possibility of repair.”31 After gaining admission to
the Virginia bar in 1870, the twenty-four-year-old Gardiner returned to Sherwood Forest to follow in his father’s footsteps by practicing law in
Charles City County, running for local political office, and farming.32

In spite of his determination, Gardiner struggled to make farming at Sherwood Forest profitable during the 1870s. He realized that wheat would

51
not be a profitable crop due to the high costs of guano, seeds, and labor, so he focused on growing oats and corn. The lower costs of growing oats
and corn enabled Gardiner’s younger siblings to attend school, which ultimately paid off when they became working professionals during the late
1870s. Gardiner could not afford the labor to grow wheat because he knew that African American laborers would “not work unless they are paid
punctually every Saturday night, dependent as they are on the proceeds of their daily labor for sustenance.”33 He also raised livestock, although he
frequently had to give cows to the sheriff to pay the property taxes. Julia almost had to sell Sherwood Forest in 1872 and 1874 because of the
family’s extensive debts. Likely buoyed by Gardiner’s passion for keeping Sherwood Forest, Julia instead sold Villa Margaret, her New York City
real estate, and the Staten Island house in 1873 and 1874 to pay the debts. After her daughter Julia’s sudden death from childbirth in 1871, the
elder Julia converted to Catholicism and moved to Georgetown, D.C. to be close to her younger children attending school in the District and
Virginia as well as Gardiner at Sherwood Forest.34

Although his primary focus was on making Sherwood Forest income-producing again, Gardiner also worked on improving the gardens around the
house, largely for his mother. The gardens had been neglected for close to a decade, which was likely when many of Julia’s ornamental plantings
such as her rose bushes were lost. While the Tylers lacked the resources to restore the gardens, Gardiner tried to beautify the Grove. In 1871, he
wrote Julia, “Your behests about cutting down the undergrowth in the Garden have been anticipated. I have had Paul at the work for a month or
two, and by next July I think he will finish. […] We have attended to the Kitchen-Garden, and shall vegetate abundantly on onions, Irish potatoes,
green corn, and other herbs this summer.”35 Similarly, in 1873, he told his mother “I am trying to extend operations both in the Garden and on the
farm in view of your probable (?) abiding here this summer. […] By Jove! What a garden I could make this place with only a little means and what
pleasure I would take in restoring the farm to its former condition.”36 The following year, Gardiner transplanted some of his mother’s beloved
hyacinths and grew strawberries preceding a visit by Julia in the spring.37

Postwar Outbuildings and Landscape

Gardiner either repaired or built several new outbuildings at Sherwood Forest during the 1870s. The Sherwood Forest stable may have survived the
Civil War and been repaired by Gardiner. In 1871, he lamented to Julia that “Old Ben Green has never sent me the mule I bought of him! […] but
the vacant stall in our stable is still lonely and mule-less.”38 The letter indicated that a stable building existed at Sherwood Forest, although it was
being used to house work mules. On the other hand, the cow barn appears to have be destroyed during or after the war. Gardiner wrote Julia that
the “poor cattle [are] standing shivering on the dreary hillside, and no feed to warm the poor beasts in the barn. I hope this will be the last winter

52
our herd will be forced to endure, unsheltered, and uncared for, the piercing blasts of winter.”39 Gardiner likely built the dairy barn to the west of
Sherwood Forest now on Jimmy Tyler’s property that is aligned with the main house and outbuildings to replace the barn that had been destroyed
during or after the Civil War. He also built the green barn between the dairy barn and Sherwood Forest around 1900 as he continued to rebuild the
farm.40 Gardiner’s placement of the barns indicated that he continued the linear arrangement of outbuildings established by his parents. He may
have been replacing buildings on the sites of earlier structures built by John and Julia or he could have been interested in continuing their
aesthetics and spatial arrangements as part of his investment in restoring the plantation to its prewar state.

Gardiner may have also moved the log tobacco barn, also known as
the wine house, to its current location next to the smokehouse
during the 1870s. It also follows the linear arrangement of the
house and outbuildings. The tobacco barn was likely built during
the eighteenth century when previous owners cultivated tobacco
on the property. Log structures were a foreign method of building
construction to the English settlers during the seventeenth century
due to the lack of timber in Great Britain. Swedes and other
Northern Europeans introduced log construction to the United
States during the mid-seventeenth century when they settled the
Delaware Valley. Architectural historians and archaeologists
generally believe that log construction techniques did not reach
Tidewater Virginia until the late-seventeenth or early-eighteenth
centuries. Once log construction was introduced, it quickly became
a popular method of construction because it was quicker, easier,
and cheaper to erect small buildings of logs than frame. The log
tobacco barn likely stood elsewhere on the property. After owners
ceased to grow tobacco, they probably used it for other purposes,
enabling its survival. Gardiner most likely moved it as a way of
quickly replacing another outbuilding that had burned or fallen The ca. 1900 green barn.
apart. It is doubtful that the tobacco barn was located next to

53
the Sherwood Forest house during John and Julia’s ownership because its rough-hewn appearance did not fit into the polished aesthetics they
sought to create. The tobacco barn never had siding, indicating that John and Julia did not try to make it blend in with their weatherboard-cladded
frame buildings and offering additional evidence that the tobacco barn was not originally located near the house. 41

There is also little evidence that the Tylers used the log
tobacco barn as a wine house. According to family oral
histories, John Tyler produced wines from scuppernong
and muscadine grapes grown on the property in the
tobacco barn. However, Julia only documented instances
of him purchasing casks of wine and bottling them himself
in correspondence. In 1846, she humorously informed her
mother that “today he has bottled and corked fourteen
dozen of wine, and is wondering what it is has made his
arms and fingers so to ache!”42 A letter from Gardiner to
Julia also provides evidence that John did not produce
wine. Shortly after the Civil War, Gardiner inquired “in
Virginia all the hillsides are beginning to be planted with
the grape-vine –that is, in the mountains of Va. Have you
ever thought of trying the culture at Sherwood? I presume,
however, the soil is not suited for it.”43 Since Gardiner was
John and Julia’s eldest child, he would have likely known
if his father had been able to successfully grow grapes and
produce wine at Sherwood Forest. It is possible that
Gardiner experimented with viticulture after he returned
to Sherwood Forest in the 1870s, which could have given
rise to the story about the tobacco barn’s use as a wine
house.
The tobacco barn.

54
The walnut allée to the east of the house likely grew up along fence lines or was planted sometime after the Civil War by Gardiner. The walnut trees
in the allée are noticeably smaller than the walnut tree growing on the south side of the house, so it is unlikely that John and Julia planted them.
One of the trees in the allée is also a hackberry, not a walnut. Given Julia’s attention to gardening, she probably would not have left the hackberry
tree in place had she intended to grow a walnut allée.

David Gardiner Tyler Acquires Sherwood Forest

After Reconstruction ended in 1877, Julia began a campaign to
pension the widows of former Presidents. The Hayes
administration took a more reconciliationist approach than the
preceding administrations, so they were supportive of Julia in
spite of her husband’s role in secession. She successfully argued
that John had faithfully served the United States for most of his
life, but that she was unable to survive due to the devastation of
the Civil War and the litigation over her mother’s will. Congress
initially granted her a $1,200 annual pension in 1880, but they
established a $5,000 annual pension for all the presidential
widows after the death of President Garfield in 1881. The pension
enabled Julia to live comfortably in Richmond for the remainder
of her life. She was staying in the Exchange Hotel in July 1889
when she suffered a stroke. She died on July 10th in a room close
to where her husband passed away in 1862 and was buried next to
him in Hollywood Cemetery.44

Just as Julia’s life ended, Gardiner was becoming an increasingly

successful lawyer and politician. He served in the Virginia State The hackberry tree growing next to a walnut in the allée.
Senate from 1891 to 1892 before he was elected to the U. S. House

55
of Representatives. Gardiner lost his reelection in 1896, so he returned to private practice until he was reelected to the state senate from 1900 to
1904. Afterwards, he served as a Virginia circuit court judge until his death in 1927. Gardiner’s rise to prominence enabled him to marry Richmond
socialite Mary Morris Jones in June 1894. Similar to the large age gap between his parents, Gardiner was nineteen years Mary’s senior. Between
1895 and 1905, they had five children together including Mary Lyon Tyler, Margaret Gardiner Tyler, David Gardiner Tyler, Jr., James Alfred Jones
Tyler, and John Tyler. John Tyler died as an infant, but the other children survived to adulthood. Gardiner’s increasing financial success also
allowed him to purchase Sherwood Forest from Julia Gardiner Tyler’s estate after he paid off the liens on the property in 1895.45

Gardiner appears to have made only a few documented changes to the property, such as clearing the thirty-acre field and building the present horse
barn, after he formally acquired it. In 1901, he wrote to his brother Lyon that he had “21 acres of the Creek Field pines cut […] I calculate that there
are still 25 or 30 acres undergrowth standing in the field next to the mill-site.”46 The letter indicated that thirty-five years after the Civil War,
Gardiner and Lyon Tyler were still working to reclaim the fields next to Mapsico Creek that had grown up in woods from a lack of cultivation. The
twenty-one acre field may have been the field south of Tyler Mill Road and north of Lion’s Den, while the field next to the mill-site is presently
Jimmy Tyler’s thirty-acre field north of Tyler Mill Road.

Gardiner also built the oldest portion of the current horse barn after the Sherwood Forest stable burned during the early-twentieth century. An
undated newspaper article noted that Judge Tyler lost three horses when a fire destroyed the stable, which had been uninsured. The fire occurred
after Gardiner became a judge in 1905, likely closer to his death in 1927. He replaced the stable with a four-stall barn and tack room. The road to
the stables ran through the patio of the current office building. Gardiner may have added an additional two stalls to the north side of the barn
shortly thereafter. The new horse barn did not align with the main house and outbuildings. It was also on the opposite side of the house from John
Tyler’s stable and carriage house, which was near the garden. Gardiner’s discontinued focus on linearity and precedent suggests that by the
twentieth-century, his priorities appear to have shifted away from restoring Sherwood Forest to its pre-war state to memorializing the Confederacy
and the “Lost Cause.” He became known for his skills as an orator through addresses he gave at the unveiling of the Charles City County
Confederate soldiers monument in 1900, the commemoration of the birth of Robert E. Lee at the College of William and Mary in 1911, and a
gathering of Confederate veterans in Richmond in 1915. Gardiner was a member of the Grand Camp, Confederate Veterans, which erected
monuments of Generals Jackson and Lee in Charlottesville during the 1920s. At Governor Harry Byrd’s request, Gardiner also joined the One
Hundred Thousand Club of Virginia in 1926 to help finance the carving of the Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial in Georgia. 47

Opposite: Buildings constructed by Gardiner highlighted in yellow. The unnumbered building is the tobacco barn.

56
Unfortunately, there is little information on the gardens at Sherwood Forest during Gardiner’s ownership of the property. Few letters between
Gardiner and Mary that could provide insights into the landscape are currently accessible through archival collections. Additionally, there are no
landscape features in the grove that definitively date to the early-twentieth century. Gardiner may have only sought to maintain the grove instead
of restoring it after Julia died because he likely viewed the farm and his career as higher priorities. Similarly, Mary may not have been interested in
large-scale landscape gardening, possibly because she developed other hobbies such as being a member of a literary club as an urbanite and
socialite. However, she may have been responsible for the lattice railings added to the porches as they were not present in images of Sherwood
Forest until the late-1920s.48

Conclusion

After the Civil War, Gardiner’s dedication to restoring

the plantation ultimately led to the farm becoming
productive again. In the decades following the war, he
replaced many of the outbuildings that had been
destroyed during the war or by neglect. He continued
placing the outbuildings in a linear arrangement, likely
following his understandings of how they should be laid
out from his childhood and his desire to regain planter
status. His construction of the present horse barn out of
alignment with the other outbuildings showed that his
mindset had shifted by the 1910s. While Gardiner
succeeded in restoring the farm, he did not attempt the
restoration of the house’s interiors or gardens, likely Close-up of the earliest known photograph of Sherwood Forest, likely taken during
the late-19th century. Note the small size of the beech and cedar trees compared to
because it was a lower priority than making the farm
the mature oaks. The house did not have lattice-work on the roof of the porch.
productive. The restoration of Sherwood Forest’s house
Likewise, there was an urn located next to the foot of the porch stairs with the pair
and gardens would be attempted by later generations
of dogs at the top of the stairs. Sherwood Forest Plantation Foundation.
during the twentieth century.

58
Chapter 4: Sherwood Forest during the Twentieth Century
Introduction
During the twentieth century, wills leaving interest in Sherwood Forest divided equally among the heirs caused familial discord on multiple
occasions. David Gardiner Tyler’s son James Alfred Jones ultimately acquired the Sherwood Forest during the mid-twentieth century. His wife
Katherine Thomason undertook an early restoration of Sherwood Forest’s interior and gardens based on the local Colonial Revival and historic
preservation movements. Disputes over Sherwood Forest eventually caused their children to sell the house and surrounding fifty acres to their
relatives Harrison Ruffin Tyler and his wife Frances Payne Bouknight in 1975. Paynie completed a second restoration of the house and outbuildings
grounded in her understandings of historic preservation and family history. After the restoration, the Tylers opened the grounds and portions of
the house to the public.

A House Divided
After Gardiner and Mary died in 1927 and 1931, respectively, their four children received equal interest in Sherwood Forest. During the late-1920s
and 1930s, their son James Alfred Jones Tyler lived at Sherwood Forest and maintained the farm while he worked as the Charles City County
Commonwealth’s Attorney. His older brother David Gardiner Tyler, Jr. lived in Richmond where he was the Assistant Attorney General of Virginia,
while his sisters had married and moved away with their husbands. James married Katherine Thomason of Richmond in 1940 and brought his wife
to live with him at Sherwood Forest. They had three children James “Jimmy” Alfred Jones, Jr., Emily, and Mary beginning with Jimmy’s birth in
1945. James and Katherine often employed five servants including a cook, a laundress, a maid, and two men to help with farm and yard work.1

The divided interest in Sherwood Forest began causing familial tensions between James and Gardiner as early as 1942. Around 1948 or 1949,
Gardiner, Jr., his wife, and children forcibly moved into Sherwood Forest as Gardiner legally had interest in the property. Although James had
acquired his sisters’ interest in the property, the two brothers still divided the house in half. Gardiner’s family lived on the west side of the house,
converting the ballroom into a kitchen, while James’s family lived in the east half. The center hall and stairs became a no-man’s land since the
families, particularly the wives, did not get along. Katherine had a small staircase installed between the second and third floor bedchambers so her
daughters’ third floor room could be accessed without using the main staircase. Since the tension made living at Sherwood Forest unbearable,

59
James and Gardiner went to court over the division of Sherwood Forest. The Charles City Circuit Court awarded Gardiner 342 acres and gave
James the title to the house, outbuildings, and 398 acres. Gardiner appealed the decision to the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals, arguing that
both the house and the land should be divided in half. Since James had acquired three-quarters of the interest in the property, the Virginia
Supreme Court of Appeals ultimately ruled in his favor in 1952. Gardiner ended up with the northwestern portion of the Sherwood Forest property
bounded by Mapsico Creek, Tyler Mill Road, James’s land to the east, and Route 5. He built the Colonial-Revival brick house named the Creek
Plantation during the early 1950s.2

Mid-20th Century Agriculture at Sherwood Forest

James constructed many of the agricultural buildings to the east of the Sherwood Forest house between the 1940s and early 1960s, in addition to
creating another field for crops. He also built a third agricultural building to the west of the house that no longer stands. He used the pastures to
the southeast of the house for hogs, constructing two shelters for the pigs at the top and the bottom of the hill. James also built a small corncrib
near the pig pen at the top of the hill. He created a small road running from north to south along the tree line separating the gardens from the
pastures to access the pig pens. The chicken house stood next to the horse barn. James continued to use the fields to the east of the pig pens as
horse pastures. He completely discontinued the practice of aligning outbuildings with the Sherwood Forest house, instead siting them for practical
reasons. In addition to constructing agricultural buildings, James created the ten-acre field to the east of the forty-acre field on Tyler Mill Road
during the 1940s. He also opened some of his land for gravel mining during the 1950s, resulting in the formation of a large pond to the southwest of
the house.3

Katherine Thomason Tyler’s Alterations

Much like Julia Tyler a century before, Katherine brought her own tastes in aesthetics to Sherwood Forest’s interiors and gardens. While Katherine
unfortunately did not document the changes she made to Sherwood Forest through her correspondence like Julia, her alterations appear to have
been heavily influenced by the Colonial Revival movement and the restoration of nearby Colonial Williamsburg, which began in the late-1920s.
Designs grounded in the Colonial Revival movement were based on a combination of historical research and nostalgia for the past. At Sherwood
Forest, Katherine added new features to beautify both the interiors and landscape likely based on how she thought they would have historically
appeared. Preservation and restoration efforts in Williamsburg and Richmond during the early-to-mid twentieth centuries probably influenced her

60
understanding of historic aesthetics.

