The Pleasants family have deep roots in Goochland. The first members of the Pleasants family to settle in Goochland were Quakers seeking refuge from the religious intolerance that pervaded a colony where the Church of England was the only recognized church.
The most famous member of this family was James Pleasants who lived at Contention (near Crozier) and became the third man born in Goochland to become governor of Virginia. (Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Mann Randolph II were the others.)1
The story of Contention’s name change has become the stuff of legend in the County. Originally known as Pleasant Green, in an 1890 Richmond Dispatch article about old mansions, the unnamed writer spun a story that had passed down in the Pleasants family about the name Contention.
The cause of the name of this old mansion was a singular one. It was once the property and in the possession of Charles Woodson, Sr., whose son Tarlton was a general and whose son Frederick was a major in the Revolutionary War. He was a very strong-minded but singular man. His wife being a Pleasants, he acquired the home by her and his right was disputed by his connection, Mr. Pleasants, an ancestor of the Governor. A tedious action of ejectment had been slowly proceeding when Mr. Pleasants’s counsel told him he never could recover as long as Mr. Woodson held possession, but that if he came in possession Woodson count not recover the land, “Possession being nine points of the law,” Mr. Woodson living in Powhatan and having houses elsewhere kept the house at Contention locked and carried the key in his pocket. On one of his regular and periodical visits, in attempting to open the front door, he found that Pleasants in his absence had put a pad-lock on it and had thus locked Woodson out. Finding that he could no enter without breaking a lock, which he had defied Pleasants to do, he said: “I didn’t know that Bob had so much sense, and I will give him the place.” He stuck his key in the lock and left the place, which has been called Contention ever since.2
According to Adelaide Nuckols, who once lived at Contention, the original Colonial era Pleasants home (pictured at the beginning of this post) was demolished in 1917 and a new home (pictured above) was built on the spot. It is some contention among locals that instead of being demolished, the old home was simply swallowed up by the new one as a core of the much larger mansion. Contention will continue to live up to its name.
- Cece Bullard, Goochland Yesterday and Today: A Pictorial History (Virginia: Donning Company, 1994), 84.
- Richmond Dispatch, 1890
Goochland History 