Historic Stagville Plantation

So, we've lived in North Carolina now for two years and four months and not one time have we visited a plantation. What is that all about???

Well, yesterday, we did. We went with a group of about nineteen CHS kids and their moms to the Historic Stagville Plantation in Durham and spent two hours there learning a bit about the family that owned the land and what took place on the plantation. Sad, sad piece of American history. Incredibly interesting and important to learn about...but the reality of it is almost unbelievable.

Ready for a history lesson? Okay...here goes!

Richard Bennehan, a merchant from Virginia, was ranked among the region's wealthiest planters. He owned 4,000 acres and 40 slaves, raised livestock and grew crops such as tobacco and grain. He bought part of this land from Judith Stagg who, with her late husband, owned a very popular tavern known as Stagg's Tavern. Since this was already a popular location that everyone knew about, Richard Bennehan decided to keep the Stagg name.  Now when he told someone he lived at Stagville, they knew exactly where it was at.  Bennehan and his wife, Mary Amis controlled their estate from the Georgian style Bennehan House which is still standing at Stagville. The original one and one half story section was built in 1787. The two story section was added in 1799.

This is what the house looks like today from the front,

and then from the side.

Richard and Mary had two children, a son named Thomas and a daughter named Rebecca. The four of them lived in this home together. We were able to tour the bottom floor of this home, but were unable to see the top floor due to some safety issues.

The first room we saw was the parlor, or what we would consider to be the living room.

Our docent, Kimberly, told us about the Bennehan family's home.

We saw the entry hall with an enormous grandfather clock. Unfortunately it was pretty dark in there and not great for picture taking. Their was a small office and a dining room across the great hall opposite the parlor.

On the dining room walls there were some family pictures. One photo was of Rebecca Bennehan's husband, lawyer Duncan Cameron. He built Fairntosh plantation with land given to him by Rebecca's father. Cameron joined into a partnership with Richard and Thomas Bennehan to manage the stores and the plantations. 

Another photo was of Paul Cameron, Rebecca and Duncan's second son who inherited Stagville and took over his grandfather and father's enterprise. He held numerous significant positions including service as president of the North Carolina Railroad, state senator, and trustee of the University of North Carolina. 

This is the butler's pantry. The house itself had no kitchen in it.

The kitchen was built behind the house. It was separated to keep the main house safe from fire. With all wood buildings, the fire that was used for cooking was a danger. Slaves that cooked for the Bennehan family would bring the food here to the butler's pantry where it would be arranged and final preparations made before it was served in the dining room. The original kitchen is actually no longer there. What's left of the building behind the house is a stone foundation.

A bedroom next to the butler's pantry in the back of the Bennehan house.

After we'd seen the lower part of the house, we all climbed into our cars and followed another docent who led us up the road about a mile and half to a place called Horton's Grove.

Horton's Grove is where many of the slaves that lived and worked the land on Stagville plantation lived. There were also some buildings that housed slaves near the Bennehan house, but they no longer exist. These were one room, one story structures. Horton's Grove consists of four large dwellings that are two story, four room houses. These were built in the 1850's under the order of Paul Cameron, after many of the enslaved community were getting sick due to the horrible living conditions.  The sick slaves could not work and were costing Paul Cameron $2 a day to have a doctor come out and help those that were ill.   

Here, our docent is teaching us about how life might have been for the slaves living and working this land in front of one of the houses.

The slaves harvested the three main crops grown on these lands; cotton, tobacco, and the Bennehan family's cash crop, corn.

Here, our docent is explaining that the things on the plantation were homemade and talking about how the slaves made the bricks that formed the chimneys.

Here you can see grooves where four fingers held a brick that had not completely hardened.

We went to the back of the building to enter it.

I took these shots while in the slave quarters. Thinking about life for the people who lived here is mind blowing. It's almost too big to wrap my head around.

Horton's Grove is located behind Horton House.

Richard Bennehan bought this house and the land around it from the Horton family in the late 1700's. The Horton House was built pre-1776.

The Great Barn at Stagville was built in 1860 to house mules and was possibly the largest agricultural building in all of North Carolina until the Civil War.

Once we'd seen Horton's Grove, we all climbed back into our vehicles and headed back to the visitor's center behind the Bennehan House.

You can't see it very well here...it was hard to take a picture of, but the kids and I noticed that all of the other cars, about five or six of them, were all minivans. Scott's comment was, "We're not a minivan family so much".

Our little Audi was the only sedan there. But, I've wandered completely off topic here...

Roses outside the visitor's center.

Once inside the visitor's center, our docent gathered the kids for a game of charades. One word was 'bed', and when it was guessed, he told us the story about an African American who invented the headboard and bed frame who bought himself out of slavery with his talent. Another word was 'doctor' which prompted a story about an African American who was the first person to perform open heart surgery. The lecture he gave was very interesting and the kids and I enjoyed it very much.

On the eve of the Civil War, the North Carolina plantation holdings of the Bennehan and Cameron families were among the largest of the South. Approximately 900 slaves worked the land which totaled almost 30,000 acres by 1860.

When the Civil War ended in 1865, many of Stagville's former slaves and their children remained on the land and continued to farm and work there. A log school at Stagville provided an elementary education for the children and the grandchildren of freedmen.

In 1950, the last Cameron heir to own Stagville sold the property to a timber and lumber merchant. Ligget and Myers Tobacco Company bought the land in 1954 and in 1976, they conveyed the present 71-acre holding to the state of North Carolina.

The Bennehan House was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973. Horton House was listed in 1978.

The kids and I are very glad we took this trip. I am constantly amazed at the vast and bottomless sea of historic information we have available to us. It is always exciting to dip our toes into the waters and learn something we didn't know before.