This dignified example of a Federal-period gentry farmhouse was built ca. 1819 for Elisha Betts, a native of Northumberland County, who migrated to the Roanoke Valley about 1807. Huntingdon originally was the nucleus of a 500-acre working plantation and took some twenty-five years to complete. Following Betts’s death in 1825, his widow Sara Watson Betts, continued to reside here, adding handsome Greek Revival porches. The dormers, front entry, and one-story rear wing are early-20th-century additions. Huntingdon retains some of its original Federal interior woodwork. Remaining on the eight-acre tract (now within the boundaries of the city of Roanoke) is the Betts family cemetery and a small, one-story frame outbuilding that may have been a slave quarters. Now surrounded by 20th-century development, the complex is a historic anchor in a growing modern city.
Many properties listed in the registers are private dwellings and are not open to the public, however many are visible from the public right-of-way. Please be respectful of owner privacy.
Abbreviations:
VLR: Virginia Landmarks Register
NPS: National Park Service
NRHP: National Register of Historic Places
NHL: National Historic Landmark
Programs
DHR has secured permanent legal protection for over 700 historic places - including 15,000 acres of battlefield lands
DHR has erected 2,532 highway markers in every county and city across Virginia
DHR has registered more than 3,317 individual resources and 613 historic districts
DHR has engaged over 450 students in 3 highway marker contests
DHR has stimulated more than $4.2 billion dollars in private investments related to historic tax credit incentives, revitalizing communities of all sizes throughout Virginia