Stafford Plantation

Last updated

Stafford Plantation Historic District
Stafford Plantation.jpg
Stafford mansion
Nearest city St. Marys, Georgia
Built1901
MPS Cumberland Island National Seashore MRA
NRHP reference No. 84000265
Added to NRHPNovember 23, 1984 [1]
Stafford Plantation setting. Closer view looking from the southeast - Stafford Plantation, Playhouse, Saint Marys, Camden County, GA HABS GA-2360-A-2.tif
Stafford Plantation setting.

The Stafford Plantation was a plantation on Cumberland Island in Camden County, on the southeastern coast of Georgia. It was established in the early 19th century by Robert Stafford.

Contents

19th century

Stafford acquired portions of lands belonging to General Nathanael Greene through auction, and continued to assemble former Greene family lands so that by 1830 Stafford controlled 1,360 acres (550 ha) with 148 slaves. In 1843 Stafford acquired 4,200 acres (1,700 ha) from P.M. Nightingale, a Greene descendant who retained Dungeness. The primary crop was Sea Island cotton. [2]

Robert Stafford died in 1877. His heirs sold the property to Thomas M. Carnegie and his wife Lucy, who had also acquired Dungeness. [2] All that remains of Stafford's house is a ruin known as "the Chimneys," a series of 24 hearth-and-chimney structures representing Stafford's slaves' housing, about one kilometer east of the main house. [3]

20th century

The Stafford Mansion was built by Lucy Carnegie in 1901, for one of her children. It was one of a series of Carnegie houses on the island, including Plum Orchard, Greyfield, and the main Carnegie residence at Dungeness. [4] [5]

Present day

The property is privately held under a life estate by a Carnegie descendant within Cumberland Island National Seashore. [6]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Camden County, Georgia</span> County in Georgia, United States

Camden County is a county located in the southeastern corner of the U.S. state of Georgia. According to the 2020 Census, its population was 54,768. Its county seat is Woodbine, and the largest city is St. Marys. It is one of the original counties of Georgia, created February 5, 1777. It is the 11th-largest county in the state of Georgia by area, and the 41st-largest by population.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Plum Orchard</span> United States historic place

Plum Orchard is an estate located in the middle of the western shore of Cumberland Island, Georgia, USA. The estate and surrounding area are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cumberland Island</span> Island in the U.S. state of Georgia

Cumberland Island, in the southeastern United States, is the largest of the Sea Islands of Georgia. The long-staple Sea Island cotton was first grown here by a local family, the Millers, who helped Eli Whitney develop the cotton gin. With its unusual range of wildlife, the island has been declared a National Seashore. Little Cumberland Island is connected to the main island by a marsh.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cumberland Island National Seashore</span>

Cumberland Island National Seashore preserves most of Cumberland Island in Camden County, Georgia, the largest of Georgia's Golden Isles. The seashore features beaches and dunes, marshes, and freshwater lakes. The national seashore also preserves and interprets many historic sites and structures.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Techwood Homes</span> United States historic place

Techwood Homes was an early public housing project in the Atlanta, Georgia in the United States, opened just before the First Houses. The whites-only Techwood Homes replaced an integrated settlement of low-income people known as Tanyard Bottom or Tech Flats. It was completed on August 15, 1936, but was dedicated on November 29 of the previous year by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The new whites-only apartments included bathtubs and electric ranges in each unit, 189 of which had garages. Central laundry facilities, a kindergarten and a library were also provided. Techwood Homes was demolished in advance of the 1996 Olympics and is now Centennial Place Apartments.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park</span> American Civil War battlefields in Virginia

Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park is a unit of the National Park Service in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and elsewhere in Spotsylvania County, commemorating four major battles in the American Civil War: Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, The Wilderness, and Spotsylvania.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bride's Hill</span> Historic house in Alabama, United States

Bride's Hill, known also as Sunnybrook, is a historic house near Wheeler, Alabama. It is significant as an example of a Tidewater-type cottage built on a large slave plantation. It was added to the Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage on April 16, 1985, and to the National Register of Historic Places on July 9, 1986.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas Stone National Historic Site</span> National Historic Site of the United States

