Nelson House

The Nelson House looks remarkably composed for a building that survived the Siege of Yorktown.

Standing along Yorktown's Main Street, the Georgian house was built around 1730 by “Scotch Tom” Nelson, a wealthy merchant and member of one of colonial Virginia's most prominent families. His grandson Thomas Nelson Jr. would become the house's most famous resident. The younger Nelson signed the Declaration of Independence, served as governor of Virginia, and commanded Virginia militia during the Yorktown campaign.

In the fall of 1781, war arrived quite literally at the family's doorstep. American and French forces surrounded the British army at Yorktown and subjected the town to sustained artillery bombardment. The Nelson House survived, but evidence of damage from the siege remains on the building today.

The house is also a relic of the once-looming Nelson presence in the town. Several members of the powerful family maintained substantial houses in Yorktown, and their similar names have caused some historical confusion. A different residence, known as the Secretary Nelson House, was used by British General Charles Cornwallis as a headquarters during the 1781 siege and suffered extensive damage. Though that house is gone, its foundation is marked with a plaque.

Preserved as part of Colonial National Historical Park, the surviving Nelson House offers something difficult to reproduce in a museum. Its Georgian proportions speak to the wealth and influence of colonial Virginia's elite, while its facade records the violence that overtook the town in 1781. From across the street, it is an elegant 18th-century mansion. Get closer, and the building becomes something else: a witness to Yorktown under fire.