Halifax County is rich in historic homes. In accordance with the Society’s Mission Statement to preserve historical information for dissemination to the public, the Society can assist homeowners in locating a professional who can help them work toward obtaining state and/or national recognition for their historic property.

Currently there are thirty-seven county properties that have been listed on either or both the Virginia Historic Landmarks Register and the National Register of Historic Places. There are also five groups of homes and public buildings in Halifax County now designated as “Historic Districts” and many other properties in the county with historic architectural features.

For additional information on houses listed on the Virginia and National registries and those that have historical significance but are not currently listed, please see An Architectural History of Halifax County, Virginia, published by the Halifax County Historical Society. Properties listed in this publication will be featured periodically on the website and will include detailed descriptions and photographs of the exterior and interior of these building, if available.

Bloomsburg — Circa 1832

Listed on the Virginia Historic Landmarks Registry and the
National Register of Historic Places

Home of Andrea and Ed Mckinney
9000 Philpott Road, Soouth Boston, Virginia

Site of Halifax County Historical Society’s
Annual Meeting October 25, 2026, 2:00 p.m.

(The information below has been garnered from sources listed in Bloomsburg’s nomination for the National Register of Historic Places. In the nomination were facts prepared by the owner, local historians and architectural historian Dan Pezzoni.)

Bloomsburg, a finely detailed Greek Revival plantation house was built for Alexander Watkins in the late 1830s. Although its builder and other craftsmen are unknown, there are several clues to their possible identity. Two other Halifax County houses with pedimented one-story Greek Revival porches (which were originally on the front and back of Bloomsburg) are found on Tranquil Hill, circa 1834, and the Thomas Townes Carter House, circa 1837. The porch on the latter house is attributed to master-builder Josiah Dabbs and brick mason Dabney Cosby. Court documents show that both men worked on the Carter house and both most likely are responsible for the original porches on Bloomsburg as well as other aspects of the house construction. Other architectural highlights include marble mantels, decorative plaster cornices and ceiling medallions, a stair with foliated ornamented stair brackets, exceptionally tall ceilings and molded doors and window surrounds.

Another craftsman who may have had a role in architectural details is free Black cabinetmaker and finish carpenter Thomas Day of Milton, NC. Two elements, the tread or step brackets that feature leafy tendril motifs on the center hallway stair, and door trims with x-form blocks are typical of Day’s work, whose shop was only a short distance from Halifax County.

Alexander Watkins began acquiring land in Halifax County in 1829, In January 1831, he married Sarah Price Pate and the couple had 13 children. The family first lived in a log cabin on the 114.8 acre property and later moved into Watkins’ two-story brick store—a county landmark until its demolition in 1957. The store was on the main road that led from Irvins Ferry to Milton, NC. It took almost seven years to complete the house as Watkins was particular about his building materials. He wanted all materials to be as nearly perfect as possible. It is said, he would not let a piece of lumber be used if it had a knot in it and if a brick was not perfect, it had to be discarded.

On his property was a blacksmith’s shop, a brick carriage house, a smokehouse, ice pit, corncrib and a two-room brick kitchen or “overseer’s house.” In addition, there was a dairy house and servants quarters on the property. Watkins property grew to include 300 improved acres and 400 unimproved acres, which supported five horses, small herds of cattle, milk cows, swine, a yoke of oxen and sheep. Because his mercantile business was his principal occupation, his farm animal herds were relatively small ones.

According to Watkins family tradition, his store catered to immigrants heading westward. An undated newspaper clipping states that the store was  “an important place, and travelers stopped off to sample the locally distilled whiskey dispensed from kegs on the counter. Across the road from the store, Watkins built a tobacco warehouse and prizery. Local growers are said to have brought their leaf tobacco to the warehouse for sale and packing into hogsheads. The tobacco was then transported by wagon to Clarksville and sent by boat to other destinations. Watkins’ financial situation following the Civil War forced him to sell the Bloomsburg home while he retained ownership of the store until 1866, when both the store and house were purchased by Robert Wade.

Bloomsburg’s domestic and farm outbuildings have many interesting features. Rectangular stone foundations of tobacco barns are still evident, but servants houses behind the house are no longer visible.  Root crop storage was obviously important as the brick kitchen/overseers’ cabin had both vents in the rear elevation and trapdoors on the interior. The brick carriage house is distinctive as most carriage houses were not build of brick. A family cemetery is adjacent to the house. The home is owned by Andrea and Ed McKinney.

Oak Grove Plantation

Site of Halifax County Historical Society’s
Annual Meeting October 2024

This circa 1820 residence was built for Thomas and Harriet Bailey Easley and has been home to five generations of the family. Today it is operated as a Bed and Breakfast (B & B).

 The Easley’s had ten children and as several of these descendants returned to live in the homeplace, major additions were made to the residence in 1835 and 1955. Today, Oak Grove Plantation is home to a great, great granddaughter, Pickett Craddock, who operates the home as a B & B from May through October. Oak Grove is ranked in the top 14 of Eco-Friendly B & Bs in the United States with solar power to provide electricity among its environmental attibutes.

 Oak Grove began as a two-story hall and parlor frame dwelling with a one-story wing. The side with a wing sat on an English basement which housed the kitchen. An enclosed porch at the rear of the home had two entrances. One opened to a stairway to the basement kitchen and the other allowed access to the dining room.

The entrance hall features a Federal style open-string stair that rests on a paneled spandrel. Wide, flat-paneled wainscoting sheathes the hall and the parlor. Gouge work (stylized carved decoration) can be seen under the chair rails in both areas. According to family lore a Hessian soldier who decided to stay in the colonies after the Revolutionary War, is credited as being the carver. Tall mantels in the parlor and dining room have exceptionally deep friezes with fluted pilasters. The parlor mantel, the more formal of the two, has a carved sunburst in the middle panel. In the dining room, floor-to-ceiling cupboards once flanked each side of the fireplace, but during a 1955 addition, one was removed to make way for a doorway to an addition. This cupboard was repurposed as a corner cupboard for the dining room.

Mr. Easley died in 1835 and their youngest child, Mary Bailey and her husband, Dr. John Wimbush Craddock moved to the home to help take care of Mrs. Bailey. The Craddocks added an upstairs bedroom as well as a one-story, two-room ell at the back of the house. These rooms have Greek Revival mantels, tall baseboards and flat paneled “aprons” under the windows. These and other architectural details can be attributed to the workshop of Free-Black carpenter Thomas Day. During this renovation, the Greek Revival front porch with latticework columns was also added. Dr. Craddock, a practicing physician, built a two-room office in the side yard. That building stands today with additions.

The Craddocks had eleven children and their tenth child, Edward Branch Craddock, married Mary Douglas Easley in 1897. Mary Douglas Easley died during the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic and some time later, Edward married Fannie Barksdale Vaughn whose husband had also died during the influenza epidemic. Edward and Fannie, who had no children, had a bedroom built over Dr. Craddock’s office to accommodate her children from a previous marriage.

Edward Branch Craddock’s son from his first marriage, Edward Douglas, married Blanche Huckabee in 1935 and they had a daughter, Mary Pickett Craddock. When Edward Douglas’s grandfather, Dr. Craddock, died in 1955, Edward Douglas and Blanche Craddock moved into the residence.  At that time the couple made other changes to the Easley home.

The Craddock’s daughter returned to Oak Grove Plantation in 1988. Soon after, she opened the home as a bed and breakfast. Pickett Craddock and her husband renovated Dr. Craddock’s office which now serves as a rental house.

There is a family cemetery at Oak Grove with graves of several of Thomas and Harriet Easley’s children. One son buried there was killed in the Mexican American War.