The Thomas Stone National Historic Site, also known as Haberdeventure or the Thomas Stone House, is a United States National Historic Site located about 25 miles (40 km) south of Washington D.C. in Charles County, Maryland. The site was established to protect the home and property of Founding Father Thomas Stone, one of the 56 signers of the United States Declaration of Independence. His home and estate were owned by the Stone family until 1936.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kingsley Plantation</span> United States historic place

Kingsley Plantation is the site of a former estate on Fort George Island, in Duval County, Florida, that was named for its developer and most famous owner, Zephaniah Kingsley, who spent 25 years there. It is located at the northern tip of Fort George Island at Fort George Inlet, and is part of the Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve managed by the U.S. National Park Service. Kingsley's house is the oldest plantation house still standing in Florida, and the solidly-built village of slave cabins is one of the best preserved in the United States. It is also "the oldest surviving antebellum Spanish Colonial plantation in the United States."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mansfield Plantation</span> Historic house in South Carolina, United States

Mansfield Plantation is a well-preserved antebellum rice plantation, established in 1718 on the banks of the Black River in historic Georgetown County, South Carolina.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kingscote (mansion)</span> Historic house in Rhode Island, United States

Kingscote is a Gothic Revival mansion and house museum at Bowery Street and Bellevue Avenue in Newport, Rhode Island, designed by Richard Upjohn and built in 1839. It was one of the first summer "cottages" constructed in Newport, and is now a National Historic Landmark. It was remodeled and extended by George Champlin Mason and later by Stanford White. It was owned by the King family from 1864 until 1972, when it was given to the Preservation Society of Newport County.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brice House (Annapolis, Maryland)</span> Historic house in Maryland

The Brice House is, along with the Hammond-Harwood House and the William Paca House, one of three similar preserved 18th century Georgian style brick houses in Annapolis, Maryland. Like the Paca and Hammond-Harwood houses, it is a five-part brick mansion with a large central block and flanking pavilions with connecting hyphens. Of the three, the Brice House's exterior is the most austere, giving its brickwork particular prominence. The Brice House was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1970.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">His Lordship's Kindness</span> Historic house in Maryland, United States

His Lordship's Kindness, also known as Poplar Hill, is a historic plantation estate on Woodyard Road east of Clinton, Maryland. It was built in the 1780s for Prince George's County planter Robert Darnall. The five-part Georgian mansion retains a number of subsidiary buildings including a slave's hospital and a dovecote. The property is now operated as a museum by a local nonprofit preservation group. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1970.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sotterley (Hollywood, Maryland)</span> Historic house in Maryland, United States

Sotterley Plantation is a historic landmark plantation house located at 44300 Sotterley Lane in Hollywood, St. Mary's County, Maryland, USA. It is a long 1+12-story, nine-bay frame building, covered with wide, beaded clapboard siding and wood shingle roof, overlooking the Patuxent River. Also on the property are a sawn-log slave quarters of c. 1830, an 18th-century brick warehouse, and an early-19th-century brick meat house. Farm buildings include an early-19th-century corn crib and an array of barns and work buildings from the early 20th century. Opened to the public in 1961, it was once the home of George Plater (1735–1792), the sixth Governor of Maryland, and Herbert L. Satterlee (1863–1947), a New York business lawyer and son-in-law of J.P. Morgan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dungeness (Cumberland Island, Georgia)</span> Historic district in Georgia, United States

Dungeness on Cumberland Island, Georgia, is a ruined mansion that is part of a historic district that was the home of several families significant in American history. James Oglethorpe first built on Cumberland Island in 1736, building a hunting lodge that he named Dungeness. Oglethorpe named the place after the Dungeness headland, on the south coast of England. Dungeness was next the legacy of Revolutionary War hero Nathanael Greene, who had acquired 11,000 acres (45 km2) of island land in exchange for a bad debt. In 1803, his widow Catharine Littlefield Greene built a four-story tabby mansion over a Timucuan shell mound. During the War of 1812 the island was occupied by the British, who used the house as a headquarters.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chicora Wood Plantation</span> Historic house in South Carolina, United States

