Berkeley Plantation, one of the first plantations in America, comprises about 1,000 acres (400 ha) on the banks of the James River on State Route 5 in Charles City County, Virginia. Berkeley Plantation was originally called Berkeley Hundred, named after the Berkeley Company of England. In 1726, it became the ancestral home of the Harrison family of Virginia, after Benjamin Harrison IV located there and built one of the first three-story brick mansions in Virginia. It is the home to two presidents of the United States: William Henry Harrison, and his grandson Benjamin Harrison. It is now a museum property, open to the public.
Shirley Plantation is an estate on the north bank of the James River in Charles City County, Virginia. It is located on scenic byway State Route 5, between Richmond and Williamsburg. It is the oldest active plantation in Virginia and the oldest family-owned business in North America, dating back to 1614, with operations starting in 1648. It used about 70 to 90 African slaves at a time for plowing the fields, cleaning, childcare, and cooking. It was added to the National Register in 1969 and declared a National Historic Landmark in 1970. After the acquisition, rebranding, and merger of Tuttle Farm in Dover, New Hampshire, Shirley Plantation received the title of the oldest business continuously operating in the United States.
James Madison's Montpelier, located in Orange County, Virginia, was the plantation house of the Madison family, including Founding Father and fourth president of the United States James Madison and his wife, Dolley. The 2,650-acre (1,070 ha) property is open seven days a week with the mission of engaging the public with the enduring legacy of Madison's most powerful idea: government by the people.
The Isaac Royall House and Slave Quarters is a historic house located in Medford, Massachusetts, near Tufts University. The historic estate was founded by Bay Colony native Isaac Royall and is recognized as giving a face and life to the history and existence of slave quarters and slavery in Massachusetts. It is a National Historic Landmark, operated as a non-profit museum, and open for public visits between June 1 and the last weekend in October.
The Judah P. Benjamin Confederate Memorial at Gamble Plantation Historic State Park, also known as the Gamble Mansion or Gamble Plantation, is a Florida State Park, located in Ellenton, Florida, on 37th Avenue East and US 301. It is home to the Florida Division United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC).
The Maggie L. Walker National Historic Site is a United States National Historic Landmark and a National Historic Site located at 110½ E. Leigh Street on "Quality Row" in the Jackson Ward neighborhood of Richmond, Virginia. The site was designated a U.S. National Historic Landmark in 1975. The National Historic Site was established in 1978 to tell the story of the life and work of Maggie L. Walker (1867-1934), the first woman to serve as president of a bank in the United States. It was built by George W. Boyd, father of physician, Sarah Garland Boyd Jones. The historic site protects the restored and originally furnished home of Walker. Tours of the home are offered by National Park Service rangers.
Shockoe Bottom historically known as Shockoe Valley, is an area in Richmond, Virginia, just east of downtown, along the James River. Located between Shockoe Hill and Church Hill, Shockoe Bottom contains much of the land included in Colonel William Mayo's 1737 plan of Richmond, making it one of the city's oldest neighborhoods.
The Old Slave Mart is a building located at 6 Chalmers Street in Charleston, South Carolina that once housed an antebellum-period slave-auction gallery. Constructed in 1859, the building is believed to be the last extant slave auction facility in South Carolina. In 1975, the Old Slave Mart was added to the National Register of Historic Places for its role in Charleston's African American history. Today, the building houses the Old Slave Mart Museum.
The Franklin and Armfield Office, which houses the Freedom House Museum, is a historic commercial building in Alexandria, Virginia. Built c. 1810–1820, it was first used as a private residence before being converted to the offices of the largest slave trading firm in the United States, started in 1828 by Isaac Franklin and John Armfield. Another source, using ship manifests in the National Archives, gives the number as "at least 5,000".
Berry Hill Plantation, also known simply as Berry Hill, is a historic plantation located on the west side of South Boston in Halifax County, Virginia, United States. The main house, transformed c. 1839 into one of Virginia's finest examples of Greek Revival architecture, was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1969. The surviving portion of the plantation, which was once one of the largest in the state, is now a conference and event center.
