Life on the Plantation at Stagville
by Kimberly Puryear *
®lose your eyes. What
do you picture when
you hear the word
plantation ? Staff
members at Historic
Stagville State Historic Site in
Durham often ask visitors this
question. Staff members hear
many different responses that
include words such as land, farm,
crops, and enslaved people. A very
large farm of at least 500 acres
and at least 20 enslaved African
American workers often was
called a plantation. However, a
simple definition for a planta¬
tion proves hard to find. An
antebellum plantation ran more
like a small town. It reflected
an economic and social system
with many complex relationships
between people, the land, and the
environment.
Cl
'■<
О
Stagville State Historic Site were built in the 1850s. During the antebellum era. each
room housed a family of enslaved laborers. Image courtesy of Marcia Loudon
Stagville — one of the largest antebellum planta¬
tions in North Carolina — included 30,000 acres
of land and almost 900 enslaved individuals at
its height just before the Civil War. It stretched
47 square miles, touching the modern-day
Piedmont counties of Orange, Durham, Wake,
and Granville. Along with thousands of acres of
crops, the plantation featured mills, shops, and
other common operations of the era.
The story of Stagville actually began before the
American Revolution. Richard Bennehan — a
merchant from northern Virginia — moved to
the area that is now Durham in 1768 to help
manage a local store that also offered postal and
banking services. His wife, Mary Amis, brought
a small fortune in land and 20 enslaved people
to their 1776 marriage. This partnership ben¬
efited Bennehan, because it boosted him from
the merchant class to the planter class. Being in
this top level of antebellum society meant more
money, additional opportunities, and greater
respect. Bennehan increased his holdings by
buying land and enslaved workers from small
yeoman farmers. Most North Carolinians at the
time could be called yeoman farmers — working
the land themselves
and growing little
more than what their
families needed to
survive. These farmers
sometimes owned a
few enslaved people.
Wealthy planters like
Bennehan made up
less than 10 percent of
the Piedmont's popu¬
lation in the late 1700s.
Bennehan's planta¬
tion really grew in
1787, when he bought
66 acres of land from
Judith Stagg. He built
the first part of what
today is called the
Bennehan House on
a hill; another section
was added just over
10 years later. Features
of the house include
Seek to make your homes lovely,
especially in the eyes of your
children; induce them to aid you
in ornamenting it. Children em¬
ployed and happy at home, are the best
guarantee for virtue and devotion to par¬
ents. No cottage so humble that it may
not be made sweet by neatness; none
so lowly that it may not be embellished
by the hand of industry. ... No man is
so poor but that he can contribute something to make
our world more beautiful. He can leave behind him
monuments of his good sense and of his refined taste,
if not of his opulence. He who plants a tree, sets an
orchard, or builds a stone barn may be longer and bet¬
ter remembered than he who dies a millionaire.The
rose or the jessamine at the door of a homestead, or
the lily of the valley at the grave of a friend, is quite as
certain an indication of a pure heart and gentle feeling,
as gilded walls and silver plate, or chiseled marble.
Surround your dwellings by fruitful and well kept
gardens. ... No man is better entitled to all the good
fruits of the earth, than he who tills it . . . Money is as
much the sinew of Agricultural Improvement, as it is of
war. . . . Capital nowhere makes a more sure return than
when judiciously applied to agricultural improvement"
— Paul Cameron, in An Address Before the 0
ганце
County Society for the Promotion of Agriculture, the
Mechanic Arts, and Manufactures. October 1854.
‘ Kimberly Pmyear is the assistant site manager at Historic Stagville State Historic Site. THIH Fall ’010
She received her master's degree in museum studies from North Carolina Stale University 5
and began her studies of antebellum plantation life during three years working at Mordecai
Historic Park in downtown Raleigh
