Malvern Hill

Malvern Hill, estate of the prominent Cocke family, featured a brick house built ca. 1720 on the site of an earlier frame dwelling. The Marquis de Lafayette camped on the property in the summer of 1781, during the Revolutionary War, as did Virginia militiamen during the War of 1812. A workforce of 10-15 enslaved African Americans labored here before the Civil War. Nearby on 1 July 1862, Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee attacked Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan's Union Army of the Potomac as it retreated from the outskirts of Richmond. The Union forces prevailed. The Malvern Hill house, half a mile northwest of here, survived the battle as a Federal headquarters but burned in 1908.