Wildlife observed includes blue herons, osprey, hawks, bald eagles, white-tailed deer and various reptiles and amphibians.

[5] Two years after English settlers moved into the Northern Neck in 1650, Thomas Powell (d. 1670) patented 500 acres of land including the small peninsula protruding into the Rappahannock River between Deep Creek and Mulberry (or Mud) Creek, and patented another 700 acres on the west side of the Corotoman River eight years later, so the area became known as "Powell's Quarter.

Despite some legal entanglements, Kyrby eventually managed the land that became Belle Isle for two decades, and inherited it from Rawleigh who died unmarried at age 21.

After education in France, John Bertrand had immigrated to London in 1677, and was a chaplain and tutor to a French nobleman for several years before marrying Charlotte Jolly (1659-1721).

Bertrand's father-in-law, the Sieur d'Esnaux, and family were prominent merchants in Cozes (Charlotte's brother Jean Jolly was the Seigneur de Chadignac by 1692).

Thus in the last years before the paterfamilias' death, the Bertrands began developing the Deep Creek port and store, as well as expanding their labor force with indentured servants and enslaved Africans.

[12] In 1761, Thomas Betrand Griffin inherited the plantation he named Belle Isle (and 28 enslaved Africans) from his grandfather William Bertrand.

Betrand's will had established an entail on the main property, requiring it be kept intact and inherited by the eldest male), he and his grandfather had signed a 3-party deed with prominent merchant, politician and planter Charles Hill Carter to insulate the plantation from creditors and debts incurred by relatives (MaryAnn's sons and their half-siblings) who had moved to Prince William County further up the Potomac River and established a trading post and ironworks near Dumfries, which went bankrupt.

[16] He also let his youngest brother, the London-educated lawyer Cyrus Griffin and his (eloped) wife, Lady Christina Stuart, live at Belle Isle, and soon gave them the adjacent 75 acre Newby tract.

They periodically returned for the next three decades, and were the last Bertrand family residents at the plantation, although Cyrus Griffin's political, diplomatic and judicial duties often called him away.

He finally sold the plantation with the assistance of his brother Cyrus Griffin to prominent Middlesex county planter Ralph Wormeley IV (1750-1790) in 1782 for 5000 pound sterling.

They hired Thomas Tileston Waterman, the first director of the Historic American Buildings Survey, to supervise the restoration, which included reproductions of the now-Winterthur paneling[1].

[23] Meanwhile, in 1940, John G. Pollard and his wife Peggy hired Thomas T. Waterman to build Bel Air, using cypress trees from the Belle Isle farm and in the Colonial revival style.