Faunsdale Plantation

Infobox_nrhp
name =Faunsdale Plantation
nrhp_type =hd


caption = Faunsdale Plantation slave cabins.
location=near Faunsdale, Alabama
lat_degrees = 32
lat_minutes = 26
lat_seconds = 7.26
lat_direction = N
long_degrees = 87
long_minutes = 36
long_seconds = 9.28
long_direction = W
locmapin =
area =
built =1844Marengo County Heritage Book Committee: "The heritage of Marengo County, Alabama", pages 17-18. Clanton, Alabama: Heritage Publishing Consultants, 2000. ISBN 189164758X]
architect=
architecture= Greek Revival, Gothic Revival
designated=
added =13 July 1993cite web|url=http://www.nr.nps.gov/|title=National Register Information System|date=2008-03-06|work=National Register of Historic Places|publisher=National Park Service]
refnum=93000602cite web|title="Alabama: Marengo County "|work="Nationalhistoricalregister.com"|url=http://www.nationalhistoricalregister.com/al/marengo/state.html| accessdate=2007-01-23]
governing_body = Private
mpsub=Plantation Houses of the Alabama Canebrake and Their Associated Outbuildings MPS [http://www.nr.nps.gov/multiples/64500009.pdf Plantation Houses of the Alabama Canebrake and Their Associated Outbuildings MPS] NRIS Database, National Register of Historic Places. Retrieved 6 March 2008.]

Faunsdale Plantation is a historic plantation near Faunsdale, Alabama, United States. The slave quarters on the property are the last known significant examples of slave housing in Marengo County and are among the last remaining examples in the state of Alabama.Cooper, Chip, Harry J. Knopke, and Robert S. Gamble. "Silent in the Land", page 112. Tuscaloosa, Alabama: CKM Press, 1993. ISBN 0963671308.] The house was added to the National Register of Historic Places on 13 July 1993 as a part of a multiple property submission, "Plantation Houses of the Alabama Canebrake and Their Associated Outbuildings".cite web|url=http://www.nr.nps.gov/|title=National Register Information System|date=2008-03-05|work=National Register of Historic Places|publisher=National Park Service]

History

The plantation was established by Dr. Thomas Alexander Harrison from Charles City County, Virginia in 1843.cite web|title="ADAH: Marengo Historical Markers"|work="Alabama Department of Archives and History"|url=http://www.archives.state.al.us/markers/imarengo.html|accessdate=2008-01-24] He named his plantation after Faunus, the ancient Roman deity of the forest, plains, and fields. Harrison is known to have brought a large number of slaves with him from Virginia, he is listed in the 1850 Federal Census of Marengo County as having $18,300 in property. Dr. Harrison was killed in a buggy accident on 5 Sept 1858 and the nearby town of Faunsdale was named after his plantation in his honor.

Faunsdale Plantation is one of the few large plantations in Alabama where detailed slave records were recorded and managed to survive as part of the historical record. These records indicate that the Harrison family held roughly 99 slaves in 1846. This number had increased to 161 by 1857.cite web|title="Faunsdale Plantation"|work="Sankofa's Slavery Data Collection"|url=http://www.rootsweb.com/~afamerpl/plantations_usa/AL/faunsdale.html|accessdate=2008-02-14] A list from 1 January 1864 also indicates that Harrison's widow, Louisa, owned 186 slaves, at least 35 families. Some of the slave surnames noted at that time were Barron, Brown, Francis, Harison, Iredell, Mutton, Nathan, Newbern, Paine, Parsons, Richmond, Washington, and Wills. Fourteen of these enslaved people had died by the end of 1864 from causes ranging from typhoid fever to measles.

t. Michael’s Church

In 1844 Harrison and his wife, Louisa, gave one acre of their plantation for the building of a log church across from their plantation house. In 1846, Alabama's first Episcopal bishop, Nicholas Hamner Cobbs, visited Faunsdale Plantation and noted that Louisa Harrison gave regular instruction to her slaves by reading the services of the church and teaching the catechism to their children.cite web|title="An excerpt from Bishops, Bourbons, and Big Mules"|work="J. Barry Vaughn"|url=http://www.merechristian.org/bishops.htm|accessdate=2008-01-26] In 1852 the church was renamed St. Michael’s Episcopal Church and by 1855 a Gothic Revival style church building had been constructed.

A churchyard for burials was established in 1858 with Dr. Harrison being the first interment. Slaves, and later freedmen, from the plantation began to be buried there in 1860. The church building was moved to the town of Faunsdale in 1888 and was later destroyed by a tornado in 1932, though the churchyard remained an active burial ground.

Several years after the death of Thomas Harrison, Louisa remarried to Rev. William A. Stickney, the Episcopal minister for St. Michael's, in 1864. Stickney had been one of the first ministers ordained by Bishop Cobbs and was appointed by Bishop Richard Wilmer as a "Missionary to the Negroes" in 1863. Louisa joined him as an unofficial fellow minister among the African Americans of the Black Belt.

Description

The main house at Faunsdale Plantation is a simple Greek Revival style two-story wood frame structure with a gabled roof, flanked on each side with one-story gabled wings. The nearby slave cabins date from 1860 and are also wood frame structures with high-pitched gables and scalloped barge boards that show a Carpenter Gothic influence.

ee also

*National Register of Historic Places listings in Marengo County, Alabama

References

External links

* [http://www.rootsweb.com/~afamerpl/plantations_usa/AL/faunsdale.html Sankofa's Slavery Data Collection: Faunsdale Plantation]