Marengo County is a county located in the west central portion of the U.S. state of Alabama. As of the 2020 census, the population was 19,323. The largest city is Demopolis, and the county seat is Linden. It is named in honor of the Battle of Marengo near Turin, Italy, where French leader Napoleon Bonaparte defeated the Austrians on June 14, 1800.
Demopolis is the largest city in Marengo County, in west-central Alabama. The population was 7,162 at the time of the 2020 United States census, down from 7,483 at the 2010 census.
Faunsdale is a town in Marengo County, Alabama, United States. At the 2020 census the population was 90, down from 98 in 2010. Faunsdale is home to a community of Holdeman Mennonites, the only such community outside of Greensboro, Alabama. The town has the only Holdeman Mennonite Church in the area, Cedarcrest Mennonite Church.
A plantation house is the main house of a plantation, often a substantial farmhouse, which often serves as a symbol for the plantation as a whole. Plantation houses in the Southern United States and in other areas are known as quite grand and expensive architectural works today, though most were more utilitarian, working farmhouses.
Mount Airy, near Warsaw in Richmond County, Virginia, is the first neo-Palladian villa mid-Georgian plantation house built in the United States. It was constructed in 1764 for Colonel John Tayloe II, perhaps the richest Virginia planter of his generation, upon the burning of his family's older house. John Ariss is the attributed architect and builder. Tayloe's daughter, Rebecca and her husband Francis Lightfoot Lee, one of the only pair of brothers to sign the Declaration of Independence are buried on the estate, as are many other Tayloes. Before the American Civil War, Mount Airy was a prominent racing horse stud farm, as well as the headquarters of about 10-12 separate but interdependent slave plantations along the Rappahannock River. Mount Airy is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as a National Historic Landmark as well as on the Virginia Landmarks Register and is still privately owned by Tayloe's descendants.
Waldwic, is a historic Carpenter Gothic plantation house and historic district located on the west side of Alabama Highway 69, south of Gallion, Alabama. Built as the main residence and headquarters of a forced-labor farm worked by enslaved people, Waldwic is included in the Plantation Houses of the Alabama Canebrake and Their Associated Outbuildings Multiple Property Submission. The main house and plantation outbuildings were added to the National Register of Historic Places on July 22, 1994.
Cedar Grove Plantation, also known as the Charles Walker House, is a Greek Revival plantation house located near Faunsdale, Marengo County, Alabama. It is notable in having been the residence of Nicola Marschall for a brief period while the Walker family owned the property. 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.
Cedar Crest, also known as Cedar Crest Farms, is a Greek Revival plantation house located near Faunsdale, Alabama. It was built for Kimbrough Cassels Dubose in 1850 by Albert Prince, a slave. Dubose, born in Darlington District, South Carolina was educated at the preparatory school of Prof. Stafford who later was of the faculty of the University of Alabama. His wife was Miss Elizabeth Boykin Witherspoon also of Darlington District, South Carolina, and they had seven sons and four daughters: John Witherspoon, James Henry, Jr., Eugene, Nicholas William, Francis Marion, Lemuel Benton and Edwin Dargan-the daughters Louisa, Rosalie, Augusta and Adele. The plantation was worked by the forced labor of as many as 130 enslaved persons. The house is one-and-a-half stories with side gables, but has been simplified. It originally had side wings, with adjoining porches across the front. These were removed in 1939, leaving the small central front portico. Another historic plantation house, Altwood, was moved from a nearby location to the Cedar Crest grounds in 1988. The house was added to the National Register of Historic Places on August 5, 1993, as a part of the Plantation Houses of the Alabama Canebrake and Their Associated Outbuildings Multiple Property Submission.
Altwood is a historic plantation house located near Faunsdale, Alabama. It was built in 1836 by Richard H. Adams and began as a log dogtrot house. It was then expanded until it came to superficially resemble a Tidewater-type cottage. Brought to the early Alabama frontier by settlers from the Tidewater and Piedmont regions of Virginia, this vernacular house-type is usually a story-and-a-half in height, displays strict symmetry, and is characterized by prominent end chimneys flanking a steeply pitched longitudinal gable roof that is often pierced by dormer windows.