Katherine reused architectural pieces from her ancestral Nolting House in Richmond to decorate Sherwood Forest’s interiors. Demolished in 1951,
the Nolting House had been one of the city’s finest examples of Greek Revival architecture. Since Julia had originally decorated Sherwood Forest
with Greek Revival interiors, the architectural pieces from the Nolting House were fairly stylistically compatible. Katherine reused a marble
mantlepiece from the Nolting House in the drawing room, as well as window valances in the dining room. Although the dining room did not
originally have a chandelier, Katherine added one from the Nolting House. Katherine and James also restored the ballroom around 1958 as
Gardiner had converted it into a kitchen. In addition to undertaking an early restoration of the interiors, Katherine and James also oversaw several
other construction projects in the house including adding oil heat in 1954 and the installation of bathrooms on the second and third floors.4

Likewise, Katherine’s additions to the Sherwood Forest gardens, such as the plants she chose, also reflected an interest in Colonial Revival
landscapes. She planted boxwoods around the front circle, as well as magnolia trees on the north side of the house. On the south side, Katherine
planted crepe myrtles and a tree hydrangea. Early-to-mid twentieth century landscape architects designing in the Colonial Revival style, such as
Ellen Biddle Shipman, popularized the use of
boxwoods and magnolias in Southern gardens.
Likewise, landscape architects such as Arthur A.
Shurcliff also used boxwoods, magnolias, crepe
myrtle, and hydrangeas in the early Colonial
Revival gardens in Williamsburg. Although
Katherine selected some species that Julia used
and others that she did not, Katherine generally
followed Julia’s precedent for using picturesque

Early-to-mid 20th century photograph of

Sherwood Forest taken prior to Katherine’s
landscaping. Note the dog statues on the porch
stair cheekwalls and the lattices on the porch roof.
From the private collection of Sherry Tyler.

61
Above: Boxwoods and magnolia trees planted on the north side of the house
by Katherine. Some of the boxwoods are later replacements for those
planted by Katherine.

Right: Tree hydrangea planted on the south side of the house by Katherine.

62
 Left: Terraces created by Katherine on the south side of
the house at the edge of the formal garden. She planted
the trees on the terraces.

Right: Remnants of Katherine’s U-shaped flower bed

with crepe myrtles near the privy.

63
landscape design instead of Colonial Revival layouts. Colonial Revival gardens used geometric layouts. Katherine’s most geometric planting was the
circle of boxwoods around the driveway and a U-shaped flower bed to the southeast of the house with rows of crepe myrtles on either side. The rest
of her plantings she interspersed among Julia’s trees in locations where they added to the garden’s overall beauty.5

Katherine’s creation of terraces on the south side of the house also reflected her interest in Colonial Revival aesthetics. She installed terraces on the
hillside below the remnants of the formal garden. Gardens with terraces at Colonial Williamsburg, as well as neighboring eighteenth-century
plantations like Carters Grove and Shirley likely inspired Katherine. She probably planted the trees on the terraces, including the maple, Chinese
chestnut, and holly trees. The Tylers used as sickle mower drawn by mules to cut the grass in the yards about the house, so the grass grew taller
than the neatly manicured gardens at Williamsburg.6

In spite of her interest in Colonial Revival landscapes, Katherine also planted some species not widely used in local Colonial Revival gardens
because she probably valued them for other reasons. She planted a flower garden with tiger lilies and shrubs on the site of the present slave
quarters building. She also scattered beds with tiger lilies around the larger garden. Additionally, Katherine likely planted the trifoliate orange,
Cunninghamia, and Chinese chestnut trees, which were species uncommon in Colonial Revival gardens. In addition to the Chinese chestnut tree on

Crepe myrtles
(left) and a
Chinese
chestnut
(right) planted
by Katherine
in the south
yard alongside
Julia’s
surviving trees
and boxwoods.

64
the terraces, Katherine also planted two of them in the south yard near the bottom of the hill, surrounding one with a circular flower bed.7

Recreational Landscape Features

James, Katherine, and their children also developed several landscape features that had both practical and recreational functions at Sherwood
Forest during the mid-twentieth century. They built a tennis court to the northeast of the house for leisure, which was close to the current sign for
John Tyler’s burial plot. They also played croquet in the front circle and softball in the area that had been the formal garden. Additionally, James
and his son Jimmy dug out the springs at the base of the hill and inserted barrels to chill foods, such as watermelons. Jimmy excavated a small
The springs and large poplar trees
The goose pond. to the south of Sherwood Forest.

65
pond for raising minnows a short distance from the springs, but it quickly silted in. James also worked to restore the goose pond, removing a
number of large tree stumps and raising the height of the dam. Afterwards, the family used the goose pond as a swimming hole. 8

A House Again Divided

During the 1960s, Jimmy Tyler returned to Sherwood Forest to help care for his aging parents and the farm. He married Alice Sharpe Watt of
Greenville, South Carolina in 1966, bringing her home to Sherwood Forest.
In spite of the difficulties James experienced with the way Gardiner gave
equal interest in the property to his children, James also left equal shares of
Sherwood Forest to his three children when he died in 1972. Jimmy wanted
to continue farming and residing at Sherwood Forest as his father and
grandfather had done, but by 1975 his sisters sold their interest in the house
and the surrounding fifty acres to their relatives Harrison Ruffin Tyler and
his wife Frances Payne Bouknight Tyler, forcing Jimmy to sell his interest.
The son of Lyon Tyler and grandson of John Tyler, Harrison sought to
return to Charles City County, while Paynie wanted to live in a historic
showpiece home on a plantation. She felt a calling to restore Sherwood
Forest and furnish it with antiques from her ancestral home Mulberry Hill
Plantation in Edgefield County, South Carolina. The Tylers ultimately
divided the property along the east side of Goose Pond Lane and the creeks
along the base of the hill, allowing Jimmy and Alice to retain the goose
pond, farm buildings to the west of Sherwood Forest, and agricultural fields
along Tyler Mill Road. Jimmy built a new house near the pond created by
the gravel pit, as well as several more barns and outbuildings, enabling him
to continue farming Sherwood Forest’s historic agricultural lands.9

The dairy prior to restoration in 1975. Historic American

Building Survey.

66
Paynie’s Restoration of Sherwood Forest
Similar to Julia and Katherine, Paynie had a specific vision of how Sherwood Forest should look. After purchasing Sherwood Forest, Paynie began
to restore the house in 1975. The sills and some of the joists in the kitchen, hyphens, law office, and parts of Tyler’s bedchamber had been damaged
by rot and termites. Paynie used lumber salvaged from other historic buildings to replace some of the larger structural members, in addition to
modern lumber for the joists under the east hyphen and kitchen. She also had the brickwork repointed in these areas of the house and rebuilt the
porch foundations. The porch originally had open Flemish bond brickwork, but Paynie likely had it replaced with regular Flemish bond brickwork
for greater structural stability. She also had failed roofing and siding replaced on the main house. On the interior, she replaced damaged flooring,
areas of failing plaster, and repainted or wallpapered based on earlier paint colors that had been exposed. Paynie found intact portions of Julia’s
wallpaper in the dining room, so she had the pattern reproduced. She predominantly furnished the house with antiques predating the 1840s from
Mulberry Hill, as well as a few of Julia’s pieces that had remained in the family.10

Paynie also quickly turned her attention to the restoration of the outbuildings, which were in significantly worse condition than the house. Both the
privy and the dairy’s wood shingle roofs were failing, so they required more extensive stabilization work. Paynie reinserted seats in the privy,
although they had been previously removed since the building had been in use as a shed. She also replaced the louvered ventilation slats covering
the windows in the dairy with glazed windows. The tobacco barn needed to be re-chinked and the trees growing up around its foundation
removed.11

Although Paynie undertook extensive restoration work on the house and outbuildings, she made fewer changes to the gardens. The formal garden
area had grown up with weeds and small trees, so she removed the trees as carefully as possible. She moved the sundial from the front circle to the
south side of the house, installing a circular brick flowerbed around it. While removing weeds, vines, and saplings from around Katherine’s U-
shaped flowerbed, Paynie also removed much of the flowerbed to increase the privy’s visibility. Invested in the family story of John using the
tobacco barn as a wine house, Paynie added several furrows south of the privy and interpreted them as the area where John had grown grapes for
wine production. She believed that the walnut allée dated to John and Julia’s occupation of Sherwood Forest, so she planted walnut trees along the
farm road. She also removed the tennis court on the north side of the house and interpreted the area as the spot in the grove where John had
wanted to be buried. Additionally, Paynie removed a board-and-batten shed that had stood to the east of the smokehouse and built a shelter for an
antique shingle maker that had been used on the farm by James and Jimmy next to the site of the shed. Paynie and her family also started a pet
cemetery near the front gates of the plantation, as John had buried one of his favorite horses in the grove according to oral histories.12

67
 Left: The circular bed built by Paynie with the sundial at
the center. The base is part of a birdbath, while the original
base of the sundial is in the formal garden.

