A house built by hand,
kept by heart.

The story of Midland Farm begins before America itself. In 1722, this stretch of Virginia Piedmont was part of a grant to the Taylor family, whose line would one day give the nation President Zachary Taylor. They called the tract Middle Land, a name the centuries would soften into Midland.

In the summer of 1786, George Taylor began raising a house here, and by the following winter it was done: a modest two-story frame home looking out over the Rapidan countryside. We know this because his son kept a diary, and in it, the building of this house. Few homes in Virginia can date themselves by a father's work recorded in his son's hand.

The house grew as the generations passed through it. A wing in the early 1800s. A grand expansion at the turn of the twentieth century. And in 1935, the remodeling that gave Midland the stately Colonial Revival face it wears today, white columns, black shutters, and all. Along the way the estate carried other names, Ashland for a time, then Yatton, before its first name, Midland, was restored to it.

Today Midland Farm is a working horse farm on 150 acres, with race horses in the pastures and more than two centuries of Virginia life in its walls. We believe a place with this much history deserves to keep making it, which is why we open the farm each year to a small number of couples ready to begin a story of their own.