Prior to the Custis Family

Following the Third Anglo-Powhatan War, the General Assembly began setting up Forts along York River and its tributaries (which are known now as the Pamunkey and Mattaponi Rivers).^[1] Captain Roger Marshall was to manage Fort Royal (also known as Rickahock), for three years.^[1] After fulfilling the requirements he was granted a patent for the 600 acres of Rickahock (including Fort Royal and any buildings within), on March 14, 1649.^[1] That same day he sold these 600 acres of Rickahock to General Manwarring Hammond.^[1] These 600 acres brought Gen. Hammond's total landholding patents to 3760 acres on the south side of York River.^[1]

On the same day as Gen. Hammond received the 600 acres of Rickahock from Capt. Marshall, Colonel Philip Honeywood was granted a patent of 3050 acres.^[1] This included 1550 acres above Warrannucock Island (now known as the Pamunkey Indian Reservation) and 1500 acres south side of the York River near the Island.^[1]

Together the tracts of land owned by Gen. Hammond and Col. Honeywood spanned six square miles.^[1] Both men were Royalist Officers who had originally fled England to escape Oliver Cromwell.^[1] Once the Restoration came, they left Virginia for home.

After leaving for England, the two tracts of land were later conveyed to Captain William Bassett on January 23, 1670 through his correspondence with Colonel Henry Norwood.^[1] While the deeds had been lost due to a fire that destroyed New Kent County records, it is thought that Colonel John Lightfoot III purchased the lands from the William Bassett Estate around 1686, after he arrived from England with his wife Anne (Goodrich) Lightfoot.^[1] Col. John Lightfoot III constructed the White House Mansion prior to 1700.^[1] "The house was a commodious one, with adequate room for entertainment of a large gathering and guests such as could be provided for by a large Colonial Plantation which had servants aplenty and provisions of all kinds".^[1]

Following Col. John Lightfoot III's death in 1709, his landholdings were divided amongst his sons: Sherwood Lightfoot, Goodrich Lightfoot, and Thomas Lightfoot.^[1] According to the diary of Col. William Byrd, there he mentioned Sherwood Lightfoot resided at Rickahock (the southern portion and originally part of Fort Royal) and his younger brother, Goodrich Lightfoot, at the White House Plantation (the northern portion) where the White House Mansion was located.^[1] It is unknown what portions of John Lightfoot III's estate went to his youngest son Thomas Lightfoot, and whether any property was given to Col. John Lightfoot's daughter Alice Lightfoot.^[1]

Location of the White House can be seen on this map along the Pamunkey River. This map from 1863 includes the area in which the White House Plantation is located as well as the 6 square miles of land that the Lightfoots conveyed to the Custis family in the 1700s.

John Lightfoot III's total landholdings included acreage he had acquired from William Bassett’s estate. Specifically Anthony Langston’s plantation, Gen. Hammond’s Fort Royal tract, and land to the east of Manquin Creek.^[5]

Sherwood Lightfoot would die April 20, 1730.^[1] In 1727 Goodrich Lightfoot moved from the White House Plantation to Spotsylvania County and later died in 1738 while living in Orange County.^[1] While the records had been lost both Goodrich Lightfoot and Sherwood Lightfoot would convey the entire property of John Lightfoot III to Colonel John Custis (father to Daniel Parke Custis).^[1] As of 1735 there are records showing Col. John Custis owned the Old Quarter and the land upon the river.^[1]

Antebellum years

A wealthy widow, Martha Custis was courted by George Washington, whom she married in 1759.^[2] Shortly thereafter, he resigned his Virginia military commission and they moved to his farm at Mount Vernon in Fairfax County overlooking the Potomac River.^[2][6]

George and Martha Washington had no children of their own, but raised her two surviving children.^[2][6] Her son, John Parke "Jacky" Custis (1754–1781) married Eleanor Calvert on February 3, 1774. The couple then moved to the White House plantation.^[3] After the couple had lived at the White House plantation for more than two years, John Parke Custis purchased the Abingdon plantation, into which the couple settled during 1778.^[3]

John Parke Custis died in 1781 after contracting "camp fever" at the Siege of Yorktown.^[3] Martha and George Washington then raised his two younger children, Eleanor Parke Custis (later Lewis) and George Washington Parke Custis (1781–1857).^[7]

George Washington became the first President of the United States and his wife, Martha, became the nation's initial First Lady, although she was known at the time as simply "Lady Washington." The title of First Lady was traditionally given the President's wife in years thereafter.