Right: Furrows created by Paynie downhill from the privy

interpreted as the area where John Tyler grew grapes.

68
During the late-1970s, Paynie moved two early-to-mid nineteenth century buildings to the yard at Sherwood Forest. She relocated an overseer’s
house from another plantation to north of the smokehouse, adding a rear kitchen addition and enclosed patio. The overseer’s house became a guest
house and the office for the Sherwood Forest Plantation Foundation. Paynie also saved a slave quarters building from demolition, moving it to the
site of Katherine’s garden to the north of the dairy on a flatbed truck. The slave quarters had a rear addition with a kitchen and bathroom. It is
presently used as a rental property like the laundry building. While these endangered buildings were saved from demolition, their placement at
Sherwood Forest further obscured John and Julia’s emphasis on the linear arrangement of outbuildings and gives the edges of the north yard a
greater sense of enclosure than it originally had. The buildings’ locations also inadvertently give visitors a false sense of the spatial relationship
between the big house and the quarters.13
The slave quarters building (right) and overseer’s house (left) moved to Sherwood Forest’s north yard by Paynie during the late 1970s.

69
 Photographs of Sherwood Forest from 1977 showing several mature
oak trees in the north yard that have since fallen. Few surviving
oaks would have been large trees during John and Julia’s
ownership. Sherwood Forest Plantation Foundation.

Opposite: Landscape features dating to James Alfred Jones

Tyler, Katherine Thomason Tyler, and young Jimmy Tyler’s
ownership of Sherwood Forest highlighted in orange.
Features created by Paynie Tyler shown in pink.

71
Sherwood Forest in Recent Years
After restoring the house and outbuildings, Paynie and Harrison began opening the grounds and portions of the first floor for tours. Their daughter
-in-law Kay Tyler took over the management of the house museum in 1992, running it until her growing family necessitated hiring staff in 2002.
Paynie, Harrison, and their children, initially lived in the upper floors of the house, the kitchen, and the east hyphen, but they eventually moved to
a neighboring house called Milton for greater quiet and privacy from tourists. Today, members of the Tyler family occasionally stay in the house,
but they all have primary residences elsewhere.14

Paynie also modified the agricultural buildings to the east of Sherwood Forest to support her equestrian activities and the management of the
grounds. An avid horsewoman, Paynie used all of the pastures for horses. She moved a lean-to shed next to the corncrib to use for storage and
constructed a larger lean-to for horse carts next to the shelter for hogs. She also had additions built on the west side of the horse barn, creating
tractor and tool sheds for the maintenance of the buildings and grounds. Finally, she added a trailer in the woods to the northeast of the house as
additional tenant housing and office space.15

Recent efforts have been made to preserve the landscape’s appearance by replanting dead or fallen trees. In addition Opposite: Same color
to Hurricane Hazel, which destroyed approximately sixty trees in and around the grove in 1954, Hurricane Isabel coding as page 70.
brought about another two hundred trees down in 2003 and Hurricane Irene seventy in 2011. Black and green ash Buildings constructed by
trees fell along the north driveway, along with many oaks. Several maples, oaks, and a large hackberry near the Jimmy Tyler after selling
overseer’s house also fell around the yard. The trees in the yard have been replanted in their original locations in an Sherwood Forest house
effort to preserve the historic layout and species used in Julia’s picturesque garden design.16 shown in turquoise. Creek
Plantation buildings
shown in gold.
Conclusion
Like Julia Tyler before them, Katherine and Paynie brought their own visions of architectural and landscape aesthetics to Sherwood Forest during
the twentieth century. Both women’s restorations were shaped by their understandings of architectural history, historic landscapes, family history,
and historic preservation. Agriculture also continued to play an important role at Sherwood forest throughout the twentieth century, although the
addition of agricultural structures and slavery-related buildings obscured John Tyler’s linear arrangement of outbuildings.

72
Conclusion
John and Julia Tyler, along with the help of Mary Tyler Jones and labor of the enslaved workforce, transformed the Tidewater farm into the
fashionable plantation Sherwood Forest. Although the original layout has been obscured by the loss of many original outbuildings and the
placements of newer outbuildings, there is evidence that the buildings at Sherwood Forest historically had an unusually long, linear layout. John
Tyler may have chosen to arrange the structures in this way to make an imposing statement of his status. After moving to Sherwood Forest, Julia
Tyler began applying Andrew Jackson Downing’s landscape design ideologies to the grove surrounding the house, resulting in a fashionable garden
in the picturesque style.

While much of the buildings and garden were lost during and after the Civil War, John and Julia’s son David Gardiner Tyler’s mindset and
determination to restoring the farm’s productivity kept Sherwood Forest in the Tyler family. Katherine Thomason Tyler and France Payne
Bouknight Tyler brought their own visions of historic preservation, architectural history, and historic landscape gardening to Sherwood Forest
during their twentieth-century restorations. Today, Sherwood Forest stands as a testament to the dedication of generations of Tyler family men
and women, as well as the hard work of their often nameless laborers over the decades.

Recommendations for Future Research

There are a variety of options including archival research, non-destructive investigations, and archaeology for pursuing additional research on
Sherwood Forest’s landscape. Non-destructive methods or an archaeological survey should also be considered to identify the locations of the slave
quarters and outbuildings at Sherwood Forest because a greater understanding of these buildings and their spatial relationships would enhance the
overall interpretation of the site.

Due to the limitations of the transcriptions of family correspondence available in Special Collections at Swem Library at the College of William and
Mary, the original copies of the Gardiner-Tyler Family Papers at Yale University may provide additional information on the landscape. The
transcriptions often have typos due to Julia’s sometimes illegible handwriting and exclude portions of letters that may have contained relevant
information as the transcriptions focus on material for the And Tyler Too biography. The Gardiner-Tyler Family Papers at Yale University is seven-
and-a-half linear feet, and would take considerable time to thoroughly research, but the collection is likely to provide at least some details about the

75
landscape.

There are also several non-destructive methods that could provide more information about the layout of the garden through remote sensing
techniques and geophysical surveys. LIDAR can map the grove including features that have been buried underground and changes in micro-
topography that could indicate the presence of flowerbeds and paths. Ground-penetrating radar could also be used to detect subsurface objects and
changes in ground materials like buried gravel paths, although its usefulness can be limited in clay and silty soils. Aerial infrared photography can
also be used to find surface anomalies not visible to the naked eye. Non-destructive methods are becoming increasingly sophisticated means of
learning about historic landscapes without resorting to excavations.

Finally, an archaeological investigation could also reveal information about the garden’s plants and layouts. Excavations can locate paths, fences,
features, and flowerbeds, while pollen and soil analysis can help interpret the locations of different plantings in the garden. Archaeology is
inherently destructive and should only be carried out by professional archaeologists who specialize in historic landscapes and gardens to maximize
the information gained during the investigation.

Historic Preservation Recommendations

The site has historically had poor drainage because there is not enough of a slope away from the building, as was occasionally reflected in letters
about trying to improve drainage by John Tyler, as well as the extensive rot and termite damage to sills, floor joists, and floors that were replaced
during the 1970s restoration. During the architectural investigation, areas of standing water were found in crawlspaces under the house. There was
also standing water around the exterior foundations after rainfalls. Even in areas without standing water, moisture was so high that mold was
growing on the floor joists, particularly under the dining room. There is a risk for future rot and insect infestation problems due to the high
moisture content of the wood structural members. Damage would likely be even worse than it has been in the past due to the improper use of
insulation and vapor barriers in the walls. The insulation and vapor barriers prevent water from evaporating in historic walls, which were built to
be breathable, forcing the moisture higher into the walls where it will cause more extensive damage. The insulation and vapor barriers likely
contributed to the areas of rotten wood siding above the foundations that was replaced during the summer of 2018.

