Located
off Evans Mill Road in Buckingham County, Virginia, is the site of Millbrook Plantation, home
of John Wales Eppes, a son-in-law of Thomas Jefferson. Eppes was a graduate of
Hampden-Sydney College and active in Virginia politics. After his wife Maria
died shortly after the birth of their third child, Eppes moved
to Millbrook, his tobacco plantation. The house at Millbrook was subsequently destroyed by fire, but a
graveyard and
possibly the foundation of a greenhouse survive.
In
the early 1990s, representatives of the Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic
Plants visited
Millbrook. They found a rose bush surviving in the graveyard and carried
cuttings back
to the Center for study and propagation. The rose is a hybrid Gallica and is
called the Millbrook
Rose.
About
four years ago, while at an antique rose propagation workshop at the Center, a
Heart of Virginia Master Gardener who
lives on Evans Mill Road was given a small offshoot of the rose. The rose is
growing in her garden and seems happy to be home again on Evans Mill Road.
For more information, see: http://www.markerhistory.com/millbrook-home-of-john-wayles-eppes-marker-o-38/
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