 Rice's
Hotel (aka Shirley Hotel) was once leased and run by George Daniel
Shirley |
The Shirley Hotel, Heathsville Northumberland
VA
"The land on which Rice's Hotel (originally Hughlett's
Tavern) stands was part of a grant of 900 acres taken up by John
Hughlett in 1663," according to the nomination for historic
designation submitted to the U.S. Department of the Interior,
National Park Service, and filed at the Library of Congress.
It was from this land that the four-acre courthouse square was
taken and the first courthouse at the site was built about 1681.
Exactly when the original Hughlett's Tavern was opened has not
yet been determined, but three generations after the death of
the original owner, his great-grandson, known as John Hughlett
the elder, wrote in his 1795 will that "the rents of the
ordinary be put to the use of schooling and raising my gran(d)son
John Hughlett." The same will bequeathed the "land
and plantation joining the Courthouse" to his son John Hughlett
"if he returns. But if he should not return" the land
was to go to the grandson.5
Thus, the earliest legal reference currently available about
Hughlett's Tavern reflects a grandfather's concern for the welfare
of a grandson whose father had been missing many years and would
eventually be presumed dead. The grandson who inherited under
the 1795 will probably never lived at the tavern, because the
Hughlett family plantation was nearby. The record does show that
by 1812 the grandson applied for a license to operate the tavern
and by 1823 he was mortgaging the property. The following year
the tavern was purchased by Griffin H. Foushee.6
Over the next forty years, ownership of RHHT passed through
many per­sons. It may not have been until John and Felicia
Rice became the proprietors that the structure became a family
home as well as a facility catering to transients. The Rices
had been married in 1854 and became the parents of three children,
John W., James A., and Lizzie John and Felicia owned a number
of properties in Heathsville before selling them and purchasing
Hughlett's Tavern a year after the Civil War ended.7 For the
first time, RHHT was called Rice's Hotel. Legend is that John
and Felicia converted the property into a fashionable establishment.
John died in 1892, but his wife continued to operate the hotel
into the first decade of the new century. Before her death, about
1909, the hotel was leased to her cousin George Daniel Shirley,
a Northumberland farmer and businessman.
Catherine Douglas Shirley, wife of the late Wellington Hill
Shirley, Sr., remembers meeting her husband's father, George
Daniel Shirley, in the early 1930s before her marriage. She recalls
he was a rather stout man, not very tall. "He was nice looking,"
she says, "a good businessman. He owned the family property,
Sycamore Hill. He did not actually farm himself, but he saw that
all the work got done. He was into a lot of things, selling fertilizer
and things like that."8
During his life, George Daniel Shirley had three wives and became
the father of eleven children. From about 1906 to 1909 when he
leased the hotel, Shirley lived with his family at the Heathsville
hotel under a new name, Shirley's Hotel. A 1907 news item appearing
in the Northumberland Echo contains an expression of thanks and
appreciation by the Shirley family to citizens of Heathsville
for assistance in saving the hotel when a number of other buildings
in the community were destroyed by fire.9
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