A house with a view ...... of history

BRANDY STATION — Geraldine Schneider hosted a unique open house Sunday afternoon.

The 90-year-old owner of Berry Hill Farm welcomed nearly 70 visitors into her three-story Victorian farmhouse in Brandy Station, explaining the historic connection her picturesque property has with the Civil War.

Berry Hill Farm, a 970-acre tree farm, was once the backdrop of numerous bloody Union and Confederate skirmishes during the Civil War.

Schneider invited the guests into her spacious, renovated home during the Brandy Station Foundation’s 20th anniversary, a celebration that recognized the organization’s former board members and past presidents.

The historic home — located at the end of a two-mile gravel road off of Carrico Mills Road in eastern Culpeper County — was built on the footprint of the property’s original 18th century Georgian-style home.

Described by historians as the most heavily traveled military route on Mountain Run, Stoney Ford basically runs across the home’s front yard.

“This home sits at the very vortex of the Civil War in Culpeper County,” said historian Clark “Bud” Hall, a 2009 BSF board of director. “This historic ground witnessed a Federal column of 2,000 soldiers ride past and on this property to surprise J.E.B. Stuart’s line. So they arrived behind his lines in the village of Brandy Station essentially undetected and this road that goes by this house facilitated that enormous surprise that J.E.B. Stuart suffered.”

Additionally, Hall added, the Federal Army also marched up and down the nearby road to the Mine Run campaign and witnessed the withdrawal of the troops that left Culpeper to begin the Battle of the Wilderness campaign.

“It can be argued that this particular ground has witnessed as much marching, camping and military maneuvers back and forth across this property than any other piece of ground in Culpeper County because of the Fredericksburg Plank Road that went right by this house,” Hall added.

Guest speaker Eric J Wittenberg, an award-winning Civil War author and Ohio attorney, quoted Civil War historian Brian Pohanka, on Sunday explaining the importance of preserving history.

“Some kid a hundred years from now is going to get interested in the Civil War and going to want to see those places. He’s going to go down there and stand in a parking lot,” Wittenberg told the crowd. “I’m fighting for that kid. That’s why we’re here friends. It’s so that kids do have something other than parking lots to visit when they get interested and so that future generations can see and understand the ground that their ancestors fought and died for.”

Promising start, fiery end
In 1762, Alexander Thom purchased 300 acres in Brandy Station from Tom Slaughter. After his death, his son, John Triplett Thom, bought the adjacent property, already named Berry Hill, adding 1,200 acres.

The original Georgian-style home was located at the foothills of scenic mountain ranges and beautiful rolling hills.

However, by the time of the Civil War, the homeowners abandoned it, allowing the home to become the headquarters of Confederate Gen. Dick Ewell in 1862.

During the four-year battle, both sides occupied the property at different times.

However, in December 1863, Federal soldiers torched the home to the ground.

“Everything was so destroyed,” said Schneider.

According to Catherine Thom Bartlett’s book, “My Dear Brother,” the granddaughter of Pembroke Thom wrote that the leftover stones were carted off to build chimneys and other structures for Union camps.

By 1864, William Ross purchased the property and built a home on it a year later.

A portion of this house still stands as the right side of the home where the kitchen is located.

During Schneider’s brief speech to the crowd, she reminded them that her home is “not exactly a museum, it’s home to us.”

The BSF members presented Schneider with another copy of the book “My Dear Brother,” thanking her for opening her history home.

Restoring Berry Hill
When Schneider and her late husband, Jorge, were looking to purchase a house in Culpeper County, she recalled a real estate agent stopping on the winding road before they reached the property to give her a pair of rubber boots so that she could walk the rest of the way.

It was a rainy day in 1950.

“I didn’t even look at the house, I just took one look around and I said ‘this is it,’” said Schneider, who was moving from New York at the time.

She told the crowd that the house didn’t have electricity, plumbing, bathrooms or walls.

“When we came here everything was completely abandoned,” she said. “Everything that you see has sort of grown slowly and in that way it means so much more to us.”

Schneider, who lives in the home with two of her three grown daughters and young grandchildren, also added that the house had no running water at the time that she and her husband purchased it.

“Which means no little girls room,” she laughed.

Today, the house features 11 rooms (with walls), library, office, kitchen, hardwood floors, sunroom, dining room, two staircases, eight fireplaces, 5 bedrooms and 3-1/2 bathrooms, according to the home’s residents.

Schneider’s paintings of landscapes also decorate the walls.

Jorge Schneider, a former advisor to the Chilean government, traveled to many countries for work, inspiring his wife to collect and fill their home with countless cultural keepsakes from France, Hungary, Chile, and Japan — just to name a few destinations.

Outside, there’s an inground pool, colorful flowers, a manicured lawn, towering trees, two gun mounts, and a mineral spring from which the family sold “Berry Hill Dyspepsia Water.”

The home used to have a dumbwaiter in the kitchen until Schneider’s mother discovered a snake in it one day.

“That was the end of that,” she chuckled.

When one of Schneider’s guests asked how long it took her to restore her home, she smiled and told him that she’s still working on it.