Today I visited Sherwood Forest. Not the original Sherwood Forest, somewhere in the English county of Nottingham where an outlaw named Robin Hood hung out, but the historical residence of Virginia state legislator/Virginia Governor/Senator/Vice President/President/congresscritter (both USA and CSA) John Tyler. The plantation was first recorded in a 1616 land grant and was known as Smith's Hundred. Tyler purchased the property in 1842 from his cousin Collier Minge and soon afterward renamed it Sherwood Forest due to his being "outlawed" by the Whig Party. Today, it belongs to Tyler's grandson Harrison Tyler. (I first learned about Harrison Tyler in 1998 when he appeared on the TV network C-SPAN and explained how he was the grandson of a man who was president of the U.S. during the 1840s. As of this post, he's still alive today at age 95.)
The first thing I saw walking from the parking lot to the main house, on a self-guided tour, was the pet cemetery.
The walkway then leads to the main house, the central part of which is seen here from its north side. It was originally a smaller farm house which both Minge and Tyler enlarged.
The tour leads to a slave house, which was moved to Sherwood Forest from a nearby property called Moss Side. None of Sherwood Forest's original seven slave houses have survived. To the left is a shed for storing dairy products.
This open area was the site of a garden.
This structure that forms the west end of the main house was originally a laundry, but later became Tyler's law office during the last few years of his life.
The south side of the main house included this piazza as its front porch.
The piazza faces the area around this sundial, which includes a small statue of a frog.
For more on President John Tyler and Sherwood Forest, go to Discover America, Presidential History Blog, History(dot)com and the Bay Journal. For more pictures, stay tuned for Part 2.
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