Bowling Green Burned to the Ground

BOWLING GREEN BURNED TO THE GROUND
by
ANNA GLEAVES RICH.

 Bowling Green, the home of my forefathers is no more!  Mr. Bowman, the owner, was having it painted. The workmen went home one night, and when they returned the next morning, it was reduced to ashes and rubble.  It is presumed that a painter dropped a lighted cigarette, and left it burning.  The neighbors knew nothing of the conflagration, as it is situated on a private road, several miles from Wytheville, Virginia.

 No human eye saw the flames rise upward through the dark hours of the night; when the old colonial brick home that had stood for 155 years was destroyed.  And yet, I think the ghosts of the former owners gathered around it and grieved in helplessness that there was no one there to save it from total destruction, when they had loved it so, and called it home, and were born, married and died there within its portals.

 I think the soul of Gallant Robert Crockett, a Major at 23, in the Revolutionary War was there, and thought how happy he was in building it for his bride, the lovely Jane Stuart, of Greenbrier, daughter of Colonel John Stuart, so dis­tinguished in the American Revolution. Jane Stuart had her rosewood secre­tary, 7 feet high, hauled over the mountains from Lewisburg to grace her new home.  The mate to it is still in Lewisburg, and Jane's is owned by her de­scendants in Wytheville, Va. today, although they have never found the secret drawer for hiding valuable papers.

 I surmise that Charles Lewis Crockett was there in spirit-he who was named for his great-uncle, Charles Lewis, who died when a lad, bravely fighting at the Battle of Point Pleasant. He looked over the wide lawns, so green and so level, that they gave the house the name of Bowling Green.  And he saw the private race track, where he and his friends of the Virginia gentry, raced their blooded horses, and bet on them, and drank mint juleps. And his pretty, petite wife, Mary Harrison Bowyer, came in her gown of golden_. satin, cut low, and circled with amber ornaments, with background of borcaded green mantle around her shoulders, in which she had her portrait painted.

 I feel that R. C. Kent was there, Lieutenant Governor, of Virginia, who bought Bowling Green, when it was sold for debt, and Old Man Leftwich, the greatest skinflint in Wythe County, who said, "It was a damn shame to take that blind boy's money!" because Lucian Augustus Crockett was blinded at age of 21, when his gun exploded, and lived 66 years in total darkness.

 And Rob Kent, Jr., should have been there to recall the long lines of huge boxwoods that extended all the way from the house to the gate, and that he sold for the paltry sum of $125.00!  But the money was cursed for later he used it when his son, Robin Kent, III, was tried for murdering a women for her money!

Some were respected and admired and loved, and some were despised and detested and abhorred, and all have gone to other worlds according to their deserts. Bowling Green that housed them all in turn, has burned, and their memories will soon fade from the minds of men. May the good that they did, live after them, and the evil be interred with their bones!

 Note. My father, Dr. Charles Wythe Gleaves, was born at Bowling Green, in bedroom, on first floor, whose fireplace had the Dabney Coat of Arms, carved under the mantel, with its motto "God's Providence is my Inheritance."

Before the Civil War, there was a horse race track on the farm and there would often be races there.

All that was left until 2003 and this is now gone.
Note this out building to the left of the main house in the picture showing the farm and the animals.