Stop #1 on Prince William County Farm Tour Sept. 29-30 - Brentsville Historic Courthouse Center

Visitors on the 2012 farm tour this coming weekend, Sept. 29-30, will be able to get an idea of what life on a farm was like back in the mid-1800s if they visit the Haislip-Hall House, a restored dwelling tucked on the rear grounds of the Brentsville Courthouse Historic Center site.

Visitors will be able to walk into the main house to view it but children may be interested in what is going on outdoors. There will be goats and chickens in the nearby pens to visit and feed. They will be able to pet the goats through the fence and offer feed to the chickens, said Mike Riley, manager of the Brentsville property, which is among the heritage sites managed by the Prince William County Division of Historic Preservation.

“We plan to be making apple butter outside and do some open hearth cooking,” Riley said. Traditional “hoe cakes” will be cooked and offered for tasting. Hoe cakes, he explained, were a cornmeal pancake made by slaves and others working in the field. Too far from the house to travel to cook a meal, they started a campfire where they worked and formed and cooked pancakes made from cornmeal. The blade was taken off their hoe and used as a makeshift skillet, hence the name “hoe cake.”

Riley also plans to have a woodworking demonstration for visitors both days of the farm tour at Brentsvillle. They will see how ax handles and tool handles were created in the days before mass production.

Riley is planning activities for visitors of every age group to enjoy. The grounds and other buildings on the grounds can also be viewed. There is a jail on the site, which is currently being restored and can’t be entered, but there is also a restored courthouse, a school, and church on the site, as well as markers that tell the story of historic Brentsville.

Brentsville was the county seat of Prince William from 1820 to 1893 when it was moved to Manassas. The historic site sits on 28 acres of land. Besides the buildings, there is a one-mile nature trail. The grounds are open from sunrise to sunset. The farm tour activities will run from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on the Saturday of farm tour weekend, Sept. 29, and noon to 4 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 30.

The Haislip-Hall House is a more recent addition to the site. Riley explained it was moved to historic Brentsville to save it from being demolished when the Braemar housing development was built.

It was restored and opened to visitors to provide some idea of farm life 150 years ago. “It is a representation of an average household prior to the Civil War,” Riley said. The Haislip family had 200 acres of farmland and owned seven slaves, according to the 1860 census. There were nine children in the family, plus the parents living in a house that was not large. There is one large room downstairs where cooking by fireplace and eating was done. There were two rooms for sleeping upstairs with an attic above.

It is a timber frame house with clapboards on the outside and a front porch. The Haislip-Hall house was restored about five years ago, Riley said,, and has been an attraction at Brentsville since then. For more information about the Brentsville historic site go to http://www.virginia.org/Listings/HistoricSites/BrentsvilleCourthouse Historic Center/.The site is located at 12229 Bristow Road. For more information about all farm tour stops go to http://www.pwcfarmtour.org.