River Edge Once known as Clover Fields, River Edge, as it has been known for the last hundred years or more, stands just west of State Route 5 South, in Charles City County. The property was a grant of ten thousand acres from the crown to Colonel William Cole, Esquire. The grant originally included all of the land along the James River from Gunn's Run to Herring Creek. Due to the destruction of early county records when the Charles City County Courthouse was burned by the Union Army during the Civil War, there is no record of the builder or date of construction for the present house. The deed of 1813 shows that there were four previous owners, and that in 1714 William Cole II, a member of the House of Burgesses, gave his bond, with John Stith as security, to construct warehouses on this land, then known as Swine Yards. Thus it is presumed that the house was built in the early 18th century. The house originally stood closer to the river but was moved to its present location at a later date. In 1769 William Cole IV sold four thousand of his ten thousand acres to William Byrd III of Westover. The nearby river landing known as Wilcox's Wharf, is the location from which a part of General Grant's army ferried across the James to Windmill Point at Flowerdew Hundred en route to lay siege to Petersburg in 1864.