Text and names have been copied from a photostatic copy of the original manuscript by Florienette Matter Knight, Organizing Regent, Leedstown Resolutions Chapter, N.S.D.A.R. The original manuscript, handwritten by Richard Henry Lee, is in the archives of the Virginia Historical Society, Richmond, Va.
On an October day in the year 1773 a man on horseback rode down through Westmoreland County until he came to the entrance of a plantation known as Nomini Hall. The avenue leading to the great house was bordered with poplar trees, through which the white stuccoed house appeared "romantic" and "truly elegant."
Philip Vickers Fithian, lately graduated from Princeton, had been seven days on the road since he had left New Jersey. He had ridden two hundred and sixty miles and crossed a number of ferries.
Fithian was not sure that he was doing the right thing in coming to Virginia. His friends had tried to persuade him not to go to that "wicked colony" where he would be sure to fall in with evil companions and become a drunkard or a gambler. If his parents had lived Fithian would probably have stayed in the North, but they had recently passed away, and the salary as a plantation tutor was good. With a last prayer to the Lord that he would be strong enough to stick to his upright way of life, Fithian set off on his journey to the Northern Neck of Virginia.
Nomini Hall was the seat of one of King Carter's grandsons, Robert Carter, III. His holdings, amounting to seventy thousand acres, were scattered over a number of counties. He owned more than five hundred slaves and employed numerous white overseers, clerks, stewards, craftsmen and artisans. Tobacco was still the main crop of the plantation, but its profits were now waning and Councillor Carter sought other money crops to supplement this chief product. Carter also manufactured supplies for the use of his plantations and for his neighbors' needs. He operated grain mills, textile factories, salt works and bakeries.
Nomini Hall was laid off in the usual formal English style, with four dependencies--one equally distant from each corner of the manor. These were the large dependencies--there were many others, probably as many as thirty. In the square thus formed by the four buildings there was a bowling green, and gardens interspersed with oyster-shell walks.