Somerset Place

Plantation house

When my oldest grandson came to visit in August, we went to Somerset Place, one of the largest plantations in the South. It's located near Creswell in Washington County, North Carolina, near the coast, and is a good example of life on a large plantation prior to the Civil War. Today it is a state historic site, and a reunion of its slave descendants in 1896 inspired the book, A Somerset Homecoming by Dorothy Spruill Redford.

During its 80 years of operation as an active plantation (1785 - 1865), Somerset Place comprised around 100,000 acres and grew corn, wheat, and rice. More than 800 slaves lived and worked there during those years. Eighty of these were brought directly from West Africa in 1786.

Hospital

For the first 40 years, no one lived on the land, and it was used sorely for raising crops or hunting and fishing. Then, in 1829, Josiah Collins III, his wife, and six sons built a large house and moved in. Like most plantations, the complex was pretty self-sufficient. The grounds contain a dairy, 

kitchen and laundry, smoke house, salting house, storage buildings,

Quarters for special house slaves

overseers house, stocks, and slave quarters. At Somerset, important house slaves had better living quarters than the field hands, and there was also a hospital to care for the sick and injured.  

The site is open all year on Tuesdays through Saturdays from 9:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m, but it's closed on all major holidays. Admission is free.

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