Southern plantations are an endless source of fascination. That’s no surprise since these palatial homes are rich in history, representing a pivotal time in U.S. history that truly is “gone with the wind.” With the Civil War literally exploding all around, many of these homes were occupied either by Confederate or Union troops. Nowhere else in the south were plantations so affected by the nation’s bloodiest war than in Virginia. At times, families fled, leaving behind slaves to manage the property. There are still more than 60 plantations in Virginia today, most of them open to the public. Some have been restored, others undergoing that process. If only the walls could talk, the stories we might hear! That’s what we hope to bring into this book on The Plantations of Virginia. We’ll take the tours and talk to the guides and dig even further if there is more to discover. We hope that travelers will be enlightened before they travel to Virginia, their visits will thus be enriched, and that residents will equally love exploring this deep history of Virginia. Accompanying the text will be photographs, taken by one of the authors, showing, in all their splendor, the exteriors of these plantations, as well as areas of interest inside the buildings.

Richard Dunn reconstructs the lives of three generations of slaves on a sugar estate in Jamaica and a plantation in Virginia, to understand the starkly different forms slavery took. Deadly work regimens and rampant disease among Jamaican slaves contrast with population expansion in Virginia leading to the selling of slaves and breakup of families.

Using newspapers, periodicals, organization records, and numerous letters from Virginia planation families, Morsman captures how these frustrated elites made sense of embarrassing postwar changes, in the private but also in the public spheres they inhabited. Morsman suggests that the planters' adaptations may have been carried away from the crumbling plantations by their adult children into the urban house-holds of the New South. --Book Jacket.

The treasures of American heritage showcased in this volume include such masterpieces as Colonial Williamsburg's Governor's Palace, George Washington's Mt. Vernon, Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, Robert E. Lee's Arlington House, and Stratford Hall Plantation--all presented in new photography commissioned for this book. (Architecture)

Three centuries ago, German, Dutch, and English farmersas well as a few aristocratic colonistssettled an area of Virginia known as the Piedmont. The 1900s saw another influx of settlers; this time horse enthusiasts from the North. In the process, a small Southern town called Middleburg in Northern Virginia became known as the Heart of the Virginia Hunt Country. This second volume features twenty-eight historic properties around the Hunt Country, along with the families that built and preserved these veterans of the past. The book is lavishly illustrated with nearly 300 photographs, and includes a study on the origins of Piedmont family names.

They lived with professors and waited on former presidents. They were masons and nurses, school teachers and field hands, 246 people owned by a man who struggled with the institution of slavery. Yet, almost no one knows their names. When a white woman begins to study the history of the plantations these people built, the plantations where she was raised, she discovers that the silence around these people's lives speaks of a silence in her country's history . . . and in her own life. A creative nonfiction, history book about American slavery and its legacy in the United States. "In the late afternoons sometimes, I walk up and talk to the folks who are buried in the undulating earth, most of their graves are unmarked by any stone except, perhaps, two pieces of slate stuck vertically in the ground, one at head and one at foot, and long worn down or washed clean of names. But three stones bear words, gifts cut into rock - Ben Creasy, the carpenter, Jesse Nicholas, the stonemason, and Primus, the foreman. Ben and Jesse's stones are clear - with their names and dates marked deeply in the sandstone. I can find them in the records - know for sure who they are. Primus's stone is harder to know. The tradition here on the farm is that Primus the foreman at Upper Bremo is buried here, but I cannot be sure. The stone reads "Prams - 12," and I'm not sure that it refers to this Primus. It may be his grandson, also Primus, or some person I don't know yet. It's the 12 that throws me - the Primus I know lived to be an old man, long past 1812 - his death date is noted - 1849. That date seems right according to the records, but then, the records are so sparse; it's hard to know. I don't know how to solidify - to give storied flesh - to these rough marks hewn deep into stone."

Description: This first (and only) part outlines the history of Virginia and Maryland, providing a narrative of key events during early colonisation. Included are descriptions of cultivation, taxation and legislation.