The Farm, Charlottesville

This photograph shows the Farm, a privately owned, antebellum estate at 1201 E. Jefferson Street, Charlottesville. The house was built in 1826 by William B. Phillips and Malcolm F. Crawford for John A. G. Davis, a law professor at the University of Virginia who was shot and killed by a student in 1840. Phillips and Crawford were protégés of Thomas Jefferson, and the house is considered to be one of the best surviving examples of Jeffersonian residential architecture.

Thomas L. Farish purchased the property in 1848. During the Union occupation of Charlottesville in March 1865, Union general George A. Custer made his headquarters there.