Clifton boasts a remarkable historical legacy that begins with a direct link to Thomas Jefferson and includes a connection with one of the most colorful characters of the Civil War. The original property was part of a 3,000 acre land grant belonging to Peter Jefferson. Through the Jefferson family, approximately 350 acres of the land was passed on to Thomas Jefferson’s daughter and her then-new husband Thomas Mann Randolph. It was on the central parcel of this land that Randolph built their home “Edgehill.”
Thomas Mann Randolph was himself a prominent figure in the Commonwealth, where he served as Governor, member of the House of Delegates and member of the United States Congress.
Randolph and his business partners originally designed Clifton as a trading center for the once- prosperous and now-vanished trading towns of Milton and North Milton.
The stone foundations of the present main house were likely part of a warehouse that Randolph built to service his trading business. Randolph spent a great amount of time at Clifton while his wife Martha worked as hostess at Monticello.
Randolph’s Jefferson family ties were frayed and in fact broken in 1826 in a dispute over Thomas Jefferson’s will. When Randolph learned that he had been bypassed as executor of the will by his own son, Thomas Jefferson Randolph, the elder Randolph was furious and humiliated. So much so, in fact, that in 1826 he renounced his family, leaving Edgehill and moving 1⁄2 mile away to what is now Clifton. It was there that he lived in complete seclusion, spending his days and nights drinking and brooding while his health failed him. In March of 1828 he moved again, this time to the North Wing at Monticello, where he died alone only a few months later.
Clifton once again had a date with history during the Civil War, when it is said to have been the home of the “Grey Ghost of the Confederacy,” Colonel John Singleton Mosby. Mosby and his family were driven from their home in Middleburg and apparently sought refuge at Clifton. As the story goes, the colorful Colonel often sent them food and supplies and was careful to re-route his packages upon reports of Union soldiers in the area.
Following the Civil War, Clifton remained a private residence for more than a century until it was lovingly restored by its current owners into a five-room country inn. Three historic dependencies on the estate were restored to create nine additional guest accommodations in the original home and its outlying buildings, including the “Honeymoon Cottage” and “Livery Suites.”
-straight off of the clifton inn website
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