By Matt de Simone
On December 9, the Virginia Department of Historic Resources (DHR) added the Greenfield kitchen and slave quarters in Daleville to their historic register.
The Greenfield Kitchen and Quarters are two log buildings of significance that formerly stood at the center of the historical Greenfield property, an extensive plantation in Botetourt County established in the mid-1700s by Colonel William Preston.
Botetourt’s Historic Greenfield is a bucolic 29-acre site in Amsterdam, located at the eastern edge of the 18th century plantation of Colonel William Preston (1729-1783). Preston was an influential political and military leader of the Virginia colony. His Greenfield plantation in Botetourt County was the cultural, economic, and political center of the Virginia frontier.
The preservation site includes three rare antebellum log structures, two of which were part of the enslaved community at Greenfield. In the immediate surroundings of the preservation site, there are archaeological sites containing evidence of early Native American settlements. The area also includes two historically significant cemeteries, and the remains of “The Jefferson Gardens,” a terraced garden thought to have been built by William Preston’s heirs in the late nineteenth century.
Botetourt County began the development of the Botetourt Center industrial park in the late 1990’s. Part of the Greenfield historical site (the kitchen and slave quarters) relocated, fully intact, to the Bowyer-Holladay House site on the property five years ago. The kitchen and quarters remain as the only surviving buildings at Greenfield.
For anyone looking to donate to the project, donations to Historic Greenfield are administered by the Botetourt County Treasurer’s Office. Checks should be written to “Historic Greenfield, Botetourt County.” Donations may be deductible on federal and state income taxes.
