The southeastern edge of the Warminster Rural Historic District winds along nearly 3.8 miles of the James River, which separates this portion of Nelson County from Buckingham County. Apart from large agricultural properties that line the riverfront, such as Bon Aire and Edgewood, the district mostly consists of scattered rural residential properties along with large tracts of woodland, including the 1,213-acre James River Wildlife Management Area. The most densely grouped properties occur in a historically African American community in the western portion of the district, west of Mayo Creek. The district represents a microcosm of the historical settlement, agricultural, commercial, and transportation trends in the piedmont of central Virginia. Swan Creek Plantation was settled by Dr. William Cabell in 1742. The ambitious Dr. Cabell used his connections as a land surveyor to acquire prime bottomland along the James River, then on the frontier of settlement, and established his home near the mouth of Swan Creek. A cemetery for enslaved workers on the property dates to the mid-1800s, while the Cabell Family Cemetery dates to 1756. Dr. Cabell’s political career included the governorship of the Commonwealth and justice on the Virginia Court of Appeals; yet arguably, his brother Joseph Carrington Cabell had the most lasting influence through his energetic promotion of canal transportation, including the James River & Kanawha Canal, which ran along the entire riverfront portion of the district. Joseph had a long career in Virginia’s General Assembly, and as Thomas Jefferson’s political ally in Richmond, also helped bring about the establishment of the University of Virginia in 1819. The name Warminster refers to a planned two-acre town on the James River within the district, laid out with 36 lots by Nicholas Cabell in 1788.