Cuba Plantation is a historic plantation house located in Faunsdale, Alabama. It was built in 1850 by Andrew Pickens Calhoun as an overseer's house for this, his second slave plantation. He added about 420 acres to Cuba Plantation, purchased from William Henry Tayloe, son of John Tayloe III of The Octagon House-called Adventure. His primary plantation was the nearby Tulip Hill. Andrew Calhoun was the son of John C. Calhoun, seventh Vice President of the United States, who frequented the Octagon House while in Washington, D.C. as Secretary of War and later an independent outlier of the anti-Jacksonian Whig Party, later realigning himself with the Democrats' policies. It was sold in 1863 to Tristram Benjamin Bethea, who resided in Montgomery County, Alabama. Originally a one-story structure, the house was later enlarged on the ground floor and a second story added by the Bethea family. The house was added to the National Register of Historic Places on July 13, 1993, as a part of the Plantation Houses of the Alabama Canebrake and Their Associated Outbuildings Multiple Property Submission.
Roseland Plantation is a historic plantation complex site in Faunsdale, Alabama. The site is situated on a low hill at the end of a long driveway on the overgrown estate. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on January 20, 1994, as a part of the Plantation Houses of the Alabama Canebrake and Their Associated Outbuildings Multiple Property Submission.
The Canebrake is a historical region of west-central Alabama in the United States, which was once dominated by thickets of Arundinaria, a type of bamboo, or cane, native to North America. It was centered on the junction of the Tombigbee and Black Warrior rivers, near Demopolis, and extended eastward to include large parts of Hale, Marengo, and Perry counties. Portions of Greene and Sumter were also often included.
Hawthorne, also known as the Browder Place, is a historic Italianate plantation house and historic district in Prairieville, Alabama, USA. This area of Hale County was included in Marengo County before the creation of Hale in 1867. Hawthorne is included in the Plantation Houses of the Alabama Canebrake and Their Associated Outbuildings Multiple Property Submission. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on July 7, 1994, due to its architectural significance.
Benjamin "Ogle" Tayloe was an American businessman, bon vivant, diplomat, scion of colonial tidewater gentry, and influential political activist in Washington, D.C. during the first half of the 19th century. Although he never held elective office, he was a prominent Whig and influential in presidential electoral politics in the 1840s and 1850s. His home, the Tayloe House, became a salon for politically powerful people in the federal government and socially influential individuals in the United States and abroad. Tayloe was also a party in the important 1869 contract law case, Willard v. Tayloe, 75 U.S. 557.
Plantation complexes were common on agricultural plantations in the Southern United States from the 17th into the 20th century. The complex included everything from the main residence down to the pens for livestock. Until the abolition of slavery, such plantations were generally self-sufficient settlements that relied on the forced labor of enslaved people.
William Henry Tayloe was an American plantation owner, horse breeder, businessman and land speculator during the first half of the 19th century. He inherited a vast estate from his father and expanded his holdings, pioneering new territory in the Canebrake region of Alabama.
Henry Augustine Tayloe of Oakley Plantation, Essex County, Virginia, later Gallion, Canebrake, Alabama, was an American planter, slaveholder, horse breeder and racer, and land speculator in the 19th century.
Edward "Thornton" Tayloe was an American Diplomat, planter and scion of colonial tidewater gentry. He was named after his godfather, Edward Thornton a friend and fellow student of his father's at Eton College and His Majesty's ambassador to Washington D.C. He owned estates in King George County, Virginia and the Canebrake. He was the private secretary to Joel Roberts Poinsett during his time as the first minister to Mexico. He married his first cousin, Mary Ogle, at Belair Mansion Prince George's Co., Maryland during Christmas in 1830.
Winney Grimshaw was an enslaved African-American woman at Mount Airy Plantation in Richmond County, Virginia. The Grimshaws are one of the most well-documented enslaved families who lived at Mount Airy. Though the Grimshaws were a well-regarded slave family at Mount Airy, it wasn't enough to keep their master from dissolving her family ties.
Freetown is a former African American community near Gallion, in Hale County, Alabama, United States, in the so-called Canebrake region. Land and buildings formerly owned by a local slave-owning planter were left to both free and enslaved African Americans who had worked for him and lived with him, and the community lasted until the 1920s. A church built by that community in 1929 burned down in 2022.
