Plantations

Historic Sotterley, a National Historic Landmark and UNESCO Site of Memory, preserves over 300 years of history, offering powerful stories of the past alongside scenic trails, gardens, and views of the Patuxent River.

The country plantation of Philip Schuyler: surveyor, businessman, Revolutionary War general, and supporter of America's canals.

The open, grassy field besides the main house was the location of the Ellwood service yard. Many buildings where enslaved people once lived and worked once stood here.

Ellwood was a slave plantation dating to the 1790s. During the Battle of Chancellorsville, this building was a Confederate field hospital. During the Battle of the Wilderness it was the headquarters for US Generals Warren and Burnside. Though most famous because Confederate General "Stonewall" Jackson's amputated left arm is buried in the family cemetery, the house has many more stories to tell. The house is open seasonally.

First constructed in the 1700s, Ellwood is best known for its association with the Battles of Chancellorsville and the Wilderness during the Civil War. However, this place has a much wider and more expansive history. Learn about the people who first inhabited this land and the ways that colonial settlement altered the physical landscape.

The Snee Farm Corn Crib (circa 1910) is located near the Snee Farm Barn in a clearing in the northwest corner of the park grounds. It is closed to the public. The building represents the later agricultural use of the site.

Francis Bay is one of the quieter areas of the park and is a great place to view turtles, go for long swims, snorkel along the rock shoreline at the north end of the beach. A board walk provides access to some great birding opportunities along the salt pond located behind the beach. Visitors can also take the trail up to the remains of a "Great House" and the Francis Sugar Factory.

The orangery is the first structure you come to when walking towards the mansion. This reconstructed citrus fruit greenhouse today serves as public restrooms and a small conference room for special events.

The Snee Farm barn was built around 1943 by owners Thomas and Alexandra Stone to stable riding horses. It is found in a clearing northwest of the house in a clearing at the property’s northwest corner and is accessed by a gravel service road.

This slave quarters building was used throughout the times of slavery and tenant farming. The exhibits today represent the era of tenant farming that followed the American Civil War.

Learn about the lives of enslaved African Americans at the Chicora Wood Plantation.

Discover the personal experiences of Americans in a nation divided politically on the issue of slavery through the early life of Ulysses S. Grant, who lived on a Missouri farm with his wife Julia Dent Grant and her slave-holding family in the 1850s.

High on a bluff in Stafford County, Virginia, overlooking the Rappahannock River and the town of Fredericksburg beyond, stands the 18th-century plantation house called Chatham. Use this lesson plan to learn about Chatham and its legacy.

Within a low-lying, interior wetland, bounded by wax myrtle shrubs and pine trees between the Thorofare and Passmore Creek, lies the likely location of the Travis plantation house and housing for the enslaved. Archeology at domestic farmstead site located a half-mile away reveals where the enslaved community lived. Learn about the plantation's history and a few of the artifacts archeologists found.

The Shenandoah Valley had small family farms that owned none, one or a few enslaved people. The Valley also had larger plantations with many enslaved people. White residents of the Valley were all economically connected to slavery. Therefore, their culture, like that of the rest of the United States, was part of a system of race-based slavery and they used racism, violence, and fear to maintain it.

On December 13, 1770, Thomas Stone purchased a 442 acre plantation with an unique name. This would be his home until he moved to Annapolis in the mid-1780s.

Ulysses S. Grant spent four years as a farmer at White Haven, his father-in-law's estate near St. Louis, Missouri, between 1854 and 1858. Recent archeological investigations of a satellite structure of the main house at White Haven have brought to light many details of slave life at the plantation in the years preceding the Civil War.

Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor residents attended a memorial service for “The Weeping Time,” a period of a few days in March 1859 when 436 enslaved people were put up for auction so that the slave holder, a grandson of U.S. Constitution signer Senator Pierce Butler, could pay off his debts. This tragic time was the largest auction of enslaved people on record.

A four-year archeological exploration of Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve's Kingsley Plantation focuses on the slave quarters from the early nineteenth-century. This analysis of the ceramics assemblage compared to that of the archetypal antebellum plantation of Cannon’s Point Plantation, GA is a fundamental first step to interpreting the role of material objects in the slaves’ daily lives.

The 20th annual naturalization ceremony at Snee Farm, part of Charles Pinckney National Historic Site, was one of the largest naturalization ceremonies in the region in 2017. Each year, naturalization ceremonies are hosted at national parks around the country to celebrate new citizens and recognize the broad and varied history of the United States.