"The Revolutionary Home of a ‘Most Noble Patriot’: Patrick Henry's Life at Scotchtown” - Lectures on the Lawn at Totopotomoy Creek

The Rural Plains Foundation and the National Park Service are pleased to an-nounce the 2025 “Lectures on the Lawn” series for 2025. Join us on three consec-utive Thursday evenings in June at the Shelton House in Hanover County, part of the Totopoptomy Creek Battlefield unit of Richmond National Battlefield Park. We have lined up some fascinating discussions of local history and personalities!

June 5

Elyse Werling, Director of Interpretation and Collections, Preservation Virginia
"The Revolutionary Home of a ‘Most Noble Patriot’: Patrick Henry's Life at Scotchtown”

Patrick and Sarah Henry, their five (soon to be six) children, and the more than a dozen people they enslaved, moved to the Hanover County property called “Scotchtown” in 1771. From there, Patrick rode to Richmond to deliver his “Lib-erty or Death” speech that we commemorated this year. Yet every public action he took had an impact on, and was shaped by, his private life at Scotchtown. Today, Scotchtown is owned by Preservation Virginia and is a museum open to the pub-lic. Learn about the historic property as it stands today, and how those formative years at Scotchtown drastically impacted the lives of both the Henry family, and the enslaved servants whose labor provided for their comfort and lifestyle.

The lectures begin at 6:30 on the lawn in front of the Shelton House at Rural Plains, located at 7273 Studley Road. They are free and open to the public — pic-nic suppers are encouraged! (Rain location: Enon United Methodist Church, 6156 Studley Road.)