It was 1804 when George Carter, great grandson of colonial Virginia’s renowned Robert “King” Carter, began building his Oatlands estate: the mansion, greenhouse, dairy, smoke house, bank barn and gardens. In the 1820s, he remodeled his federal mansion to its current Greek Revival style. Carter died in 1846, and his widow, Elizabeth Grayson Carter, remained at Oatlands with their two sons and managed the property through the Civil War years.