Alston-DeGraffenried Plantation & A Mother's Courage

Compared to the other original 13 colonies, North Carolina was known as backwoods country, a wilderness of unconventional paths from one village to the next, hardly qualifying as roads. Even though it was a slave state, few plantations in North Carolina owned large numbers of slaves. Most owned small tracts of land and were considered farmers, surviving on the hard work of every member in the household, including the children.

The Alston-DeGraffenried Plantation in present day Chatham County is one of the few surviving plantations in the state. It sits on a corner of Deep River in an area called Horseshoe, originally part of a 7,654 acres surveyed for colonial governor Gabriel Johnson in 1747. In 1772, Philip Alston purchased 4,000 acres from the governor's heirs and built his first house in 1773 made of the Georgian style architecture. Exterior features include a gable roof, shed porches, and end chimneys with Flemish bond brickwork. Other additions were added after 1791.

The center hall contains a flush-sided ceiling and walls above a flat-paneled wainscot. The north parlor has plastered walls over flat-paneled wainscot with an incised geometric design resembling a Greek pattern. The fireplace is flanked by fluted pilasters adorned with marrow spoon and floral patterns. The cornice is decorated in pierced dentils around the room. To the left is one of the bedchambers on the first floor.


Battle of 1781
During the Revolutionary War, Philip Alston was a loyal Patriot. Early on Sunday morning on July 29th, Colonel David Fanning, a Tory, crossed the Deep River with about 40 men and attacked. After the first shots were fired, Alston's outnumbered men retreated into the house where his wife, Temperance and his children were located. Since it was summer and the fireplaces weren't being used, she hid the older children in the fireplace where they would be safe from shots raining on the house from all sides. The brick fireplace was much safer than wooden walls and windows. The photo to the right is of the backside of the house.

After several hours of gunfire, Fanning and his men decided to storm the house and set it on fire. Alston realized he needed to surrender, but feared he and his men would be shot if they went outside. Temperance found the courage to go out for them, hoping they wouldn't shoot a woman. It worked. Respecting her courage, Colonel Fanning met her halfway and accepted their surrender. The action saved their home and the lives of their children. The photo to the left is of the well on the side of the back porch.

Daily Lives
The family table was filled with the bounty of fruits and vegetables grown in the kitchen garden near the house. Peas, beans, greens, apples, and grapes were grown by the family. The current caretakers have resurrected some of the gardens on the other side of the well in front of the corn field, which is behind the wooden building that now serves as a museum. Cattle and hogs provided meat for the table and the woods housed wild deer, turkey, rabbits and squirrels. Poultry not only provided eggs, down and feathers, but meat as needed. The image to the right is an 18th century corn crib.

Philip Alston's father gave him 20 slaves. They cleared the land and grew the crops for him, but during the war, the plantation's growth suffered while Alston was away at war. With major damage to the house during the battle with Fanning, money and labor went to repairs rather than investing in the growth of the plantation. After the war, the economy was poor and paper money became worthless. Taxes were raised to pay for the war. There are no record of crop sales after the war.

The view from the back porch.

WAKEFIELD - GEORGE WASHINGTON’S BIRTHPLACE

By Janet Grunst


As we celebrate George Washington’s 280^th birthday, what better opportunity to explore the place he was born. Wakefield is located in Westmoreland County, part of the Northern Neck of Virginia, just 38 miles east of Fredericksburg. It is situated on the Potomac River, between Mattox Creek and Popes Creek.

In 1657 John Washington came to Virginia from England aboard the merchant ship Seahorse of London as its second officer. When the ship attempted to sail away with its full cargo of tobacco into the Potomac, it ran aground on a shoal in Mattox Creek. While waiting for the ship being readied to sail, John Washington formed a friendship with a local planter, Colonial Nathaniel Pope, and more particularly an attachment with his daughter Anne. A 700 acre parcel of land was Colonel Pope’s wedding gift in 1658 when John Washington married Anne Pope. John became a planter and increased his land holdings to 10,000 acres. In 1664 he moved his family into a new home on Bridges Creek, 4 miles east of Mattox Creek. His son, John later received the Bridges Creek property.

Pope’s Creek 

John and Anne Washington had three children; Lawrence, John and Anne.  Their son, Lawrence, who was born at Bridges Creek, married Mildred Warner of Warner Hall in Gloucester in 1686 and their family settled west of Bridges Creek.  Lawrence and Mildred Washington also had three children; John, Augustine and Mildred.                              

