Southern History: A Virtual Tour of Four National Trust Historic Sites
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Plan Your VisitIt’s week seven of our National Trust Historic Sites virtual tour series, and if you’ve been following along, we hope that the tours have been educational and provided an escape from your weekly routine. In this, the final installment of the series, we visit four Southern estates spanning 230 years of American history, from a mid-18th century Colonial plantation big house in the South Carolina Lowcountry to a late-1960s restoration of an 1876 Italianate villa in San Antonio, Texas.
Today these historic sites help tell the full American story, which often includes the history of slavery in the United States. The first site on our tour, Drayton Hall, is one example of what historic sites are doing to reveal the many layers of history they hold.
photo by: Carol Highsmith
Located on 630 acres between the Ashley River and an expansive salt marsh just outside of Charleston, South Carolina, the grounds at Drayton Hall are arguably the most significant, silenced historic landscape in America. The 265-year-old house on site is described as the most important surviving house from British North America.
photo by: John Apsey
Drayton Hall has been working to present a full interpretation of its history as a plantation, the home of an individual who owned more than 100 commercial plantations, and the home and work place of a large and stratified enslaved community. The Drayton Hall property includes within it one of the oldest documented African American cemeteries in the nation still in use.
photo by: Drayton Hall Preservation Trust/Willie Graham
The earliest and one of the finest examples of Palladian architecture in the United States, one of Drayton Hall’s defining characteristics is symmetry. Here, the upper great hall mirrors the footprint of the great hall on the first floor, but this room was used for more formal entertaining and its ceiling is two feet higher than the hall below.
The next stop on today’s tour takes us to the Shenandoah Valley. Home to Revolutionary War Major Isaac Hite and his wife Nelly Madison Hite, sister of President James Madison, Belle Grove was an expansive plantation complex. Starting with 483 acres, Hite grew the property to as large as 7,500 acres and expanded the farming operations to include a general store, a grist-mill, a saw-mill, and a distillery, worked by more than 276 enslaved people.
To learn more about the enslaved community, visit Belle Grove’s website where a growing number of biographies are updated monthly.
photo by: Belle Grove Plantation
In 1864, Belle Grove became the center of the Battle of Cedar Creek, when Union General Sheridan used the property as his headquarters. After a surprise Confederate attack on October 19, Sheridan’s troops ultimately prevailed, securing the Shenandoah Valley for the Union and boosting Lincoln’s chances for re-election.
photo by: National Park Service/Buddy Secor
Surrounded by breathtaking mountain views, this Federal-era home has served as the anchor for a property that stays true to its heritage. Annual battle re-enactments and presentations on the history of slavery by Black living history professionals bring the rich Civil War-era history of Belle Grove to life.
Hite family records indicate that they enslaved 276 people at Belle Grove between 1783 and 1851. Although no slave quarters are extant, archaeology is underway in the area where they were located. There is also a small cemetery believed to be the final resting place of some of the enslaved people who lived and labored at Belle Grove.
The third house on our southern history tour takes us to Louisiana. Set among towering live oak trees draped with Spanish moss on the banks of the Bayou Teche in New Iberia, The Shadows was built in 1834 for sugar planters David and Mary Weeks. During David’s illness and after his early death, Mary operated this urban plantation complex, a substantial sugar cane plantation and other associated properties with the forced labor of more than 250 enslaved people through its most financially successful era.
Louisa Bryant, the enslaved house manager governed domestic matters including supervising the 50 people who comprised the enslaved house staff and farm workers who fed and clothed the Weeks and enslaved communities while also keeping up the carefully curated grounds at The Shadows.
In 1922 William Weeks Hall, great-grandson of the original owners, acquired the property. He conducted major construction and restoration work to preserve the family estate and, with the help of some creative landscaping, operated it as a quintessential southern plantation destination for tourists, celebrities, and a whole host of LGBTQ artists and writers. Hall added a garden walk, bamboo barriers for privacy, hedges to screen unwanted views, a peaceful fountain and a ticket booth with restrooms built from the remnants of brick slave houses. He was also an active part of the early to mid-century arts and preservation movements in New Orleans and helped rouse support for the preservation of the French Quarter. In 1958, he bequeathed the property to the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
photo by: Mickey Delcambre
In recent years, The Shadows has begun telling the full story of the house, its people, and the landscape. With the help of local descendants of slavery, area educators, artists, and scholars the Shadows was excited to premiere new tours and website content in 2021. The Shadows also continues to serve as the location for Plein Air Painting competitions, artists-in-residence programs, and live performances.
photo by: Carol Highsmith
The parlor, which is located on the second floor of the house, was used for entertaining guests and thus showcases the Weeks family wealth. Décor includes extravagant wall-to-wall carpet, horsehair and mahogany furniture, portraits of the Weeks children, and two original Marie Adrian Persac paintings of the house. Tours of the house, and this room in particular, focus on the fact that these elements of beauty and aesthetics were only possible because of enslaved labor.
photo by: Carol Highsmith
The pantry is located on the first floor of the house and was a center of domestic work such as food preparation, plating, food and china storage, and other related tasks. This area of the house was used primarily by enslaved kitchen staff, as they were the majority of the people in the house, evidence of their lives and work can be found in each room.
Our last stop is Villa Finale, built in 1876 for the hardware merchant Russel C. Norton. First designed as a one-story, four-room, single family home in San Antonio’s desirable King William neighborhood, the house was expanded in 1904, adding a second story and the Italianate tower. By the middle of the 20th century, the neighborhood was in decline and the house was divided up for use as a boarding house.
In 1967, preservationist Walter Nold Mathis purchased the house and restored it along with 14 other houses in the area. As such he was instrumental in the revitalization of the historic King William neighborhood. Mathis, who wanted to leave this gift for visitors to enjoy for generations to come, bequeathed the property and its collections to the National Trust in 2004.
photo by: Carol Highsmith
Once the home of consummate collector Walter Mathis, acclaimed architect O’Neil Ford regarded Villa Finale as the finest house in Texas. An Italianate Villa, the architecture features a story-book tower, arched masonry, and a welcoming porch with views of the San Antonio River. The interiors of the house overflow with a collection of fine decorative arts.
photo by: Carol Highsmith
In the Napoleon Parlor, Mathis displayed his collection of approximately 825 Napoleon-related items. Most of the objects on view are celebratory pieces, dating from 1840 or after. The year 1840 is significant, as this was when the English returned Napoleon’s body to France after keeping it for 19 years.
photo by: Carol Highsmith
Villa Finale’s library contains nearly 2,000 books accented by art and fine objects that were part of the Mathis collection. Notable elements include a solid bronze, 19th century French chandelier weighing about 250 pounds and a variety of religious art including Russian and Byzantine Greek religious icons and an authentic 18th-century Spanish Colonial wood carving of Saint Francis Xavier.
Check out the rest of our virtual tours of National Trust Historic Sites, exploring places related to Commerce and Industry, Sacred Places, Garden Glory, Architectural Traditions, Presidential Retreats, and Modernism.
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