Sherwood Forest Plantation Foundation should consult with historic preservation specialists who deal with moisture problems in historic buildings

76
to learn about treatment options. Solutions could include increasing the ventilation under the house or installing underground drainage systems.
Caution needs to be taken with drainage systems to make sure they do not negatively impact the root systems of the historic trees growing near the
house, such as the gingko. Archaeology should also be done if the ground will be disturbed. Sherwood Forest Plantation Foundation should also
remove vapor barriers and insulation in the walls. Vapor barriers and insulation can be appropriately used in attics and crawlspaces as long as
moisture problems in the crawlspaces are mitigated.

Interpretation Recommendations
Sherwood Forest has unique opportunities for the interpretation of gender and race on a Tidewater Virginia farm. Currently, tour guides do an
excellent job of interpreting Julia’s role in designing the interiors and gardens to visitors. The interpretation of women as both arbiters of taste and
preservationists could be expanded by also including discussions of Katherine and Paynie’s modifications to the house and grounds. Both women
clearly had their own understandings of style and historic preservation, which they imposed on the house and grounds. Less well interpreted at
historic sites in the United States are women’s involvement in construction. Mary and Julia both supervised construction at Sherwood Forest
during the 1840s in lieu of John Tyler. Visitors are generally more aware of women’s roles as wives, mothers, and superintendents of domestic
space during the antebellum period. Discussing women’s involvement in construction would expand visitors’ understandings of the breadth of
roles women played in shaping the built environment beyond more commonly-held, gendered understandings of women as interior decorators and
gardeners.

There are also important opportunities for the interpretation of race and slavery at Sherwood Forest. As a politician in the period leading up to the
Civil War, many of John’s decisions as a legislator and President were influenced by his understanding of slavery and desire to protect Southerners’
rights to own humans. Similarly, Julia’s correspondence offers fascinating insights into how a Northern woman raised with free domestic servants
came to support the institution of slavery and ultimately write one of the most widely-read defenses of slavery during the 1850s. Most significantly,
Sherwood Forest’s cultural landscape as designed by the Tylers would not have been possible without the labor of the enslaved African Americans
owned or rented by John to work the plantation, construct the buildings, and cultivate the gardens. While their stories are not represented in the
archives, Tyler family correspondence can be carefully read to better understand the lives of the enslaved at Sherwood Forest and the ways in
which they sought to gain agency in spite of the oppression of slavery.

77
Gardiner’s writings shed light on sharecropping, race relations in Charles City County, and the efforts of lawmakers like Gardiner to create a new
social order in which white, landowning men retained power through the limitation of African Americans’ rights. His preservation of Sherwood
Forest during Reconstruction can be understood as a way of trying to reestablish social control and status after the Civil War. Gardiner also worked
to memorialize the Confederacy through his speeches as an orator and his financial contributions to the creation of Confederate monuments. The
interpretation of Gardiner’s role in helping create the Lost Cause narrative could be deeply meaningful in a society still profoundly impacted by the
physical and ideological landscapes of race and Civil War memory developed during the early-twentieth century.

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Notes
Chapter 1: Sherwood Forest’s Beginnings
1. For a detailed discussion of Sherwood Forest’s early history and archaeology, as well as the limitations of this research, see the reports by the
William and Mary Center for Archaeological Research. Todd L. Jensen, David W. Lewes, and Courtney J. Birkett, “Archaeological Investigations
in the Sherwood Forest Mansion Yard and Along Mapsico Creek, Charles City County, Virginia,” William and Mary Center for Archaeological
Research, December 8, 2004, 39; Charles M. Downing, “The Origins of Sherwood Forest, Charles City County, Virginia,” William and Mary
Center for Archaeological Research, December 16, 1992, 4.
2. Jensen, Lewes, and Birkett, “Archaeological Investigations,” 3-4; Downing, “Origins of Sherwood Forest,” 4-7.
3. Jensen, Lewes, and Birkett, “Archaeological Investigations,” 4-10; Downing, “Origins of Sherwood Forest,” 7-8.
4. Jensen, Lewes, and Birkett, “Archaeological Investigations,” 10-11; Downing, “Origins of Sherwood Forest,” 8.
5. Jensen, Lewes, and Birkett, “Archaeological Investigations,” 11-13, 27-39.
6. Downing, “Origins of Sherwood Forest,” 14-18.
7. Downing, “Origins of Sherwood Forest,” 17-18.
8. Charles City County Deed Book 4, Page 45, Library of Virginia, Richmond, VA, microfilm; Downing, “Origins of Sherwood Forest,” 18; Jensen,
Lewes, and Birkett, “Archaeological Investigations,” 19-26, 41-42; Willie Graham, “Timber Framing” in The Chesapeake House, ed. Cary Carson
and Carl R. Lounsbury (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013), 206-238.
9. Charles City County Deed Book 5, Page 395, Library of Virginia, Richmond, VA, microfilm; Charles City County Deed Book 5, Page 396, Library
of Virginia, Richmond, VA, microfilm; Charles City County Deed Book 4, Page 456, Library of Virginia, Richmond, VA, microfilm; Charles City
County Deed Book 4, Page 588, Library of Virginia, Richmond, VA, microfilm; 1820 United States Census, Charles City County, Virginia,
retrieved from Ancestry.com (accessed August 10, 2018); Downing, “Origins of Sherwood Forest,” 11-22.
10. Charles City County Will Book 3, Page 225, Library of Virginia, Richmond, VA, microfilm.
11. Charles City County Will Book 3, Page 225.

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12. 1830 United States Census, Charles City County, Virginia, retrieved from Ancestry.com (accessed August 10, 2018); Charles City County Land
Books 1827 and 1828, Library of Virginia, Richmond, VA, microfilm; Downing, “Origins of Sherwood Forest,” 19.
13. Graham, “Timber Framing,” 206-238.
14. Graham, “Timber Framing,” 206-238.
15. 1830 United States Census, Charles City County, Virginia, retrieved from Ancestry.com (accessed August 10, 2018); 1840 United States Census,
Charles City County, Virginia, retrieved from Ancestry.com (accessed August 10, 2018).
16. Charles City County Land Book 1836, Library of Virginia, Richmond, VA, microfilm; Charles City County Deed Book 5, Page 395, Library of
Virginia, Richmond, VA, microfilm; Charles City County Deed Book 9, Page 261, Library of Virginia, Richmond, VA, microfilm; Downing,
“Origins of Sherwood Forest,” 20; 1840 United States Census, Charles City County, Virginia, retrieved from Ancestry.com (accessed August 10,
2018).
17. Downing, “Origins of Sherwood Forest,” 20-22; Jensen, Lewes, and Birkett, “Archaeological Investigations,” 11-12; Map of the James River
Valley from the vicinity of Richmond to Chesapeake Bay: Including Parts of Henrico, Chesterfield, Charles City and James City Counties.
[186, 1862] Map. https://www.loc.gov/item/2005625013/.
18. A. J. Downing, Landscape Gardening and Rural Architecture, Dover Edition (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1991), 47.

Chapter 2: John and Julia Tyler Develop Sherwood Forest

1. Charles City County Deed Book 9, Page 261, Library of Virginia, Richmond, VA, microfilm; Robert Seager II, And Tyler Too: A Biography of
John & Julia Gardiner Tyler (Charles City County, VA: Historic Sherwood Forest Corporation, 2003), 147-171, 179-180.
2. John Tyler to Mary Tyler Jones, 20 December 1843, John Tyler Papers: Series 1, General Correspondence, 1710-1861, 1710-1855, Library of
Congress; John Tyler to Mary Tyler Jones, 24 March 1844, Pequot Collection, Yale University Archives, copy; John Tyler to Mary Tyler Jones, 21
April 1844, Tyler Family Paper Additions, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library, College of William and Mary.
3. John Tyler to Mary Tyler Jones, 20 December 1843, John Tyler Papers: Series 1, General Correspondence, 1710-1861, 1710-1855, Library of
Congress.

