Nathaniel E. Venable was born on December 5, 1791 at the Springfield Plantation in Prince Edward County, Virginia. He graduated from Hampden-Sydney College in 1808 and served as a Captain in the militia during the War of 1812. He was a member of the Virginia House of Delegates and of the State Senate, and was a trustee of Hampden-Sydney College from 1827 until his death in 1846. In 1814, Venable married Mary Embra Scott of Halifax County, Virginia. She was the daughter of Colonel Charles Scott, a Cornet in the Revolutionary Army and a member of the original Society of Cincinnati. Her mother was Priscilla Reade, whose father, Colonel Issac Reade was also a Revolutionary Soldier. Also in 1814, Nathaniel E. Venable was given the Longwood Estate and Plantation by his father, Samuel Woodson Venable, who had previously inherited the property from his brother, Abram Venable, after his death in the Richmond Theater Fire in 1811. Shortly after acquiring the property, the original home was destroyed in a fire. Nathaniel E. Venable began building the present-day Longwood House in 1815 and moved his family into the home in the fall of that same year. The home and property were later sold by Venable's descendants in 1873, and were eventually acquired by [then] State Teachers College in 1924. Longwood House now serves as the home of the president of Longwood University.