Long Branch

Long Branch was built around 1805 by Robert Carter Burwell, a member of a group of descendants of Tidewater tobacco planters who moved to the Shenandoah Valley at the end of the eighteenth century. Settling on land granted to them in 1730 by an ancestor, Robert 'King" Carter, they built large and well-appointed houses and raised tobacco and wheat with slave labor. This new plantation society revolved around the village of Millwood, with its store, blacksmith's shop and grist mill.
Robert Carter Burwell consulted Benjamin Henry Latrobe, the noted architect of the U.S. Capitol, as he drew up plans for his new home on a rise above the Long Branch creek, Whether Burwell was able to finish the house and live there is not known; he led a company of militia to fight in the War of 1812 and died of disease at a camp near Norfolk in September 1813.
In his will, Burwell left Long Branch to his sister and brother-in-law, Sarah and Philip Nelson. Philip Nelson was a son of Thomas Nelson Jr., signer of the Declaration of Independence and governor of Virginia during the Revolutionary War, Philip Nelson was a vestryman, justice of the peace and owned up to 33 slaves. He and his wife raised a large family and operated a girl's school at Long Branch.

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