Est. 1790 · James Madison Birthplace · Colonial History · Civil War · Virginia Plantation · Rappahannock River
The Belle Grove land grant on the Rappahannock River in King George County dates to 1670, when the plantation was established by the Conway family. The plantation's most significant historical claim came on March 16, 1751, when Eleanor Conway Madison gave birth to her son James Madison while visiting her parents at Belle Grove — the future fourth President of the United States and architect of the Constitution. The original house in which Madison was born no longer stands.
The current Federal-style mansion was built in 1790 by John Hipkins for his only child, Fannie, who married William Bernard. Carolinus Turner purchased the plantation in 1839 and significantly modified the structure, adding the porticos and terminal wings that define its present silhouette. The four guest suites in the current bed and breakfast are named for these successive owning families: Conway, Hipkins-Bernard, Madison, and Turner.
During the Civil War, the plantation's position on the Rappahannock placed it in contested territory, and Union forces are documented as having occupied the grounds at various points during the war. The plantation was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973-74 and encompasses 380 acres.
Current owners operate the mansion as a bed and breakfast with four named Master Suites, gourmet breakfasts, and optional four-course dinners. The paranormal investigation program runs through Haunted Rooms America, and Ghost Hunt Weekends periodically organizes celebrity events featuring Steve Gonsalves of Ghost Hunters and Ghost Nation, who investigated the property in Ghost Hunters S9E22 'Dead Presidents.'
Sources
- https://bellegroveplantation.com/
- https://www.hauntedrooms.com/virginia/ghost-hunts/belle-grove-plantation
- https://www.ghosthuntweekends.com/bellegrove
The first thing to establish about this venue is which one it is.
Virginia has two Belle Grove Plantations. This is the King George County property on the Rappahannock, the birthplace of James Madison, today a bed and breakfast. The other is in Middletown, near Cedar Creek Battlefield, a National Trust site used as a field hospital during the Civil War. Three of the four haunting-related sources collected for this page turned out to describe the Middletown property -- one prints its street address -- and were set aside.
What remains is a single source, and it is a sales page. A ghost-hunt operator sells an overnight investigation here for several hundred dollars, and it is that listing which supplies the figures repeated everywhere else: 83 documented spirits, 23 full-body apparitions since March 2013, Union soldiers on the driveway, ghost cats, a child called Jacob. Those are the vendor's claims about its own product.
That does not make them false. It does mean this page has no first-hand account, no dated sighting from a named witness, and no independent record behind any of it -- so we count no original accounts here, and the numbers are reported as the operator's rather than as documentation.
The house's documented history is a different matter and is not in question: it stands on land patented in the seventeenth century, and James Madison was born here in March 1751.
Notable Entities
JacobUnion Soldier ApparitionsGhost Cats
Media Appearances
- Ghost Hunters Season 9
- Kindred Spirits: Dying Regrets (S3E7) (2019)