Beaver Creek Plantation, under the ownership of George Hairston, was a large slave-holding tobacco plantation and the center of an empire in tobacco-growing and slave-trading built by the Hairston family, Scottish emigrants to Pennsylvania in the early 18th century. Located just outside today's Martinsville, Virginia, the plantation thrived in tobacco production and textile manufacturing, as well as producing household goods and raising livestock. At one point the enslaved blacks of Beaver Creek were tending a thousand yam plants; in one day they made 660 candles.
Faunsdale Plantation is a historic slave plantation near the town of Faunsdale, Alabama, United States. This plantation is in the Black Belt, a section of the state developed for cotton plantations. Until the U.S. Civil War, planters held as many as 186 enslaved African Americans as laborers to raise cotton as a commodity crop.
Tuckahoe, also known as Tuckahoe Plantation, or Historic Tuckahoe is located in Tuckahoe, Virginia on Route 650 near Manakin Sabot, Virginia, overlapping both Goochland and Henrico counties, six miles from the town of the same name. Built in the first half of the 18th century, it is a well-preserved example of a colonial plantation house and is particularly distinctive as a colonial prodigy house. Thomas Jefferson is also recorded as having spent some of his childhood here. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1969.
The Reynolds Homestead, also known as Rock Spring Plantation, is a slave plantation turned historical site on Homestead Lane in Critz, Virginia. First developed in 1814 by slaveowner Abram Reynolds, it was the primary home of R. J. Reynolds (1850-1918), founder of the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, and the first major marketer of the cigarette. Upon liberation of the plantation in 1863, 88 people were freed from captivity and enslavement. It was later designated a National Historic Landmark in 1977. The homestead is currently an outreach facility of Virginia Tech, serving as a regional cultural center. The house is open for tours.
Lumpkin's Jail, also known as "the Devil's half acre", was a slave breeding farm, as well as a holding facility, or slave jail, located in Richmond, Virginia, just three blocks from the state capitol building. More than five dozen firms traded in enslaved human beings within blocks of Richmond's Wall Street between 14th and 18th Streets between the 1830s and the end of the American Civil War. Its final and most notorious owner, Robert Lumpkin, bought and sold slaves throughout the South for well over twenty years, and Lumpkin's Jail became Richmond's largest slave-holding facility.
Rockland is the home of Virginia's Rust family, near Leesburg, Virginia. The property housed slaves to work their farm. The property was acquired by General George Rust from the heirs of Colonel Burgess Ball in 1817. General Rust built the present brick residence about 1822, incorporating an older frame house as a rear service wing.
Slavery in Virginia began with the capture and enslavement of Native Americans during the early days of the English Colony of Virginia and through the late eighteenth century. They primarily worked in tobacco fields. Africans were first brought to colonial Virginia in 1619, when 20 Africans from present-day Angola arrived in Virginia aboard the ship The White Lion.
Pompey Callaway House is a historic home located near Elliston, Montgomery County, Virginia, United States. The house was built about 1910, and is a two-story, three bay brick dwelling with a single pile central passage plan. Its builder, Pompey Callaway, was an ex-slave from Franklin County. It is one of the most substantial houses built for an African-American owner in Montgomery County before 1920.
Lynch's slave pen was a 19th-century slave pen, or slave jail, in the city of Saint Louis, Missouri, United States, that held enslaved men, women, and children while they waited to be sold. Bernard M. Lynch, a prominent Saint Louis slave trader, owned the slave pen. Lynch operated the slave pen at this location from 1859 until the U.S. Army confiscated it in 1861.
Slave markets and slave jails in the United States were places used for the slave trade in the United States from the founding in 1776 until the total abolition of slavery in 1865. Slave pens, also known as slave jails, were used to temporarily hold enslaved people until they were sold, or to hold fugitive slaves, and sometimes even to "board" slaves while traveling. Slave markets were any place where sellers and buyers gathered to make deals. Some of these buildings had dedicated slave jails, others were negro marts to showcase the slaves offered for sale, and still others were general auction or market houses where a wide variety of business was conducted, of which "negro trading" was just one part.