The Chicora Wood Plantation is a former rice plantation in Georgetown County, South Carolina. The plantation itself was established sometime between 1732 and 1736 and the 1819 plantation house still exists today. In 1827, Robert Francis Withers Allston (1801–1864) resigned as surveyor-general of South Carolina to take over full-time management of Chicora Wood, which he had inherited from his father. Chicora Wood served as a home base for his network of rice plantations, which produced 840,000 pounds of rice in 1850 and 1,500,000 pounds by 1860. 401 slaves worked the plantation in 1850, increasing to 630 by 1860.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Westend (Trevilians, Virginia)</span> Historic house in Virginia, United States

Westend is a temple-fronted house near Trevilians, Virginia, United States. Built in 1849, the house's design refers to the Classical Revival style, representing an extension of the Jeffersonian ideal of classical architecture. The house was built for Mrs. Susan Dabney Morris Watson on a property that she had inherited from her late husband. The building project was supervised by Colonel James Magruder. The house was the centerpiece of a substantial plantation, and a number of dependencies, including slave dwellings, survive. Westend remains in the ownership of the descendants of Mrs. Watson.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Prospect Hill (Charleston County, South Carolina)</span> Historic house in South Carolina, United States

Prospect Hill is an historic plantation house on Edisto Island, South Carolina. The two-story Federal house is significant for its architecture and ties to the production of sea island cotton. Constructed about 1800 for Ephraim Baynard, it sits on a bluff overlooking the South Edisto River. In 1860, William Grimball Baynard owned Prospect Hill. Baynard was an elder in the Edisto Island Presbyterian Church, a Justice of the Peace, a Justice of the Quorum, and the owner of 220 slaves. When Baynard died in 1861, his son William G. Baynard acquired the house. The house was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on 28 November 1986.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">City of Camden Historic District</span> Historic district in South Carolina, United States

City of Camden Historic District is a national historic district located at Camden, Kershaw County, South Carolina. The district encompasses 48 contributing buildings, 8 contributing sites, 2 contributing structures, and 3 contributing objects in Camden. The district is mostly residential but also include public buildings, a church, and a cemetery. Camden's architecture is classically inspired and includes examples of Federal, Greek Revival, and Classical Revival, in addition to cottage-type, Georgian, Charleston-type with modifications, and mansion-type houses. Several of the city's buildings were designed by architect Robert Mills. Notable buildings include the Kershaw County Courthouse (1826), U.S. Post Office, Camden Opera House and Clock Tower, Camden Powder Magazine, Trinity United Methodist Church, St. Mary's Catholic Church, Gov. Fletcher House, Greenleaf Villa, The First National Bank of Camden, and the separately listed Bethesda Presbyterian Church and Kendall Mill.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lucy Carnegie Ferguson</span>

Lucy Carnegie Ricketson Ferguson was a member of the American industrialist Carnegie family who spent much of her life working to conserve Cumberland Island, the largest part of which was declared a national seashore in 1972. A granddaughter of Thomas Carnegie, her family once owned 90 percent of the island.

References

  1. "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places . National Park Service. April 15, 2008.
  2. 1 2 "Growth of the Plantation". History and Archeology at the Robert Stafford Plantation, Cumberland Island. National Park Service. January 14, 2009.
  3. "Archeological Investigations". History and Archeology at the Robert Stafford Plantation, Cumberland Island. National Park Service. January 14, 2009.
  4. "Stafford Mansion". List of Classified Structures. National Park Service. January 14, 2009.
  5. "Stafford Slave Settlement Well". List of Classified Structures. National Park Service. January 14, 2009.
  6. "Cumberland Island National SeaShore (Map)" (PDF). NPS map showing Stafford as "Private/Retained-rights" property. National Park Service. January 27, 2009.