Plantations represent a very particular, traditional time in the south. Ironically they design a sense of both pride and shame for the prestigious southern families that owned and ran them. This is a focus on ruins of plantations that have been lost through time but just enough remains to give us a sense of wonder. Such plantations as the Rosewell, Millwood, Forks of Cypress, Bulow, Windsor.. Most of what remains are just columns and walls but it’s the story of what those columns used to hold up and what those walls held in that will be in the spotlight. The Bulow Plantation in Florida was a sugar plantation built in the early 1800s and burnt down in 1836. All that remains are the limestone foundation and the coquina ruins of the mill. The Millwood Plantation is situated on the Savannah River on the border of South Carolina and Georgia. The plantation was used from 1834 to the mid 1920’s and its main cash crop was cotton. The Windsor may be the most fascinating of the three plantations. Its original appearance was unknown until a drawing of the plantation in its “heyday” was found. It was built between 1859 and 1861. It is said to be the largest home built at the time sitting on 2,600 acres. It was so remarkable that Mark Twain sat on the observatory roof to think and even mentioned the home in Life on The Mississippi. Unfortunately it burnt down in 1890. The Old Sheldon Church was Prince William’s Parish church. It may have been the first conscious effort in America to emulate a Greek temple. It was built between 1745 and 1753. Only a few walls along with four of the original seven portico columns remain. It too burnt down.
The Rosewell Plantation in Gloucester County, Virginia was once the largest and most exceptional mansion ...
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...oth, and William M.S. Rasmussen. Lost Virginia: Vanished Architecture of the Old Dominion. Charlottesville, Virginia: Howell Press, 2001.
Patton, Heather -, Correspondent. 2008. "Bulow ruins offer slice of history." Daytona Beach News-Journal (FL), September 10. NewsBank, EBSCOhost (accessed February 13, 2014).
Matrana, Marc R.. Lost Plantations of the South. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2009. Print.
Norma McLean, Staff Writer. 1993. "JUST A REMINDER COLUMNS, HISTORY ALL THAT REMAIN OF HAMPTON PLANTATION." State, The (Columbia, SC), March 25. 3. NewsBank - Archives, EBSCOhost (accessed February 13, 2014).
STARBUCK, DR. n.d. "THE MATERIAL BASIS OF THE POSTBELLUM TENANT PLANTATION - HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY IN THE SOUTH-CAROLINA PIEDMONT - ORSER,CE." Public Historian 12, no. 1: 94-96. Arts & Humanities Citation Index, EBSCOhost (accessed February 13, 2014).
Breen, T. H., and Stephen Innes. Myne Owne Ground: Race and Freedom on Virginia 's Eastern Shore, 1640-1676. 25th anniversary ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. 142 pages (kindle edition).
The Industrial Revolution in America began to develop in the mid-eighteen hundreds after the Civil War. Prior to this industrial growth the work force was mainly based in agriculture, especially in the South (“Industrial Revolution”). The advancement in machinery and manufacturing on a large scale changed the structure of the work force. Families began to leave the farm and relocate to larger settings to work in the ever-growing industries. One area that saw a major change in the work force was textile manufacturing. Towns in the early nineteen hundreds were established around mills, and workers were subjected to strenuous working conditions. It would take decades before these issues were addressed. Until then, people worked and struggled for a life for themselves and their families. While conditions were harsh in the textile industry, it was the sense of community that sustained life in the mill villages.
Writing around the same time period as Phillips, though from the obverse vantage, was Richard Wright. Wright’s essay, “The Inheritors of Slavery,” was not presented at the American Historical Society’s annual meeting. His piece is not festooned with foot-notes or carefully sourced. It was written only about a decade after Phillips’s, and meant to be published as a complement to a series of Farm Credit Administration photographs of black Americans. Wright was not an academic writing for an audience of his peers; he was a novelist acceding to a request from a publisher. His essay is naturally of a more literary bent than Phillips’s, and, because he was a black man writing ...
