Discover Smith Mountain Lake
SUMMER 2015
15
14
macadam lane leading to the house circles it like a
moat, and a wall made of field stone defines the
yard – front and back. You have a choice. You can
walk to the front door, or climb steps to the side
door… and enter a most pleasant enclosed porch,
with comfortable seating and plenty of day light.
The house is all brick, which has softened and
deepened in color from the beatings that nature
has rendered.
The kitchen is large, airy, and efficient. A back
staircase takes you up to the bedrooms. The highly
polished heart-of-pine floors throughout much of
the house look as though they’re going to squeak
when you walk on them, but they do not. This is
probably because, as one history article claims,
they were installed on top of bricks. Room after
room flows into the next, until you lose track
of where you’ve been and where you’re going.
Fireplaces abound, and they are framed by carved
marble from England. Children would love it here;
there are so many great hiding places!
A charming old carriage house by the side door now
serves as a tool and potting shed. A magnificent
barn of solid brick complements the house nicely.
A rather modern looking guest or tenant house
lays beyond the barn. All in all it’s quite a package.
Two lazy horses (Shadow and Ace) roam acres
upon acres of pasture land, completely unaware of
how lucky they are. A lone white headstone stands
guard in the pasture. It marks the grave of a fallen
Civil War soldier, laid to rest among his family,
whose graves are unmarked.
Bedford County land records
show that eight family members
are buried on Savenac Farm:
Abner (original owner) and
his wife, Nancy, also his first
cousin (she was the daughter of
Caleb’s brother, Moses); Caleb
Fuqua, father of Abner; Ophelia,
daughter of Abner and Nancy;
Samuel, son of Abner and Nancy;
Samuel’s wife, Sallie; an infant
child of Samuel and Sallie; and
George Whitfield Fuqua, son of
Abner and Nancy, the Civil War
soldier. George was killed during
that awful war at the Battle of
Manassas on July 21, 1861.
Nancy and Abner raised 8 or 9
children at Savenac, according to
a few family trees on Ancestry.
com, which means there are no
doubt hundreds of people today
who can trace their roots to
the Fuquas of Bedford County,
Virginia. It was not unusual in
those days for women to bear 9,
10 or even 12 children. Marriage
between cousins, even first cousins, was also fairly
common.
Abner’s son, John A., an executor of Abner’s will,
sold off 130 acres of land after his father’s death,
and sold the remainder of land and the house in
about 1880. Frederick H. Nicholl and his wife, who
some believed was the daughter of the Archbishop
of Canterbury, bought the estate for $3000 and
named it “Savenac”, after an ancestral home in
England. The British couple added a large drawing
room on the northwest side of the house. They sold
the property in 1898, and returned to England. A
string of buyers followed, including another Brit
named Sir Robert Stark, who bought the property
in 1914.
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