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4. Eben Horsford to Maria Norton, 14 February 1852, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library, College of William and Mary, photocopy.
5. Jimmy Tyler, interview by Mary Fesak, May 6-7, 2018, Sherwood Forest Plantation, Virginia; Julia Gardiner Tyler to Juliana Gardiner, 6 July
1854, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library, College of William and Mary, copy.
6. Letters by Julia Tyler discussed some of the extensive food preparations for dinner parties. She mentioned at least five people working in the
kitchen to make puddings, custards, jellies, pastries, and several types of meats per dinner. These preparations would have been difficult had her
servants and slaves not had the entire kitchen-quarters building to work in. Julia Gardiner Tyler to Margaret Gardiner, 5 June 1845, Tyler
Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library, College of William and Mary, copy; Julia Gardiner Tyler to Juliana
Gardiner, 27 June 1845, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library, College of William and Mary, copy;
Julia Gardiner Tyler to Margaret Gardiner, 2 April 1846, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library,
College of William and Mary, copy; Julia Gardiner Tyler to Margaret Gardiner, 8 December 1847, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special
Collections Research Center, Swem Library, College of William and Mary, copy; Julia Gardiner Tyler to Juliana Gardiner, 28 December 1859,
Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library, College of William and Mary, copy.
7. Julia Gardiner Tyler to Juliana Gardiner, July 1844, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library, College
of William and Mary, copy; Willie Graham, “Timber Framing” in The Chesapeake House, ed. Cary Carson and Carl R. Lounsbury (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2013), 206-238.
8. 1830-1860 United States Census, Charles City County, Virginia, retrieved from Ancestry.com (accessed August 10, 2018); 1850-1860 United
States Census, Slave Schedules, Charles City County, Virginia, retrieved from Ancestry.com (accessed August 10, 2018); Jimmy Tyler, interview
by Mary Fesak, May 6-7, 2018, Sherwood Forest Plantation, Virginia; Frances Payne Tyler, interview by Mary Fesak, July 27, 2018, Sherwood
Forest Plantation, Virginia. People often planted Vinca minor in cemeteries because it provides a low-maintenance ground cover. Its presence
often indicates the site of a house or cemetery since it is a non-native species.
9. Seager, And Tyler Too, 1-16, 127-146.
10. Julia Gardiner Tyler to Juliana Gardiner, 14 July 1844, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library,
College of William and Mary, copy.
11. Julia Gardiner Tyler to Juliana Gardiner, 13 July 1844, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library,
College of William and Mary, copy.

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12. Julia Gardiner Tyler to Juliana Gardiner, 13 July 1844, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library,
College of William and Mary, copy.
13. Julia Gardiner Tyler to Alexander Gardiner, 17 June 1845, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library,
College of William and Mary, copy.
14. Minard Lefever, The Beauties of Modern Architecture (New York, 1839; digitized by Google), 118-119, accessed August 23, 2018, https://
books.google.com/books?id=Ly0-AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA1#v=onepage&q&f=false; Natalie Shivers, Walls & Molding: How to Care for Old and
Historic Wood and Plaster (New York: Preservation Press, 1990), 14-34; Leland M. Roth and Amanda C. Roth Clark, American Architecture: A
History, 2nd ed.(Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2016), 196-197.
15. Julia Gardiner Tyler to Alexander Gardiner, 16 April 1845, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library,
College of William and Mary, copy.
16. Alexander Gardiner to Juliana Gardiner, 14 November 1847, excerpts of transcripts of the Tyler Family Papers, Sherwood Forest Plantation
Foundation, Charles City, Virginia.
17. Julia Gardiner Tyler to Juliana Gardiner, 1 December 1848, Tyler Family Papers Group A, Special Collections, Swem Library, College of William
and Mary, copy.
18. Julia Gardiner Tyler to Juliana Gardiner, 8 November 1859, excerpts of transcripts of the Tyler Family Papers, Sherwood Forest Plantation
Foundation, Charles City, Virginia.
19. A. J. Downing, Landscape Gardening and Rural Architecture, Dover Edition (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1991), v-xvii.
20. Alexander Gardiner to Julia Gardiner Tyler, 27 March 1845, excerpts of transcripts of the Tyler Family Papers, Sherwood Forest Plantation
Foundation, Charles City, Virginia.
21. Juliana Gardiner to Julia Gardiner Tyler, 9 May 1845, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library,
College of William and Mary, copy.
22. Julia Gardiner Tyler to Juliana Gardiner, 14 July 1844, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library,
College of William and Mary, copy.

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23. Julia Gardiner Tyler to Juliana Gardiner, 13 July 1844, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library,
College of William and Mary, copy.
24. Julia Gardiner Tyler to Margaret Gardiner, 19 June 1845, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library,
College of William and Mary, copy.
25. Julia Gardiner Tyler to Margaret Gardiner, 5 February 1846, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library,
College of William and Mary, copy.
26. Tazewell Tyler to Julia Gardiner Tyler, 2 September 1845, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library,
College of William and Mary, copy.
27. Will and Inventory of Judge John Tyler, Charles City County Will Book 2, Page 234, Library of Virginia, Richmond, VA, microfilm
28. Julia Gardiner Tyler to Margaret Gardiner Beeckman, 12 November 1855, transcripts of the Tyler Family Papers, Sherwood Forest Plantation
Foundation, Charles City, Virginia.
29. W. H. Clopton to Julia Gardiner Tyler, 2 August 1864, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library,
College of William and Mary, copy.
30. John Tyler to Mary Tyler Jones, 24 March 1844, Pequot Collection, Yale University Archives, copy.
31. Julia Gardiner Tyler to Margaret Gardiner, 26 March 1845, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library,
College of William and Mary, copy; William D. Brackenridge to Julia Gardiner Tyler, 19 October 1844, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special
Collections Research Center, Swem Library, College of William and Mary, copy. Unfortunately, none of the lists of seeds survive in the Swem
Library or the Virginia Historical Society collections.
32. William D. Brackenridge to Julia Gardiner Tyler, 25 July 1845, Julia Gardiner Tyler Papers, Virginia Historical Society Archives.
33. Julia Gardiner Tyler to Juliana Gardiner, 24 April 1848, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library,
College of William and Mary, copy; Julia Gardiner Tyler to Margaret Gardiner, 9 October 1845, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special
Collections Research Center, Swem Library, College of William and Mary, copy; Julia Gardiner Tyler to Margaret Gardiner, 18 March 1845, Tyler
Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library, College of William and Mary, copy; Julia Gardiner Tyler to Juliana
Gardiner, 19 April 1851, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library, College of William and Mary, copy;
Julia Gardiner Tyler to her brother, 17 October 1849, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library, College

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 of William and Mary, copy; Julia Gardiner Tyler to Juliana Gardiner, 5 February 1846, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections
Research Center, Swem Library, College of William and Mary, copy; Julia Gardiner Tyler to Juliana Gardiner, 24 April 1848, Tyler Family
Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library, College of William and Mary, copy; Julia Gardiner Tyler to Juliana
Gardiner, 1 March 1852, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library, College of William and Mary, copy.
34. Julia Gardiner Tyler to Juliana Gardiner, 22 May 1848, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library,
College of William and Mary, copy.
35. Julia Gardiner Tyler to Julia Gardiner Tyler, 4 November 1861, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem
Library, College of William and Mary, copy
36. Julia Gardiner Tyler to Alexander Gardiner, April 1845, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library,
College of William and Mary, copy; Julia Gardiner Tyler to Margaret Gardiner, 22 May 1854, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections
Research Center, Swem Library, College of William and Mary, copy; Julia Gardiner Tyler to Juliana Gardiner, 3 February 1846, Tyler Family
Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library, College of William and Mary, copy;
37. Downing, Landscape Gardening, 47.
38. Downing, Landscape Gardening, 47.
39. Downing, Landscape Gardening, 91-102.
40. Jimmy Tyler, interview by Mary Fesak, May 6-7, 2018, Sherwood Forest Plantation, Virginia.
41. Julia Gardiner Tyler to Juliana Gardiner, 1848, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library, College of
William and Mary, copy.
42. Julia Gardiner Tyler to Alexander Gardiner, April 1845, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library,
College of William and Mary, copy.
43. Julia Gardiner Tyler to Alexander Gardiner, October 16 1845, transcripts of the Tyler Family Papers, Sherwood Forest Plantation Foundation,
Charles City, Virginia; Downing, Landscape Gardening, 367-371; Julia Gardiner Tyler to Juliana Gardiner, September 1845, Tyler Family
Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library, College of William and Mary, copy; New York City Directory, 1845/46,
New York Public Library Digital Collections, p. 22.

