Photo, Print, Drawing River View Farm, 1780 Earlysville Road, Earlysville, Albemarle County, VA Ivy Creek Natural Area

Title

• River View Farm, 1780 Earlysville Road, Earlysville, Albemarle County, VA

Other Title

• Ivy Creek Natural Area

Names

• Historic American Landscapes Survey, creator
• Carr, Hugh
• Carr, Texie May Hawkins
• Greer, Mary Carr
• Greer, Conly
• Ivy Creek Natural Area
• Albemarle Training School
• Federation of Colored Women's Clubs
• Virginia Council of Church Women
• Washington Park Garden Club
• Mary Carr Greer Elementary School
• Ivy Creek Foundation
• Union Ridge Baptist Church
• Sammons, Jesse Scott
• Bullock, Berkeley
• Gillette, Moses
• Wheeler, Albert
• Woodfolk, Tinsley
• African American Agricultural Extension Agent
• Jones, Manfred
• Lemons, Theodosia
• Carr, Marshall
• Whitten, Charles
• Virginia Agricultural Extension Division
• Shackelford, John
• Moore, George
• Carr, Armstead
• Sammons, Rollins
• River View Farm
• Sargent, Liz, historian
• Thompson, Steve, historian
• Smith, Dede, historian
• Boeschenstein, Nell, historian
• Stevens, Christopher M., transmitter
• McPartland, Mary, transmitter
• Stranieri, Marcella, transmitter

Created / Published

• Documentation compiled after 2000

Headings

• -  rivers
• -  African Americans
• -  farmhouses
• -  farming
• -  farms
• -  agriculture
• -  agricultural facilities
• -  agricultural land
• -  stucco
• -  clapboard siding
• -  outbuildings
• -  cemeteries
• -  tombstones
• -  pastures
• -  fences
• -  stone walls
• -  roads
• -  wells
• -  driveways
• -  creeks
• -  barns
• -  parking lots
• -  trails & paths
• -  public comfort stations
• -  reservoirs
• -  slavery
• -  trees
• -  boxwood gardens
• -  stone retaining walls
• -  corrals
• -  garages
• -  Nature
• -  Virginia--Albemarle County--Earlysville

