Colonial Williamsburg Digital Library

THE MINOR HOUSE - NO. 44
BLOCK 22

^{House [razed?] 1954 (Sept)}

In the James City County Tax Records for 1854 there is no mention of Lucian Minor's ownership of any property. The next records are for the year 1859, and in these Levinia C. Minor, wife of Lucian Minor, (William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. IX, (1), p.54) is listed as owning a lot in Williamsburg with the buildings on it valued at $1600. The lot was "formerly charged to Lucian Minor dec'd". He had died in 1858. On account of the absence of the records, it cannot be determined what year Lucian Minor acquired the lot but it must have been between the years of 1854 and 1858.

Mr. John S. Charles says, "This house was built not many years before the War, but there stood on these premises a very old kitchen with immense chimney and huge fireplaces, having an iron crane, and other appurtenances for handling pots and kettles. The upstairs of this very old house was used as sleeping quarters for servants. This quaint old house was pulled down many years ago by the present owner of these premises." He also said that the ^dwelling house had been occupied by Professor Lucian B. Minor at the time he was Professor of Law at the College of William and Mary. Mr. Charles and his family occupied and owned it when he was writing his Recollections of Williamsburg; having purchased it forty years prior to that. (Charles, Recollections of Williamsburg, p. 11 ¹⁰)

Through secondary historical source only, it is evident that the Minor House of 1854 and of today are the same.

Lucian Minor was appointed Professor of Law at the College of William and Mary in 1855. (The History of the College of William and Mary, p. 80)

The Dictionary of American Biography, Vol. XIII, p. 27, says that his "actual law writing was slight: an article on the civil duties of justices of the peace in John A. G. Davis' Treatise on Criminal Law (1838), a 2 one-volume edition of Hening and Munford's Reports (1857), and an edition of the first three volumes of Call's Reports (1854).

The house has not been restored.