Ellwood Brooder Barn

This brooder barn held chickens during Ellwood's time as a working livestock farm.

NPS Photo

Quick Facts

Amenities

1 listed

Restroom - Accessible

*Public restrooms are located at the brooder barn.*

The Ellwood brooder barn was built around 1950 and used for raising poultry. It is one of many buildings added by the property’s last private owners. Today, the barn holds equipment that the park uses to maintain the Ellwood grounds. Volunteers play a critical role in keeping up the Ellwood grounds. Learn more about volunteering at the park. 

Plantation, Farm, Park

Over the course of the 1900s, Ellwood transformed from a plantation into a modern farm, then into a protected historical site. The catalyst for these changes was the end of the Lacy ownership. As the Lacy children reached adulthood during the late 1800s, they moved away from Ellwood. In 1896, Horace and Betty Lacy moved to a house in Fredericksburg and left Ellwood under the management of another tenant farmer, Robert Duvall, who lived and worked at Ellwood until 1899. After the deaths of Horace and Betty Lacy in 1906 and 1907, their children sold Ellwood to Hugh Evander Willis of Vermont.

Willis’ goal was to transform Ellwood into a modern farm. In 1909, he invited his parents to take over the farm. In preparation for their arrival, Hugh renovated the house and removed the old outbuildings in the main service yard, including the former quarters for enslaved people. The Willis family raised many types of animals at Ellwood, including cattle, sheep, chickens, turkeys, and hogs.

During the 1920s, the Wilderness region experienced a period of rapid growth and development. The United States Marine Corps held a large demonstration on the Wilderness Battlefield in 1921. President Warren Harding traveled from Washington to observe the exercises. During the three-day event, soldiers made their way to Ellwood and stopped by the family cemetery. At the time there, there was growing interest in preserving Civil War battlefields. Local veterans began the process of preserving land during the 1890s, but their goal to transfer land to the federal government had not been realized. Finally in 1927, Congress established the Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Military Park under the War Department. The War Department transferred the park to the National Park Service in 1933.

During the development of the military park, the federal government took 96 acres of land from Hugh Willis under eminent domain. Willis tried to sue for his land but lost.

No longer wanting to spend his retirement at Ellwood, Willis gave the property to his sister, Blanche Jones. Blanche moved into Ellwood with her husband, Leo, and son, Gordon. The Jones family (of no relation to the first owners of Ellwood) transformed Ellwood into a livestock farm, known as Ellwood Manor Farm.

Through the 1950s, Leo Jones added numerous agricultural buildings to the farm, including this brooder barn, which he used to raise chickens. Also present nearby were two large laying houses, where chicken eggs were collected for sale. Around the same time that farming operations at Ellwood ended, the state highway department made major changes to Routes 3 and 20, which encouraged additional development in the area. Developers built two large subdivisions nearby, impacting the rural landscape of the Wilderness Battlefield. Taking into consideration this development and his parents’ advanced age, Gordon Jones approached the National Park Service to plan for Ellwood’s future. In 1970, Gordon Jones sold Ellwood to the National Park Service, under the agreement that his parents would live out their lives here. When Leo Jones died in 1977, the National Park Service received full ownership rights to Ellwood.