Oakley (Spotsylvania County, Virginia)

Oakley is a historic plantation house in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, built in 1828 by Samuel Alsop Jr. as a wedding present for his daughter Clementina; Alsop, who also built the nearby houses Kenmore, Spotswood Inn, and Fairview, raised Oakley in the Federal and Georgian style as a two and a half story home from bricks fired in two kilns on the property, on land that had come down from a 7,777 acre royal grant to Gawain Corbin before Alsop bought 849 acres of it in 1816. The house stood near several major Civil War battles and was ransacked by soldiers passing through during one two day span, though a Union soldier disobeyed orders to burn it, and in the later nineteenth century it fell into neglect and was used more as a barn than a home before passing through a failed silver and gold mining venture to the Beals family, who have owned it since 1926; it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in May 2002.