Faunsdale Plantation
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Faunsdale Plantation | |
 The main house at Faunsdale Plantation in 2008 | |
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| Location | near Faunsdale, Alabama |
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| Coordinates | 32°26′7.26″N 87°36′9.28″W / 32.4353500°N 87.6025778°WCoordinates: 32°26′7.26″N 87°36′9.28″W / 32.4353500°N 87.6025778°W |
| Area | 13 acres (5.3 ha) |
| Built | 1844[1] |
| Architectural style | Greek Revival, Carpenter Gothic |
| MPS | Plantation Houses of the Alabama Canebrake and Their Associated Outbuildings MPS |
| NRHP Reference # | 93000602[2] |
| Added to NRHP | 13 July 1993[2] |
Faunsdale Plantation is a historic plantation near Faunsdale, Alabama, United States. The slave quarters on the property are among the most significant examples of slave housing in Marengo County and are among the last remaining examples in the state of Alabama.[1][3] The house was added to the National Register of Historic Places on 13 July 1993 as a part of the Plantation Houses of the Alabama Canebrake and Their Associated Outbuildings Multiple Property Submission.[2]
History
The plantation was established in the 1820's by Mssrs. Pearson and Henry Augustine Tayloe, owner of New Hope Plantation, Oakland or "Woodville" it was then and co-owner of Walnut Grove in the Canebrake.[4] Henry was the local land agent for his brothers: Benjamin Ogle Tayloe of Washington DC and owner of Windsor, Sidson and Meadow Hill, in the Canebrake(father to Pvt Edward T Tayloe CSA of Windsor Plantation, Canebrake); William Henry Tayloe of Mount Airy and owner of Adventure Plantation in the Canebrake-later part of Cuba Plantation; Edward Thornton Tayloe of Powhatan Rural Historic District and owner of Oak Grove in the Canebrake; and George Plater Tayloe of "Buena Vista" (father of Maj. John William Tayloe, architect of nearby Hawthorne and Col. George E Tayloe-both of the Canebrake) owner of Elmwood and co-owner Walnut Grove in the Canebrake. These five brothers were sons of John Tayloe III of the Octagon House in Washington DC and grandson's of John Tayloe II who built the grand colonial estate Mount Airy in Richmond Co Virginia, and are "considered the most important pioneer cotton planters of the Canebrake, as to the extent of their enterprise there."[5]
Nine Hundred and Sixty acres were then purchased by Dr. Thomas Alexander Harrison from Charles City County, Virginia in 1843.[6] Named after Faunus, the ancient Roman deity of the forest, plains, and fields. Harrison is known to have brought a large number of slaves with him from Virginia, he is listed in the 1850 Federal Census of Marengo County as having $18,300 in property.[1] Dr. Harrison was killed in a buggy accident on 5 Sept 1858 and the nearby town of Faunsdale was named after his plantation in his honor.[1]
Faunsdale Plantation is one of the few large plantations in Alabama where detailed slave records were kept and managed to survive as part of the historical record. These records indicate that the Harrison family held roughly 99 slaves in 1846. This number had increased to 161 by 1857.[7] A list from 1 January 1864 also indicates that Harrison's widow, Louisa, owned 186 slaves, at least 35 families.[7] Some of the slave surnames noted at that time were Barron, Brown, Francis, Harison, Iredell, Mutton, Nathan, Newbern, Paine, Parsons, Richmond, Washington, and Wills. Fourteen of these enslaved people had died by the end of 1864 from causes ranging from typhoid fever to measles.[7]
St. Michael’s Church
In 1844 Harrison and his wife, Louisa, gave 1-acre (4,000 m2) of their plantation for the building of a log church across from their plantation house. In 1846, Alabama's first Episcopal bishop, Nicholas Hamner Cobbs, visited Faunsdale Plantation and noted that Louisa Harrison gave regular instruction to her slaves by reading the services of the church and teaching the catechism to their children.[8] In 1852 the church was renamed St. Michael’s Episcopal Church and by 1855 a Gothic Revival style church building had been constructed.[6]
A churchyard for burials was established in 1858 with Dr. Harrison being the first interment. Slaves, and later freedmen, from the plantation began to be buried there in 1860. The church building was moved to the town of Faunsdale in 1888 and was later destroyed by a tornado in 1932, though the churchyard remained an active burial ground.[6]
Several years after the death of Thomas Harrison, Louisa remarried to Rev. William A. Stickney, the Episcopal minister for St. Michael's, in 1864.[3][8] Stickney had been one of the first ministers ordained by Bishop Cobbs and was appointed by Bishop Richard Wilmer as a "Missionary to the Negroes" in 1863. Louisa joined him as an unofficial fellow minister among the African Americans of the Black Belt.[8]
Description
The plantation house at Faunsdale Plantation is a simple Greek Revival style two-story wood frame structure with a gabled roof, flanked on each side with one-story gabled wings. The nearby slave cabins date from 1860[3] and are also wood frame structures with high-pitched gables and scalloped barge boards that show a Carpenter Gothic influence.[1]
Gallery
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A portion of the front elevation of the Greek Revival main house in 2008
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Slave quarters in 2008
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Detail of one of the slave quarters, built in the Carpenter Gothic style
References
- 1 2 3 4 5 Marengo County Heritage Book Committee: The heritage of Marengo County, Alabama, pages 17-18. Clanton, Alabama: Heritage Publishing Consultants, 2000. ISBN 1-891647-58-X
- 1 2 3 Staff (2010-07-09). "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service.
- 1 2 3 Cooper, Chip, Harry J. Knopke, and Robert S. Gamble. Silent in the Land, page 112. Tuscaloosa, Alabama: CKM Press, 1993. ISBN 0-9636713-0-8.
- ↑ "Chronicles of the Canebrake", by John Witherspoon Dubose, Alabama Quarterly, Winter 1947
- ↑ JW Dubose, "Chronicles of the Canebrake," Alabama Quaterly, Winter 1947 p.492
- 1 2 3 "ADAH: Marengo Historical Markers". "Alabama Department of Archives and History". Archived from the original on 2007-08-21. Retrieved 2008-01-24.
- 1 2 3 "Faunsdale Plantation". "Sankofa's Slavery Data Collection". Retrieved 2008-02-14.
- 1 2 3 "An excerpt from Bishops, Bourbons, and Big Mules". "J. Barry Vaughn". Retrieved 2008-01-26.
External links
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