Annandale’s Oak Hill: Lots of history, no ghosts

Members of the public got a chance to tour Annandale’s oldest house and explore the property’s 275-year-old boxwood grove on Oak Hill Day on Sept. 25.  

The owners of Oak Hill, currently Joe and Laura Braceland, are required to open the home to the public once a year as required by a county easement.

Oak Hill, on the corner of Wakefield Chapel Road and Braeburn Drive, is the only surviving plantation on what had been the 21,000-acre Ravensworth Tract acquired by William Fitzhugh in 1685. The other two – Ravensworth and Ossian Hall – both burned down in the 20th century.

The Ravensworth Tract was subdivided over subsequent generations, and Richard Fitzhugh, a descendant of William, is thought to have built the Georgian-style Oak Hill house around 1790.

Thomas Jefferson stayed at Oak Hill four times between 1804 and 1809. He was friends with Richard Fitzhugh, as they shared an interest in the study of birds and plants.

The plantation was a working farm run by enslaved people. A list made in 1856 names 41 people who lived on the property as slaves, although historians believe there were many more.

During the Civil War, on Nov. 5, 1861, there was a skirmish in and around the Oak Hill kitchen building between three Union scouts and four Confederate cavalrymen. Two men were wounded.

By the early 1970s, the property had shrunk to 2.6 acres and was a family farm surrounded by a suburban housing development.

In 1995, Seville Homes threatened to tear down Oak Hill and develop houses on the property. The Oak Hill Citizens Association, the Northern Virginia Conservation Trust, and Sharon Bulova, who was then the Braddock District supervisor, rallied to save it.

It was the old boxwoods that were the driving force for preventing the property from being developed, says Matt Gerhart, conservation director at the NVCT.  

Oak Hill remains privately owned but is regulated by historic and conservation easements that require the owners to maintain the boxwoods and the historic elements of the house, seek approval for any improvements, and open it to the public once a year on Oak Hill Day.

“The owners have really understood that Oak Hill is an asset with a unique arrangement that they want to take care of,” Gerhart says.

Joe and Laura Braceland bought Oak Hill from the Scheetz family, who listed the property for sale in 2017. At the time, the Bracelands lived just five minutes away but didn’t know Oak Hill existed until they saw the “for sale” sign,” Joe recalls.

Laura and their oldest child liked the idea of living in a historic house. Joe was excited to have so much land with trees. “The yard did it for me,” he says.

“The basement was the deciding factor,” Joe says. He was worried it would be in horrible shape, “but it wasn’t too bad.”

“We have to maintain the look and feel of the house,” says Joe. What remains dates mostly from the 1930s, he says, as the house had been renovated and expanded during its long history.

The existing portico across the front is not original, for example. A sunroom was added in the 1970s. A previous owner added a swimming pool, which the Scheetz’s later replaced with a garden. At one point, the house had an elevator, which was later removed.

Oak Hill still has five working fireplaces, including one in each bedroom, Joe says. Laura says they like to watch fox cubs and fawns playing outside.

Still, living in a historic house has its challenges. When the Bracelands moved in, it was July, and the air conditioning wasn’t working. They also put in new insulation, fixed a leak, and renovated an indoor doorway arch that was at risk of falling down.

Joe has heard all the ghost stories about Oak Hill but doesn’t believe them.

At a previous Oak Hill Day event, Amanda Scheetz said she’d heard footsteps at night, which she thinks could be the ghost of “Miss Anne,” Richard Fitzhugh’s 20-year-old daughter.

Anne fell in love with a British soldier, Captain Hawkins, on a trip to England. When he visited her at Oak Hill during the Revolutionary War, troops from the Continental Army searched the house looking for him. Anne was hiding in a secret room, and when the Continental soldiers thrust a bayonet into the trap door, they killed her by mistake.

Joe says that story can’t be true because “the timing isn’t right.” The house was built after the Revolutionary War. He says the sightings of blood dripping down a wall are probably red stains caused by water leaking from the red roof.

There have also been reports of ghosts moving objects around. Joe doesn’t put much stock in that because “we have cats and teenagers.” At one point, he was approached by a couple of ghost hunters who wanted to investigate the house, but he wasn’t interested.

Related story: Historic Oak Hill is on the market