Drawing Room

This was the principal public or entertaining room. The finishes of this room confirm that it served as the most important room in the house. Which was typical of the family’s stature. Smithfield is hundreds of miles from Virginia’s Colonial Capital, Williamsburg. Still, William wanted Smithfield to have the same look and feel as Williamsburg homes.

The founding of Smithfield on the edge of the frontier helps to illustrate Preston’s worldview. Establishing Smithfield here exhibits the ability to find safety, luxury, comfortability on the frontier; represents the taming of the wilderness. Preston's worldview was very narrow and did not include Black or indigenous peoples. He saw the frontier as something to be conquered, something to be tamed for white settlement and advancement.

This Drawing Room includes opulent design features meant to impress guests to Smithfield - many of these design features like the Chinese Chippendale stair railings and the Drawing Room Fireplace surround are items that Preston saw during his time in Williamsburg and had replicated in his home.

“In eighteenth century Virginia, members of the colonial elite - the gentry - were expected to demonstrate their place in society through conspicuous economic signals. They had to dress, live and entertain lavishly and central to these displays of wealth were houses befitting their status as gentlemen. Smithfield was intended to be such a house. It was a mansion clearly meant to symbolize the Preston’s position as New River aristocracy.” (In The True Blue’s Wake, p13)

The fireplace surround was copied directly from Raleigh Tavern in Williamsburg. After the original Raleigh Tavern burned in 1859, reconstruction architects visited Smithfield to copy the fireplace surround design to place back in the reconstructed tavern. This room was used as a place of gathering for the Preston family, a place to entertain guests and conduct business conversations. It was also used as the primary place where conversations about divisions of property were held. At the time of deaths or marriages primarily, the Preston family would gather in this room to discuss wills and the division of land and property, which at the time included the enslaved individuals at Smithfield. While this room was a merry gathering place for the Preston family, it was a place of division and ripping apart for the enslaved community of Smithfield. Enslaved individuals had no control over what would happen to them, or their family members when these divisions occurred.