by Lois Crane Williams
The Lancaster Virginia Historical Society’s upcoming gala at Verville could also be called the “Gala at Gordonsville,” for that was what Col. James Gordon called the property when he owned it. Gordon’s house was high on a hill above a point where the Corrotoman River divides into its eastern and western branches. He could look straight down the Corrotoman to the Rappahannock River, where large ships sailed upstream to Tappahannock (then Hobbs Hole) and smaller ships went on to Fredericksburg.
Some of what we know about Gordon and his life is from the estate inventory at his death and from a journal he kept for five years, from 1759-1763. The journal was published…