FRONT ROYAL — At Bel Air on Happy Creek Road, history comes alive through 250 years of families who lived there, guests they hosted and renovations they’ve made.

The 1795 Classical Revival brick and stucco house at 269 Happy Creek Road, with its sweeping porches that overlook the downtown, is the ancestral home of Lucy Buck, a famous Civil War diarist who recorded her accounts with her sister and parents as the house changed hands about 15 times during the war, every time troops from either side needed a place to stay.

The house will be featured along with several other historic downtown houses on the Historic Garden Week tour hosted by the Garden Club of Warren County on April 15. The tour is one of dozens of tours being held in communities throughout Virginia in mid-April.

Situated on a hill above Happy Creek, Bel Air provided a respite and exceptional lookout, said current homeowner Jeff LeHew, 62, who descends from Peter LeHew, founding father of Front Royal, previously named LeHewtown after he purchased a 200-acre property there in 1754.

Peter LeHew sold the property to the Buck Family, and Capt. Thomas Buck built the house, which his family owned for about 110 years until they sold it to the Downing Family in 1906. Jeff LeHew’s father, Larry, then purchased the rundown house in the early 1970s.

“He was able to save this house,” LeHew said of his father. “He and Mom took a lot of great pride in restoring it.”

Since inheriting the house from his father in 2020, LeHew has been restoring the outside of the house, before he addresses any concerns inside.

“I promised him that I would keep this house in the family,” he said.

The local tour will highlight the history of the town and historic Chester Street, said third-time chairwoman Beth DeBergh.

“This one is more about history,” she said. “I think it’s a very rich history. It’s different, and I like it.”

LeHew was 12 when he and his family moved into Bel Air. His family added a breakfast room off of a dining room that had been added in 1906/07.

Above the breakfast room, the LeHews added upstairs rooms that offered another access point to the attic where previous owners had added plexiglass to preserve signatures of residents and guests from over the decades, including those of the Buck family.

The Buck Family, which LeHew said enslaved several people who left during the Civil War, survived the conflict. Lucy Buck later moved with her sister to a small house at 64 Chester St., which they built in 1904 after the family’s financial downturn. The Buck House, nicknamed Cozy Corner, is another downtown building featured during Virginia’s 90th Historic Garden Week, along with J.S. Petty-Sumption House and the three houses in the Warren Heritage Society Village on Chester Street.

Bel Air sits on a 24-acre lot northeast of Main Street and includes a stable and paddock for horses, which LeHew keeps for fox hunting.

Visitors to the house on April 15 will get to tour the original dining room, hall and parlor, which feature several reproductions of local Civil War scenes by famed artists Mort Kunstler and John Paul Strain. Two prints in the hall are copies of originals that hung in the house while LeHew’s father lived there and which LeHew has since removed to a home he owns in Rockland.

Receiving prime placement above a fireplace in the parlor is a Kunstler painting of sisters Lucy and Laura Buck, which imagines their meeting with Robert E. Lee when he and his troops stayed at the house.

The tour will also feature the following properties:

• Ivy Lodge, at 101 Chester St., which dates to 1819 and will serve as the tour headquarters for the tour. The house is one of the few historic architectural structures surviving on Chester Street. It was built by George Tyler in the 1850s, and Dr. Bernard Samuels donated it to the town for a public library a century later. Many others have lived there too, and it’s featured in more political, social, religious, patriotic and cultural events than any other place still standing in Front Royal. It now houses the Warren County Heritage Society and a museum.

• Belle Boyd Cottage, at 101 Chester St., behind Ivy Lodge, which was the home of infamous Confederate spy Belle Boyd. The information that Boyd gathered on Union troop dispositions helped Gen. Stonewall Jackson win the Battle of Front Royal (May 23, 1862). Her efforts also landed her in Washington’s Old Capital Prison. After the war, the cottage was an apartment building until it was donated to the Warren Heritage Society in 1982 and was moved 2.5 blocks from its original location. The house contains period pieces and items connected with Belle Boyd.

The cottage features a garden that won the Garden Club of Warren County the prestigious Garden Club of Virginia Commonwealth Award and is now maintained by the local master gardeners.

• Balthis House, at 55 Chester St., which dates to 1787 and is named for the William Balthis Family, who lived there from 1838 to 1908. It’s the oldest surviving house in Front Royal. In 2000, the Warren Heritage Society purchased the house, with its spacious gardens and several dependencies in the rear.

• The Buck House, at 64 Chester St., owned by Doug and Cathy Gleason. It’s a typical example of Folk Victorian architecture, with decorative trim on the porches and a beautifully carved newel post on the main staircase, a tour brochure explains. The house’s historical significance derives largely from Lucy Buck’s posthumous reputation as a Civil War diarist. Many of the family’s letters and other artifacts were found in the attic.

• J.S. Petty-Sumption House, at 123 Chester St., which dates to 1788 and is owned by Bill Cammack. One of Front Royal’s most significant historic log homes, it was built by George Cheek, one of the landowners named in the 1788 Charter incorporating Front Royal. Records show that James Petty lived in the house in 1831. In 1923, the property was sold to the Warren County School Board. At that time, the house was bought by Charles Franklin Sumption and moved across the street to its present site. The home has antique pine floors, massive fireplaces and a fenced courtyard.

Chester Street is also part of the walking tour in Front Royal’s Historic District.

As part of the earliest thoroughfare from Winchester crossing the Blue Ridge, it will allow visitors to stroll through two centuries of the county’s history.

The tour will be from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. April. 15. Tickets are $30 in advance and help pay for restoration efforts for gardens on historic properties around Virginia, as well as a couple of garden club scholarships. For tickets or more information, go to vagardenweek.org/tours/warren-county-front-royal.