Augustine married Jane Butler in 1715. He inherited some of his father’s property, and in 1717 & 1718 also purchased 200 acres on the west side of Popes Creek. Between 1722 & 1726 Augustine completed the home on Popes Creek that he and his family would live in until 1735.  Augustine and Jane had four children, before she died in 1729.

In 1731 Augustine married Mary Ball. They had six children. George, their oldest, was born in 1732 in their Popes Creek home (later known as Wakefield). With additional purchases and trades Augustine Washington combined the Bridges Creek property with that of Popes Creek, including the family graveyard.

Augustine also increased his land holdings to include an iron furnace near Fredericksburg and another property further up the Potomac in Little Hunting Creek. These two locations would later become George Washington’s homes.

                    

George lived he first three and a half years at the Popes Creek Plantation until the family moved to the Hunting Creek Plantation (later known as Mount Vernon). The Popes Creek plantation, a vibrant farm was inherited by George’s half brother, Augustine Jr.

Reproduction of Wakefield Mansion

On Christmas day 1799, the home accidentally caught fire and burned. The owner at that time was General Washington’s nephew William Augustine Washington, who then moved his family several miles away.

It is uncertain when the house was named Wakefield but it is believed that it was called that around 1773. The property was also sometimes referred to as Burnt House Plantation. The house was never rebuilt though the land continued to be farmed. The State of Virginia eventually acquired the land to preserve the site of the birthplace. In 1923, Mrs. Josephine Wheelwright Rust, a distant relative of the former President, organized the Wakefield National Memorial Association to rebuild a replica of the first home of George Washington.

If you visit Wakefield you will find it a lovely setting, complete with main house, outbuildings, cemetery, herb and flower garden, walking trail and picnic area. The George Washington Birthplace National Park is administered by the National Park Service.

In future posts I’ll share something of George Washington’s other early homes. 

In Ye Olden Days: Baking on an Open Hearth

Ever wonder why the only breads frontier people ate were cornbread and biscuits? I'm here to answer that question.

It is impossible (to my knowledge) to bake yeast breads on an open hearth. The reasons are simple. An inability to keep the heat even, and no room for the bread to rise as it bakes. I worked for four years as a tour guide at Kent Plantation House in central Louisiana and Kent is one of a small handful of plantation museums with a working open hearth kitchen. I learned a lot about cooking in an open hearth. I also learned cornbread baked in a Dutch oven is the closest thing to tastebud heaven we'll ever know on this earth.

The above picture is an open hearth. All that brick is where most of the cooking and baking is done. Only soups and stews are placed directly over the fire, on the crane. The top door on the left is a bread oven that's been used twice since the hearth in this kitchen was rebuilt in the mid-80's. Beneath is wood. The first time it was fired up it took three days to get it hot enough to bake cookies.

The first step is coals. Lots and lots and lots of coals. Preferably made with oak. Pine has too much pitch in it, makes a lot of smoke, and clogs up the chimney.



The curly thing in this picture is a trivet. Coals are piled underneath, the skillet goes on top, and then the lid goes on. The round thing to the right of the trivet here is a lid with a lip on it. This lip keeps the coals from falling off the lid. Most iron pots and skillets in the 19th century had two lids. A domed one and a lipped one.

Coals on top of the skillet create the rest of the heat to cook the cornbread. Or the biscuits or the cake. Yes, you can bake a cake on an open hearth and it is very good. The coals have to be replaced at least once during baking, on top and bottom. You can also fry things on an open hearth, and my sister makes an amazing peach upside down cake. Just make sure and use liberal amounts of butter to keep the cake from sticking.

Many plantation cooks wore wooden shoes, and their skirts were shorter than everyone else's. While cooking in the kitchen where I took these pictures, my sister once caught her shoe on fire stepping on what looked like a dead coal. More than one cook at Kent has caught her skirt or apron on fire.

Since you obviously can't use potholders or an apron around live coals, what do you use? S hooks. Called S hooks because they look like an S. Every blacksmith made hundreds of them. They come in all sizes from three to four inches long to over a foot. They were also used to adjust the distance between the soup pot on the crane and the coals beneath.

Baking and cooking on an open hearth was very time consuming and very dangerous. Because of the fire danger, on plantations the kitchen was always a separate building. That often was not practical on the colonial frontier. Heat was another reason the kitchen was separate in the South. Even in October here in Louisiana it gets up in the 90's and the temperature in Kent's open hearth kitchen can easily top 100 degrees. Up north heat wasn't as much of a concern, and there often wasn't enough room to build a separate kitchen.

If you ever have the chance to see an open hearth kitchen in action, take it. It's an amazing experience that pictures cannot capture.