Mount Pleasant was one of the earliest sites of English settlement in Piedmont Virginia. Located in what was then Spotsylvania County and later Orange County, the estate was part of a 4,675-acre parcel of land that had originally belonged to Colonel James Taylor, the surveyor of King William and King and Queen counties. In 1723 Taylor gave it to his two sons-in-law, Ambrose Madison and Thomas Chew, who cleared and built on it as the law required. In March or April 1732, Madison—the grandfather of the future U.S. president—moved his family into the overseer’s house, constructed around 1726. Approximately twenty-nine enslaved people lived on the farm, which grew tobacco and corn. In July 1732, or less than six months after his arrival, Madison died; three enslaved people were later convicted of poisoning him.