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44. William and Mary Center for Archaeological Research, “Archaeological Investigations in the Sherwood Forest Mansion Yard and Along
Mapsico Creek, Charles City County, Virginia,” December 8, 2004, 41-42; Seager, And Tyler Too, 298-300.
45. Julia Gardiner Tyler to Juliana Gardiner, 6 June 1849, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library,
College of William and Mary, copy.
46. Julia Gardiner Tyler to Juliana Gardiner, 9 April 1851, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library,
College of William and Mary, copy; Julia Gardiner Tyler to Juliana Gardiner, 19 June 1851, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections
Research Center, Swem Library, College of William and Mary, copy; Julia Gardiner Tyler to Margaret Gardiner Beeckman, 24 May 1853, Tyler
Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library, College of William and Mary, copy; Julia Gardiner Tyler to Juliana
Gardiner, 10 February 1846, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library, College of William and Mary,
copy; Julia Gardiner Tyler to Juliana Gardiner, 14 June 1859, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library,
College of William and Mary, copy; Julia Gardiner Tyler to Margaret Gardiner Beeckman, 6 May 1847, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special
Collections Research Center, Swem Library, College of William and Mary, copy; John Tyler to David L. Gardiner, 3 June 1847, Tyler Family
Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library, College of William and Mary; John Tyler to Eben Horsford, 1 October
1855, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library, College of William and Mary, photocopy.
47. Julia Gardiner Tyler to Alexander Gardiner, 17 June 1845, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library,
College of William and Mary, copy.
48. Julia Gardiner Tyler to Juliana Gardiner, 16 December 1845, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem
Library, College of William and Mary, copy; Julia Gardiner Tyler to Juliana Gardiner, July 1844?, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special
Collections Research Center, Swem Library, College of William and Mary, copy.
49. Juliana’s concern for Julia being the only white woman at Sherwood Forest led her to hire Irish immigrant Catherine Wing as Julia’s
housekeeper. After Catherine got married and left Sherwood Forest, Julia sought out another white housekeeper. Juliana Gardiner to Julia
Gardiner Tyler, 10 April 1845, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library, College of William and Mary,
copy; Julia Gardiner Tyler to Juliana Gardiner, 18 October 1847, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem
Library, College of William and Mary, copy.
50. Julia Gardiner Tyler to Alexander Gardiner, 20 January 1847, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem
Library, College of William and Mary, copy.

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51. Julia Gardiner Tyler, “To the Duchess of Sutherland and the Ladies of England,” Southern Literary Messenger, XIX (February 1853), 126;
Evelyn L. Pugh, "Women and Slavery: Julia Gardiner Tyler and the Duchess of Sutherland" The Virginia Magazine of History and
Biography 88, no. 2 (1980): 186-202. http://www.jstor.org.udel.idm.oclc.org/stable/4248387.
52. Seager, And Tyler Too, 311, 334-339, 356-359, 421-422, 428, 442.
53. Julia Gardiner Tyler to Juliana Gardiner, 29 March 1851, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library,
College of William and Mary, copy; Jimmy Tyler, interview by Mary Fesak, May 6-7, 2018, Sherwood Forest Plantation, Virginia.
54. Julia Gardiner Tyler to Juliana Gardiner, 26 February 1851, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library,
College of William and Mary, copy.
55. Julia Gardiner Tyler to Juliana Gardiner, 26 February 1851, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library,
College of William and Mary, copy.
56. Downing, Landscape Gardening, 116-274.
57. Julia Gardiner Tyler to Juliana Gardiner, 9 April 1851, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library,
College of William and Mary, copy.
58. Downing, Landscape Gardening, 75.
59. Downing, Landscape Gardening, 117-245; Jimmy Tyler, interview by Mary Fesak, May 6-7, 2018, Sherwood Forest Plantation, Virginia;
Frances Payne Tyler, interview by Mary Fesak, July 27, 2018, Sherwood Forest Plantation, Virginia.
60. Julia Gardiner Tyler to Margaret Gardiner Beeckman, 28 March 1851, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center,
Swem Library, College of William and Mary, copy; Julia Gardiner Tyler to Juliana Gardiner, 29 March 1851, Tyler Family Papers, Group A,
Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library, College of William and Mary, copy; Downing, Landscape Gardening, 294-295.
61. Eben Horsford to Maria Norton, 14 February 1852, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library, College of William and Mary,
photocopy.

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Chapter 3: Sherwood Forest During and After the Civil War
1. Robert Seager II, And Tyler Too: A Biography of John & Julia Gardiner Tyler (Charles City County, VA: Historic Sherwood Forest Corporation,
2003), 447-469.
2. Seager, And Tyler Too, 469-472.
3. Seager, And Tyler Too, 473-477.
4. Seager, And Tyler Too, 478-485; Julia Gardiner Tyler to Juliana Gardiner, 8 April 1863, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections
Research Center, Swem Library, College of William and Mary, copy.
5. William H. Clopton to Julia Gardiner Tyler, 31 May 1864, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library,
College of William and Mary; William H. Clopton to Julia Gardiner Tyler, 8 June 1864, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections
Research Center, Swem Library, College of William and Mary; William H. Clopton to Julia Gardiner Tyler, 2 August 1864, Tyler Family Papers,
Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library, College of William and Mary, copy; A. R. Arter to friend, 23 June 1864, Virginia
Historical Society Archives.
6. William H. Clopton to Julia Gardiner Tyler, 2 August 1864, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library,
College of William and Mary, copy.
7. William H. Clopton to Julia Gardiner Tyler, 2 August 1864, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library,
College of William and Mary, copy.
8. John Tyler to Eben Horsford, 28 June 1852, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library, College of
William and Mary, photocopy; Jimmy Tyler, interview by Mary Fesak, May 6-7, 2018, Sherwood Forest Plantation, Virginia.
9. William H. Clopton to Julia Gardiner Tyler, 2 August 1864, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library,
College of William and Mary, copy.
10. Julia Gardiner Tyler to General Butler, 1864, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library, College of
William and Mary, copy.
11. General Wild to General Butler, 11 September 1864, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library, College
of William and Mary.

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12. William H. Clopton to Julia Gardiner Tyler, 16 October 1864, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem
Library, College of William and Mary, copy; David Gardiner Tyler to Lyon Gardiner Tyler, 9 October 1901, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special
Collections Research Center, Swem Library, College of William and Mary, copy.
13. William H. Clopton to Julia Gardiner Tyler, 16 October 1864, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem
Library, College of William and Mary, copy.
14. William H. Clopton to Julia Gardiner Tyler, 1 July 1864, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library,
College of William and Mary, copy.
15. Charles B. Mallory to Julia Gardiner Tyler, 2 August 1866, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library,
College of William and Mary, copy.
16. T. P. McElrath to Barstow, 18 February 1867, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library, College of
William and Mary, copy; G. M. Peek to Julia Tyler, 12 July 1869, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem
Library, College of William and Mary, copy.
17. Seager, And Tyler Too, 500-507, 511-512, 528-529.
18. Seager, And Tyler Too, 513-515.
19. John C. Tyler to Julia Gardiner Tyler, 28 September 1865, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library,
College of William and Mary, copy.
20. Seager, And Tyler Too, 513-515.
21. Paul E. Sprague, “Chicago Balloon Frame: The Evolution During the 19th Century of George W. Snow’s System for Erecting Light Frame
Buildings from Dimensional Lumber and Machine-made Nails” in The Technology of Historic American Buildings: Studies of the Materials,
Craft Processes, and the Mechanization of Building Construction, ed. H. Ward Jandl (Washington, DC: Foundation for Preservation
Technology, 1983), 35-61; Virginia McAlester and Lee McAlester, A Field Guide to American Houses (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), 33-38;
Chris Novelli, et al., “Classic Commonwealth: Virginia Architecture from the Colonial Era to 1940,” Virginia Department of Historic Resources,
2015, https://www.dhr.virginia.gov/pdf_files/Classic_Commonwealth_Style_Guide.pdf; Seager, And Tyler Too, 554.
22. David Gardiner Tyler to Juliana Gardiner, 6 February 1857, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library,
College of William and Mary.

