From across Main Street it is a composed brick mansion built around 1730 by a merchant wealthy enough to make the proportions right. Walk closer and the facade turns into a record: in the autumn of 1781 the American and French bombardment of Yorktown went straight over this house, and Atlas Obscura reports that evidence of the damage is still on the building. Thomas Nelson Jr., who signed the Declaration and commanded Virginia’s militia in that siege, grew up in it. Now part of Colonial National Historical Park.