In 1802, George Washington Parke Custis began construction on Arlington House, then in the District of Columbia, intending it to become a memorial to his step-grandfather (and adoptive father), George Washington, who had died in 1799. Arlington House later became the home of his daughter, Mary Anna Randolph Custis, born in 1807, who in 1831 married Robert E. Lee.^[8][9] In 1846, most of the area of the District of Columbia south of the Potomac River was retroceded to Virginia, including the land occupied by Arlington House and the surrounding plantation.^[10]

Robert E. and Mary Anna Custis Lee had seven children, of whom three boys and three girls survived to adulthood.^[8] Of these, the second son was William H.F. "Rooney" Lee (1837–1891), who was born at Arlington House.^[11] Rooney Lee was educated at Harvard University, and then followed his father's footsteps into service with the U.S. Army.^[11] However, in 1859, he resigned his commission.^[11]

Rooney Lee moved to White House Plantation, which he had inherited from his grandfather, who died in 1857.^[11] He married Charlotte Wickham, a descendant of attorney John Wickham.^[11] They had two children, a boy and a girl, both of whom died in infancy.^[11] His wife, Charlotte, died in 1863.^[11] The plantation house at White House Plantation, which was burned in 1862, had been the second of three which occupied the site over the years, all destroyed by fires.^[12]

White House was the site of the crossing of the Pamunkey River of the Richmond and York River Railroad, which was completed in 1861 between Richmond and West Point, where the Pamunkey and the Mattaponi Rivers converge to form the York River.

American Civil War years

Despite best efforts to preserve the historical home of George and Martha Washington, it was destroyed during the Civil War. When the Civil War broke out in 1861, and Virginia joined the newly formed Confederate States of America, Robert E. Lee, who had most recently been Superintendent of the USMA at West Point was offered the command of all Union forces by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, but resigned his commission in favor of serving his home state of Virginia. All three of his sons joined him in military service for the Confederacy.

Ruins of White House Plantation

Robert E. Lee's wife suffered from rheumatoid arthritis, and this became increasingly debilitating with advancing age. By 1861, she was using a wheelchair. Early in the War, Mrs. Lee and her daughters left Arlington House and she was staying at her son Rooney's plantation in New Kent County at White House when Union troops under General George B. McClellan took White House Landing as a supply base during the Peninsula Campaign in 1862, a failed attempt to capture the Confederate capital of Richmond.^[12] General McClellan made arrangements for Mrs. Lee's safe passage through the Union lines, and she relocated to Richmond, where she resided at 707 E. Franklin Street (in a still-extant house) for the duration of the War.

During the Peninsula Campaign, Frederick Law Olmsted, designer of New York City's Central Park among his many accomplishments, served as Executive Secretary of the U.S. Sanitary Commission, a precursor to the Red Cross in Washington D.C. which tended to the Union wounded during the Civil War. Olmsted headed the medical effort for the sick and wounded at White House Landing until McClellan abandoned it as he retreated with his troops during the Seven Days Battles and shifted his base to Harrison's Landing on the James River. The plantation house of White House Plantation was burned by retreating Union troops.^[12] This was not the original White House Mansion. The original White House Mansion built by Col. John Lightfoot III had been removed to "make way for the structure which stood on the same site and burned on June 27, 1862".^[1]

Postbellum years

White House as it appeared when rebuilt after the American Civil War

Rooney Lee lost his wife and children during the War, and was captured and held as a prisoner-of-war in New York after the Battle of Brandy Station.^[11] Following the War, Rooney Lee returned to White House Plantation.^[11] In 1867, he married again.^[11] With his second wife, Mary Tab Bolling Lee, he had several children.^[11] Nearby, his younger brother Rob lived at Romancoke Plantation across the river in King William County.

After his mother died in 1873, Rooney inherited the Ravensworth Estate, the old Fitzhugh family property (near present-day Springfield) in Fairfax County with 563 acres (2.28 km²) of land. In 1874, he moved there from White House Plantation.

Rooney Lee was elected to the Virginia Senate in 1875, serving until 1878. He was then elected as a Democrat to the US House of Representatives in 1887. He served in the House until his death at Ravensworth in 1891.^[11] He is interred in the Lee Chapel at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia with his parents and siblings.

Following the Civil War and the burning of the White House Mansion, another similar house was built upon the same foundation. This would be the third and final White House built at the plantation. This house subsequently burned in 1880.^[1]