​

Historic Rosemont Manor has embodied the graciousness of true, southern hospitality throughout its 200-year history. In fact, many of Rosemont’s rooms and suites are named for the historical figures that visited Rosemont—Presidents Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon, and Johnson; famed aviator, Charles Lindbergh; physicist, Albert Einstein; and military icon, Admiral Chester Nimitz, just to name a few.

​

Rosemont is a Virginia mansion set on a knoll facing east over the Shenandoah Valley to the Blue Ridge Mountains.  Originally, the 5,000-acre property was bequeathed to the first High Sheriff of Clarke County, George Horton Norris, in the early 1800s.  Norris built the manor, which he named “Rose Mont”, as a wedding gift for his bride, Jane Bowles Wormeley, in 1811.  

​

The Norris family continued living at Rosemont until 1854, when Norris’s granddaughter married into the wealthy Tyson family of Baltimore, which was one of the largest producers of metal on the East Coast. The Tysons added the Grand Portico, with its gabled pediment and fluted Doric columns, on the east side of the manor house. The Grand Portico became the main entrance, and carriages delivered ladies and gentlemen dressed in Victorian finery for spectacular evenings of dining and dancing. 

​

In 1864, the War Between the States was in full force throughout the Shenandoah Valley, and the grounds at Rosemont became the focal point of the Battle of Berryville, with Northern troops assembling lines on both sides of the manor.  To date, numerous Civil War relics have been excavated from the property. ​

​​

The Byrd family’s ownership began in 1929 when former Virginia Governor Harry F. Byrd, Sr. purchased Rosemont from the widowed Anne Smith. As Harry Sr. continued his rise to political power as a U.S. Senator, the manor evolved into a haven for politicians, and the grounds became a landing pad for presidential helicopters.  Harry Sr. lived at Rosemont until his death in 1966.​

​

William and Barbara Genda of Clarke County purchased Rosemont in 2009, in part to keep it from being lost to development. Rosemont’s renovations were completed one year later, and opened to the public for the first time in 200 years as an exclusive bed and breakfast and special events venue.