Latané Family Comes Together to Protect the Land They Love

Cousins Lawrence and David Latané grew up connected to the Westmoreland County land once known as Wakefield, the home of their Washington family ancestors.

Lawrence Latané, the third of his name, grew up on Blenheim, one of several farms eventually created from that plantation. He lives there today with wife Becky in a house built in 1780 by one of George Washington’s nephews, William Augustine Washington. Since boyhood, Lawrence has roamed the woods and tromped through the streams developing a feeling of responsibility for both the flora and fauna on the property. In 2000, the connection to the land became more direct as he and Becky established Blenheim Organic Gardens, raising organic vegetables, flowers, fruit, and herbs on the farm that’s bred generations of farmers.

David Latané’s deep ties to the land that was once Wakefield began as visits on summers and holidays joining siblings and cousins to roam, explore and hunts, and progressed to a permanent move there in the 8th grade.

“When I was a kid, we had to drive in to visit our grandparents through Ebbtide Beach, it was the way you got in and out,” he said. “There was such a drastic contrast between the farmland that had been subdivided and the farm, with its animals and birds and cows. From that contrast I sort of developed a sense that this farmland needs to stay farmland.” But it wasn’t until David went off to college that he realized how unique it is for four family-owned farms to be contiguous, or that land held by so many generations continues to be farmed and timbered by the same extended family.

These two cousins, and a substantial number of siblings and other relatives who own and steward different parts of the property, have taken serious strides to make sure the land that gave this country George Washington will not end up as subdivisions bearing his name.

Lawrence’s parents, Lawrence Jr. and Maude Ellen Latané, placed 400 acres of Blenheim into conservation easements with the Virginia Outdoors Foundation and a historic house on the property into another easement with the Virginia Department of Historic Resources in the early 1980s. Lawrence III and his sister, Rebecca Ripley, eventually put tracts they inherited into conservation easements.

David Latané and a collection of siblings and cousins have also used conservation easements to protect their section of the land under the name of Haywood Farm. They placed 565 acres of Haywood into conservation with Northern Neck Land Conservancy in 2020 and another 78 acres, also with the Land Conservancy, in 2023.

Added together, well over 1,000 contiguous acres of property between State Route 3 and the Potomac River adjacent to the George Washington Birthplace Monument will never be developed.

“Somehow the family has held onto land for generations. It’s a rare thing in this day and age to grow up on a piece of land as intact as this is, and incorporating as much history as this does,” said Lawrence.  “I think we all grew up thinking that we never wanted to see it end up as 250-home subdivisions.”

David Latané, a retired English literature professor who now lives in Richmond when he’s not visiting a dwelling on the property his family calls Blenheim 2, said that completing the process of putting the land into conservation easements has at times been a bit complex for his family.

From the start, they wanted the decision to pursue conservation to be unanimous. “Putting land into an easement is a big discussion, and everybody has to respect everybody else’s decisions,” says David.

Working together as a large family can be challenging. There were times when concerns by some family members slowed the process so questions could be answered and addressed. It helped the Latané’s to establish a family limited liability corporation, which also has tax benefits.

“I’m so thankful we were all working together in good faith, which has gotten us to where we are now,” said David. “After some time, I believe that my far-flung nieces and nephews, and grandnieces and grandnephews will know that they can come here and enjoy this property,” he said. “This special place will become a refuge of sorts, rather than just a valuable property with people arguing over what to do with it.”

One of the Haywood Farm conservation easements was made possible through the U.S. Navy’s REPI program, which provides funding when land in flight and weapons centers is put into development-limiting easements.

“In a sense that is service to the country, in the surrendering of value for the country,” said Lawrence.

The organic farmer, who also had a long career as a newspaper reporter, covering the Northern Neck for the Richmond Times Dispatch, said that while there have been a lot of moving parts in getting to the point where land is protected, the different wings of the family involved in the process were able to negotiate it.

David is like many who place land in conservation easements, moved to act both by a desire to protect the land and to help recoup some of the value lost in prohibiting development.

“One of the things that’s clear to me is the element here of having cake and eating it too,” he said. “You can generate a financial return [through the tax benefits] that can help you keep land in agriculture, so you don’t have to sell it off. I have a nephew that’s interested in farming some of the land and now that will be possible.”

And while dollars and cents matter, Lawrence feels it’s about much more than that.

“There are thousands of geese that winter on these farms and that creates an emotional attachment to the property as well,” he said. “The same is true throughout the history of this place. I think somehow, we’ve inherited those connections. It’s just part of our family’s DNA now.”

Lawrence, who previously served on the board and is a past president of the Northern Neck Land Conservancy, said protecting tracts of land in Westmoreland County has become more critical with growth and development creeping through King George County toward them.

“This end of the region is really going through a building boom,” he said. “That’s evident with the subdivision that borders property here, and the new bridge across the Potomac River.”

David adds, “The alarm bells went off for me when they started getting big box development in Dahlgren, making it look much like Waldorf in Maryland. That and Ebbtide Beach getting water and sewer.”