sites of many of the James River Plantations between the colonial capital city of Williamsburg (now the site of Colonial Williamsburg) and the capital of the Commonwealth of Virginia at Richmond. After several decades, the site of Berkeley Hundred became the property of Theodorick Bland of Westover. A portion of the Berkeley Hundred patent was purchased from descendant Giles Bland by Benjamin Harrison III. His son Benjamin Harrison IV built the three story brick mansion that became the seat of the Harrison family, one of the First Families of Virginia. Using bricks fired on the Berkeley plantation, Benjamin Harrison IV built a Georgian-style two-story brick mansion on a hill overlooking the James River in 1726. Harrison's son, Benjamin Harrison V, a signer of the American Declaration of Independence and a governor of Virginia, was born at Berkeley Plantation, as was his son William Henry Harrison, a war hero in the Battle of Tippecanoe, governor of Indiana Territory, and ninth president of the United States. Berkeley would later earn a distinction shared only with Peacefield in Quincy, Massachusetts, as the ancestral home for two United States presidents, though this connection is tenuous, as William Henry Harrison's grandson, the 23rd president, Benjamin Harrison, was born and reared in North Bend, Ohio, and his father, John Scott Harrison, was born in Vincennes, Indiana, while his father (William Henry Harrison) was the first territorial governor of the Indiana Territory. The first 10 U.S. presidents were on the property enjoying the hospitality: George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, William Henry Harrison (Who was born on the property), and John Tyler Using poor farming techniques, Benjamin Harrison VIII bankrupted the plantation and it was foreclosed on by a local bank and the family evicted. During the American Civil War, Union troops occupied Berkeley Plantation, and President Abraham Lincoln twice visited there in the summer of 1862 to confer with Gen. George B. McClellan. The Harrisons were unable to regain possession of the plantation after the war, and it was rented out by the bank from time to time to tenant farmers and the mansion was eventually used as a barn, falling into such disrepair that it was uninhabitable. Restoration John Jamieson, a lumber "tycoon" who as a youth had been a drummer boy in McClellan's army, purchased the property in 1907, and in 1925,