Virtual Jamestown. "Indenture Contract of Richard Lowther." Personal Narratives from the Virtual Jamestown Project, 1575-1705. http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/jamestown-browse?id=J1046
Between 1800 and 1860 slavery in the American South had become a ‘peculiar institution’ during these times. Although it may have seemed that the worst was over when it came to slavery, it had just begun. The time gap within 1800 and 1860 had slavery at an all time high from what it looks like. As soon as the cotton production had become a long staple trade source it gave more reason for slavery to exist. Varieties of slavery were instituted as well, especially once international slave trading was banned in America after 1808, they had to think of a way to keep it going – which they did. Nonetheless, slavery in the American South had never declined; it may have just come to a halt for a long while, but during this time between 1800 and 1860, it shows it could have been at an all time high.
Cobb, James C. Away Down South: A History of Southern Identity. Oxford University Press. 2005. Print.
Curtin, Philip D: The rise and fall of the plantation complex:essays in Atlantic history (Cambridge, 1990).
For Upton, “architecture is an art of social story telling, a means for shaping American society and culture...” (11), and it is up to the historian to choose which of many possible stories to tell. In his approach, he refused a chronological order and relied instead on five thematic structures: community, nature, technology, money and art. In the very first chapter, Upton introduces the symbol of the house in the United States; it represents the American dream and the concept of social mobility. He analyzes one of the most famous houses: Monticello, designed by Thomas Jefferson. In describing how this house served as a home for not only family members and numerous visitors, but for slaves as well, Upton proposes that Jefferson “organized Monticello to convey his sense of himself as the patriarch at the centre of his universe” (28).
Belle Meade Plantation began as a successful thoroughbred horse farms in the country in 1807. The plantation is located in Nashville ,Tennessee and even after the Civil War continued to prosper in the thoroughbred horse breeding business. Today, the plantation, due to its historical significance, is a non-profit museum that focuses on the experience of being in the nineteenth century. Faced with financial concerns, the Kelleys, Alton and Sheree had to come up with a business plan in order to secure funding in the long term to keep the museum running. Donations were increasingly lower each year and the couple had to find answers to their financial dilemma. Their unique approach was to incorporate social entrepreneurship in the shape of a nonprofit winery. Although the non profit winery is doing well, the plantation will have its challenges. If Belle Meade Plantation can continue it success, it can be an example to other nonprofit entities in how to use social entrepreneurship for raising funds in a ever-changing economic climate.
(Lewis, 2006) (cite in text) Tar Heel Junior Historian 45, no. 2 (Spring 2006) copyright North Carolina Museum of History.
Tate, Thad & Ammerman, David; The Chesapeake in the Seventeenth Century; U.N.C. Press, Chapel Hill, North Carolina; 1979.
In the late 1700’s the slave population in the United States had decreased. Before the invention of the cotton gin the South, which could only make money by farming, was loosing money because it didn’t have a major crop to export to England and the North besides tobacco and rice. However, these crops could be grown elsewhere. Cotton was the key because it couldn’t be grown in large amounts in other places, but only one type of cotton that could be cleaned easily. This was long-staple cotton. Another problem arose; long-staple cotton only could be grown along the coast. There was another strain of cotton that until then could not be cleaned easily so it wasn’t worth growing. The cotton gin was the solution to this problem. With the invention of the cotton gin short stemmed cotton could be cleaned easily making cotton a valued export and it could be grown anywhere in the south. The era of the “Cotton Kingdom” began with this invention leading into an explosion in the necessity of slaves.
...ial Plantations and Economy in Florida ed. Jane Landers (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000). 136-149.
Northup, Solomon, Sue L. Eakin, and Joseph Logsdon. Twelve years a slave. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1968. Print.
The house at Tamarack was a rough-hewn structure, built by my great-grandfather, of logs which he had cleared from the spot on which it stood. It could have been considered a log cabin if not for its two-story desi...