Bellevue

This Federal-style house, one of Craig County’s few antebellum brick buildings, was constructed for merchant Robert Wiley ca. 1832, when the style was popular in western Virginia. Construction of the house coincided with the development of a turnpike that passed here, linking this area to the Cumberland Gap. Enslaved African Americans sustained the home and farm before the Civil War. Robert May Wiley, who represented Craig County in the House of Delegates and the Senate of Virginia, lived here, as did his brother Dr. Oscar Wiley, Confederate surgeon and president of the Medical Society of Virginia, who practiced medicine from the Greek Revival doctor’s office in the front yard.