Whitethorn: The historic home of Colonel James Francis Preston

Whitethorn is a historic plantation house located in Blacksburg, Montgomery County, Virginia. Built about 1855 by James Francis Preston, who received the land from his father, Governor of Virginia James Patton Preston, the house is a large two-story, L-shaped, five-bay-by-three-bay brick dwelling. It features a shallow hipped roof in the Italian Villa style and Greek Revival-style exterior and interior decorative elements. The property includes a wide, elegant, one-story, five-bay front porch supported by square columns of the Tuscan order, as well as a contributing two-story brick office building.

Preston was a lawyer and a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point. He was commissioned as a captain in the 1st Regiment of Virginia Volunteers at the outset of the Mexican-American War in 1846, serving in Mexico from January 16, 1847, to July 31, 1848. Upon returning home, he resumed his law practice until Virginia seceded from the Union. On April 24, 1861, Preston was commissioned into the Virginia Militia and subsequently transferred to the Confederate Army.

Preston was promoted to colonel in the Confederate army and became the commanding officer of the 4th Virginia Infantry under brigade commander Stonewall Jackson. He commanded the 4th Virginia at First Manassas, where he was wounded in battle. After several months of tending to his wound while in the army, including a brief two-week stint as a brigade commander, he was forced to resign his commission due to failing health and returned home to Whitethorn. Preston died on January 20, 1862, at age 49.

Whitethorn remained in the Preston family until 1889, when it was purchased by Beverly Stockton Heth, a Radford banker and son of coal mine magnate John Heth. In the early 1970s, the majority of the 1,500-acre estate was sold for the Hethwood development. The home and 50 acres of the property are still owned by Heth family descendants, while much of the remaining farmland was sold to Virginia Tech in 2001. Whitethorn was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1989.

Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons