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Red Hill, Charlotte County, Virginia

WHERE PATRICK HENRY SPENT HIS LAST YEARS Patrick Henry was only fifty-eight years old when he retired for rest and the enjoyment of family life to his 2,920-acre estate, Red Hill, in the Staunton Valley, thirty-eight miles southeast of Lynchburg. Just before he made this move he wrote to his daughter Betsy, "I must give out the law, and plague myself no more with business, sitting down with what I have. For it will be sufficient employment to see after my little flock."

He had served his country well for thirty years, as member of the House of Burgesses, as Speaker of the first Continental Congress in Philadelphia in 1774, in the Virginia Convention of 1775 where he made his most famous speech, and as Governor of Virginia from 1776 to 1779 and again from 1784 to 1786. He had well earned the rest he hoped to find. Washington asked him to become Secretary of State and, later, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. John Adams nominated him as minister to France. But he resisted all these efforts to draw him from his retirement.