Latitude / Longitude

• 38.090226,-78.491618

Notes

• -  Second Place Winner - 2021 HALS Challenge: Historic Black Landscapes
• -  Significance: Situated on a hill above the South Rivanna Reservoir five miles from the center of Charlottesville, Virginia, River View Farm affords an unusual opportunity to understand an African American family farm of the post-Emancipation era. River View Farm, now protected within local park land, continues to convey its historic associations with the Carr-Greer family and their contributions to the Charlottesville-Albemarle community over a 100-year period between ca. 1870 and 1973. Few other properties associated with African American families within the historic Union Ridge and Hydraulic Mills communities survive intact within the region today, having been subdivided and developed, inundated beneath the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir, or impacted by other infrastructure projects. River View Farm is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. It is significant at the state and local level for agriculture, architecture, education, and African American heritage. River View Farm is significant at the local level in the area of African American heritage for its association with Hugh Carr, who was born an enslaved person and later established a prosperous working farm following Emancipation. Carr and his wife, Texie Mae Hawkins Carr, raised seven children in the house he built at River View Farm circa 1880. Although, neither he nor his wife could read or write, the Carrs encouraged all of their children to pursue higher education; nearly all completed both secondary and college-level degrees, and two went on the receive master’s degrees. Carr was also part of a community of African American farmers, tradespeople, businessmen, ministers, and educators centered around the Union Ridge and Hydraulic Mills areas of Albemarle County that prospered during the fourth quarter of the nineteenth century. Following Hugh Carr’s death in 1914, his eldest daughter, Mary Carr Greer (1884-1973), and her husband, Conly Greer (1883-1956), inherited 18 acres of the farm and the circa 1880 farmhouse. Over time, in addition to acquiring most of the remainder of River View Farm from Mary Carr Greer’s siblings, the Greers expanded the 108-acre property to more than 200 acres. Today, 152 of those acres are protected within Ivy Creek Natural Area. River View Farm is also significant at the local level for its association with Mary Carr Greer, who served first as a teacher at and later the principal of the Albemarle Training School for twenty years. Like several of Hugh and Texie Mae Carr’s children, Mary Carr Greer became an educator. The Albemarle Training School was the only post-elementary school available to African American children in Albemarle County during the Jim Crow era of segregated education. While principal of the school, Mary Carr Greer inspired many of her students to seek a college education, and she played a key role in the community as an active member of many clubs and groups, such as the Charlottesville Interracial Commission, local, state, and national chapters of the Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs, Virginia Council of Church Women, and the Washington Park Garden Club. Greer also participated in voter mobilization efforts and teacher registration drives to catalyze political awareness for Black Virginians. To honor her contribution to the community, Albemarle County named a new school—Mary Carr Greer Elementary—posthumously in her honor in 1974. River View Farm is significant at the statewide level for its association with Conly Greer, who served as Albemarle County’s first African American Agricultural Extension Agent between 1918 and 1953. As Agricultural Extension Agent, Conly Greer helped many families improve their lives through scientifically advanced farming practices introduced by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Greer built a large Gambrel roof barn that accommodated dairy cattle, hay storage, and other uses at River View Farm in 1937-1938 using agency plans for improved farm buildings. The barn stands today as a rare surviving example of a standardized barn plan built by an extension agent for this purpose. Like his wife, Mary, Conly Greer worked with many of the African American families living in Albemarle County, helping to improve life through the implementation of new farming and land management methods related to soil conservation, crop rotation, and the introduction of new livestock breeds and crop cultivars during the era of segregation and Jim Crow laws. River View Farm is also significant at the local level for the farmhouse built by Hugh Carr circa 1880. The Virginia I-style farmhouse, which is situated on the high point of the property overlooking Earlysville Road, survives with few modifications to its original construction. Although it is similar to many of the I-houses built within the region during the nineteenth century, today the Carr-Greer farmhouse is a rare surviving example of a home built by an African American farmer within Albemarle County during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The house also reflects the evolution of family lifeways on the property during the twentieth century through the inclusion of an addition built in 1915 by Mary and Conly Greer, as well as electricity, plumbing, and central heating between circa 1930 and 1950. It was also during the ownership of Mary and Conly Greer that stucco was applied over the original wood clapboards, a treatment that occurred to many houses in the region during the 1940s, the original wood porch was replaced, and formal columns added, and a two-story open side porch was enclosed. Other than roof replacement, few other changes have been made to the house since the period of significance. In addition to the farmhouse and several early to mid-twentieth century outbuildings, the property includes a family cemetery marked by a CMU wall and several headstones, farm fields, the foundation of a former tenant house, field and boundary fences and stone walls, spring boxes, roads and road traces, a well, plantings, and whitewashed stones marking the original driveway entrance. These features continue to exhibit a connection between farm development and the site’s natural features, such as soils suitable to cultivation, landform and topography, geology, and water resources. This collection of surviving features also continues to convey land patterns related to traditional local farm practices of the late nineteenth and early- to mid-twentieth century. Since 1979, River View Farm has formed the majority of Ivy Creek Natural Area, a local park jointly owned and managed by the Albemarle County and City of Charlottesville Parks and Recreation Departments. Ivy Creek Natural Area is open to the public to enjoy passive recreation and educational programming provided by the non-profit Ivy Creek Foundation. Features that support visitor access, which generally do not impact the historic features of River View Farm, include an access road, parking area, trail system that often follows the routes of historic farm roads, an information kiosk, education building, bathroom building, and a maintenance shed. The barn built by Conly Greer is an important part of the Ivy Creek Foundation logo and is used for interpretive programming related to historic farming practices and Carr-Greer family heritage. Descendants and other family members continue to support this interpretive programming in a variety of ways.
• -  Survey number: HALS VA-87
• -  Building/structure dates: 1870 Initial Construction
• -  Building/structure dates: ca. 1880 Subsequent Work
• -  Building/structure dates: 1937-1938 Subsequent Work
• -  National Register of Historic Places NRIS Number: 100005925

Medium

• Data Page(s): 58

Call Number/Physical Location

• HALS VA-87

Source Collection

• Historic American Landscapes Survey (Library of Congress)

Repository

• Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print

Control Number

• va2419

Rights Advisory

• No known restrictions on images made by the U.S. Government; images copied from other sources may be restricted. https://aj.sunback.homes/rr/print/res/114_habs.html

Online Format

• pdf