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23. David Gardiner Tyler to Juliana Gardiner, 6 February 1857, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library,
College of William and Mary.
24. Seager, And Tyler Too, 494-500; “Obituaries,” Confederate Veteran, Vol. 36, private collection of Sherry Tyler.
25. David Gardiner Tyler to Julia Gardiner Tyler, 28 November 1864, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem
Library, College of William and Mary, copy.
26. David Gardiner Tyler to Julia Gardiner Tyler, 28 November 1864, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem
Library, College of William and Mary, copy.
27. Seager, And Tyler Too, 507-508.
28. Seager, And Tyler Too, 512-513, 530-531.
29. David Gardiner Tyler to Julia Gardiner Tyler, 4 March 1869, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library,
College of William and Mary, copy.
30. David Gardiner Tyler to Julia Gardiner Tyler, 4 March 1869, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library,
College of William and Mary, copy.
31. David Gardiner Tyler to Julia Gardiner Tyler, 27 June 1868, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library,
College of William and Mary, copy.
32. Seager, And Tyler Too, 531-533.
33. David Gardiner Tyler to Julia Gardiner Tyler, September 1870, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem
Library, College of William and Mary, copy.
34. Seager, And Tyler Too, 531-533, 536-538, 540-543.
35. David Gardiner Tyler to Julia Gardiner Tyler, 2 May 1871, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library,
College of William and Mary.
36. David Gardiner Tyler to Julia Gardiner Tyler, 11 May 1873, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library,
College of William and Mary.

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37. David Gardiner Tyler to Julia Gardiner Tyler, 3 April 1874, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library,
College of William and Mary, copy.
38. David Gardiner Tyler to Julia Gardiner Tyler, 1 July 1871, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library,
College of William and Mary.
39. David Gardiner Tyler to Julia Gardiner Tyler, December 1872, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem
Library, College of William and Mary, copy.
40. Jimmy Tyler, interview by Mary Fesak, May 6-7, 2018, Sherwood Forest Plantation, Virginia.
41. The bottom logs were replaced and concrete footings installed by Gardiner’s descendants James and Jimmy Tyler during the mid-twentieth
century. They used the building to store kerosene. Willie Graham, “Timber Framing” in The Chesapeake House, ed. Cary Carson and Carl R.
Lounsbury (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013), 206-238; Gabrielle M. Lanier and Bernard L. Herman, Everyday
Architecture of the Mid-Atlantic: Looking at Buildings and Landscapes (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 71-76;
Fred B. Kniffen and Henry Glassie, “Building in Wood in the Eastern United States: A Time-Place Perspective” in Common Places: Readings in
American Vernacular Architecture ed. Dell Upton and John Michael Vlach (Athens and London: University of Georgia Press, 1986), 159-181.
42. Julia Gardiner Tyler to Juliana Gardiner, 3 March 1846, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library,
College of William and Mary, copy.
43. David Gardiner Tyler to Julia Gardiner Tyler, 1 May 1867, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library,
College of William and Mary, copy.
44. Seager, And Tyler Too, 547-551; 554-556.
45. “In the Social World,” The Times (Richmond, VA), December 17, 1893, https://www.newspapers.com/image/80875083; Speech on the
Presentation of a Portrait of Judge Tyler to the Charles City Court House, April 19, 1928, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections
Research Center, Swem Library, College of William and Mary, copy; Seager, And Tyler Too, 551-552; Charles City County Deed Book 16, Page
326, Library of Virginia, Richmond, VA, microfilm.
46. David Gardiner Tyler to Lyon Gardiner Tyler, 9 October 1901, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem
Library, College of William and Mary, copy.

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47. “Judge Tyler Loses Horses. Charles City,” newspaper clipping, private collection of Sherry Tyler; Sherwood Forest Barns Fire Insurance Policy,
1920-1923, private collection of Sherry Tyler; Speech on the Presentation of a Portrait of Judge Tyler to the Charles City Court House, April 19,
1928, Tyler Family Papers, Group A, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library, College of William and Mary, copy; “General Orders
No. 1,” Grand Camp, Confederate Veterans, October 1, 1923, private collection of Sherry Tyler; David Gardiner Tyler to Harry F. Byrd, April
1826, private collection of Sherry Tyler.
48. Sherwood Forest Photographs, Virginia Department of History, Richmond, Virginia; Sherwood Forest Photographs, Sherwood Forest
Plantation Foundation, Charles City County, Virginia.

Chapter 4: Sherwood Forest during the Twentieth Century

1. “Funeral Services be Held Today at 2,” Daily Press (Newport News, VA), September 6, 1927, https://www.newspapers.com/image/230973145;
“Tyler Funeral at 2:30 Today at Westover Church; Burial Beside Parents in Richmond,” Daily Press (Newport News, VA), February 14, 1935,
https://www.newspapers.com/image/231067707; “Tyler-Thomason Marriage is of Interest,” Daily Press (Newport News, VA), April 29, 1940,
https://www.newspapers.com/image/230175633; Jimmy Tyler, interview by Mary Fesak, May 6-7, 2018, Sherwood Forest Plantation, Virginia.
2. Margaret Tyler Chadwick to Sue Ruffin Tyler, 9 February 1942, Tyler Family Papers Group A, Special Collections, Swem Library, College of
William and Mary; “Supreme Court Sustains Ruling by Judge Smith,” Daily Press (Newport News, VA), June 24, 1952, https://
www.newspapers.com/image/231270615; Jimmy Tyler, interview by Mary Fesak, May 6-7, 2018, Sherwood Forest Plantation, Virginia.
3. Jimmy Tyler, interview by Mary Fesak, May 6-7, 2018, Sherwood Forest Plantation, Virginia; USGS Aerial Photographs, Charles City County,
Virginia.
4. Jimmy Tyler, interview by Mary Fesak, May 6-7, 2018, Sherwood Forest Plantation, Virginia.
5. Judith B. Tankard, Ellen Shipman and the American Garden (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2018), 171-173; M. Kent Brinkley and Gordon
W. Chappell, The Gardens of Colonial Williamsburg (Williamsburg, VA: Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1996), 3-7, 34; Jimmy Tyler,
interview by Mary Fesak, May 6-7, 2018, Sherwood Forest Plantation, Virginia.
6. M. Kent Brinkley and Gordon W. Chappell, The Gardens of Colonial Williamsburg (Williamsburg, VA: Colonial Williamsburg Foundation,
1996), 45, 70, 86, 93, 130; Jimmy Tyler, interview by Mary Fesak, May 6-7, 2018, Sherwood Forest Plantation, Virginia.

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7. Jimmy Tyler, interview by Mary Fesak, May 6-7, 2018, Sherwood Forest Plantation, Virginia.
8. Jimmy Tyler, interview by Mary Fesak, May 6-7, 2018, Sherwood Forest Plantation, Virginia.
9. “Tyler-Watt,” Daily Press (Newport News, VA), July 29, 1966, https://www.newspapers.com/image/231779384; “James Tyler, Grandson of
President, Succumbs,” Daily Press (Newport News, VA), July 29, 1972, https://www.newspapers.com/image/233478752; Charles City County
Deed Book 62, Page 201, Charles City County, Virginia; Charles City County Deed Book 62, Page 206, Charles City County, Virginia; Jimmy
Tyler, interview by Mary Fesak, May 6-7, 2018, Sherwood Forest Plantation, Virginia; Frances Payne Tyler, interview by Mary Fesak, July 27,
2018, Sherwood Forest Plantation, Virginia.
10. Frances Payne Tyler, interview by Mary Fesak, July 27, 2018, Sherwood Forest Plantation, Virginia; Sherwood Forest Photographs, Virginia
Department of History, Richmond, Virginia.
11. Sherwood Forest Photographs, Virginia Department of History, Richmond, Virginia.
12. Jimmy Tyler, interview by Mary Fesak, May 6-7, 2018, Sherwood Forest Plantation, Virginia; Frances Payne Tyler, interview by Mary Fesak,
July 27, 2018, Sherwood Forest Plantation, Virginia; Sherwood Forest Photographs, Virginia Department of History, Richmond, Virginia.
13. Frances Payne Tyler, interview by Mary Fesak, July 27, 2018, Sherwood Forest Plantation, Virginia; Sherwood Forest Photographs, Virginia
Department of History, Richmond, Virginia.
14. Frances Payne Tyler, interview by Mary Fesak, July 27, 2018, Sherwood Forest Plantation, Virginia.
15. Jimmy Tyler, interview by Mary Fesak, May 6-7, 2018, Sherwood Forest Plantation, Virginia; Frances Payne Tyler, interview by Mary Fesak,
July 27, 2018, Sherwood Forest Plantation, Virginia.
16. Jimmy Tyler, interview by Mary Fesak, May 6-7, 2018, Sherwood Forest Plantation, Virginia; Scrapbooks of Hurricane Damage, Sherwood
Forest Plantation Foundation, Charles City County, Virginia.

92
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