# An old rice plantation is up for sale, and I am disturbed **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [March 27, 2014, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-old-rice-plantation-is-up-for-sale-and-i-am-disturbed/684651 "2014-03-27T00:49:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Septima](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dc4da7/32.png) [@Septima](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Septima)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2014, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-old-rice-plantation-is-up-for-sale-and-i-am-disturbed/684651/21 "2014-03-27T21:00:35Z")
Listen - here is what you have to get through your skull: Go outside, look at any house, any tenement, any part of any city in the world. Anything older than a few years. Listen. Someone was raped in there. You know this. Every single house. So get over yourself. You will never live anywhere that doesn’t have a history of violence and exploitation. Better now? ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2014, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-old-rice-plantation-is-up-for-sale-and-i-am-disturbed/684651/22 "2014-03-27T21:20:38Z")
> [@a35362](#): > > You have a beautiful home. We all know that. (I was one of the people who chimed in on your paint decisions.) Maybe the difference is you live in an ordinary farmhouse, and not a $15,000,000 manor house. Nice roof for 1849, too 🙂 I don’t think there were very many houses like that built. Mitchell was angry about Tarra depicted in the film. In the novel, it was just a big house. My Great Aunt lived in a house that was built in the film style, but it was a normal size house. Slaves built the kitchen where my ancestors slept at first, then the slave quarters, then the rest of the house. The slave quarters had been used as a smoke house after the war, and was a dilapidated, hundred year old store house when I saw it as a child. I was afraid to go inside. I wish I had. ---
**Author:** ![doorhinge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a5b964/32.png) [@doorhinge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doorhinge)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2014, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-old-rice-plantation-is-up-for-sale-and-i-am-disturbed/684651/23 "2014-03-27T21:27:08Z")
> [@Ulfreida](#): > > Part Afro-American? > > I thought he was half African and half white American. I thought he was half Hawaiian and half Irish? O’bama? 😕 ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2014, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-old-rice-plantation-is-up-for-sale-and-i-am-disturbed/684651/24 "2014-03-27T21:30:32Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > Also “servant’s quarters” is probably not euphemistic, if the history of the plantation is anything like most then the slave holders who owned it probably had to sell within 10-20 years of the Civil War. Possibly to a nouveau riche Northerner looking for a summer home or such, and most likely servant’s quarters were specifically setup whenever that happened as most wealthy American’s had servant’s quarters in their homes from the mid-19th to early 20th century. That was what I was thinking as soon as I read it. The only plantation I’ve been on \* had to have all its slave quarters recreated because they were knocked down long ago. \*[Carter’s Grove](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carter's_Grove) I was very disappointed to hear how it fell on hard times. I really liked the place when it was under the control of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. Outside of the house there was a depiction of slave era life. The house was preserved as a slice of 1930s life. On the grounds was the archaeological site of one of the first European settlements, Martin’s Hundred. It also had a very nice museum about the settlement. Its a shame they closed it to the public. ---
**Author:** ![kambuckta](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/53a042/32.png) [@kambuckta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kambuckta)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2014, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-old-rice-plantation-is-up-for-sale-and-i-am-disturbed/684651/25 "2014-03-27T21:45:45Z")
Wow. I finally went to the RE webpage, and it is one seriously nice piece of real estate. REALLY nice. If I had a spare $15 mill hiding away under my mattress, I’d buy it. And I’d hire house and grounds-staff to keep it nice too! 😛 ---
**Author:** ![a35362](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3da27b/32.png) [@a35362](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/a35362)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2014, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-old-rice-plantation-is-up-for-sale-and-i-am-disturbed/684651/26 "2014-03-27T22:36:35Z")
> [@Septima](#): > > Listen - here is what you have to get through your skull: > > Go outside, look at any house, any tenement, any part of any city in the world. Anything older than a few years. Listen. > > Someone was raped in there. > > You know this. > > Every single house. > > So get over yourself. You will never live anywhere that doesn’t have a history of violence and exploitation. > > Better now? :eek: Um… no? ☹ What’s with the anger? 😕 I already know I’m being weird about this. ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2014, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-old-rice-plantation-is-up-for-sale-and-i-am-disturbed/684651/27 "2014-03-28T00:21:29Z")
> [@the\_diego](#): > > The same reason you’d want to own and live in a medieval castle. Don’t be disturbed. You now have a president who’s part Afro-American. That’s how much things have changed. Speaking of the President, but the OP’s logic both the White House and the Capitol should be destroyed (along with scores of medieval castles, the Pantheon, Coliseum, Acropolis, etc.). ---
**Author:** ![Septima](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dc4da7/32.png) [@Septima](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Septima)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2014, 12:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-old-rice-plantation-is-up-for-sale-and-i-am-disturbed/684651/28 "2014-03-28T12:03:27Z")
I’m not angry, sorry about that. Should have sprinkled some smilies in there, maybe? I was just trying to shock you out of your mental rut there. 🙂 Putting stuff in perspective, all that good stuff. ---
**Author:** ![a35362](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3da27b/32.png) [@a35362](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/a35362)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2014, 12:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-old-rice-plantation-is-up-for-sale-and-i-am-disturbed/684651/29 "2014-03-28T12:05:34Z")
Okay, thank you. ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2014, 12:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-old-rice-plantation-is-up-for-sale-and-i-am-disturbed/684651/30 "2014-03-28T12:30:10Z")
> [@kambuckta](#): > > Wow. I finally went to the RE webpage, and it is one seriously nice piece of real estate. REALLY nice. If I had a spare $15 mill hiding away under my mattress, I’d buy it. > > And I’d hire house and grounds-staff to keep it nice too! > > 😛 Just make sure you hire the Irish straight off the boat - you wouldn’t want to be racist. ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2014, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-old-rice-plantation-is-up-for-sale-and-i-am-disturbed/684651/31 "2014-03-28T12:43:38Z")
Actually, I’ve always had a thing for the underdogs of the victim race. Yes, we treated slaves horribly, but my grandparents were Slavic immigrants who worked the stockyards - ever read “The Jungle?” Its my father’s family history in a nutshell. We certainly didn’t treat the Irish well. In my town - we had Swede Hollow. We DID destroy that as a health hazard in the 1950s - but if we were going to destroy everything where we had a history of treating people like dirt, or where something horrible happened, we’d be tearing down a lot of our history. African Americans were slaves - they were property, raped, beaten and killed by their masters. But the life of an immigrant kid working in factories and living in the tenements in NYC in 1860 is not exactly a study in human compassion. ---
**Author:** ![PunditLisa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/4af34b/32.png) [@PunditLisa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PunditLisa)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2014, 12:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-old-rice-plantation-is-up-for-sale-and-i-am-disturbed/684651/32 "2014-03-28T12:45:09Z")
> [@a35362](#): > > Probably the South is full of these big old antebellum houses. Probably South Carolina is packed with them. Who would buy such a house? Who could feel at home there? Fifteen million, you should be comfortable. I understand the sentiment. After all, the people of Sandy Hook want to destroy the school where their children were murdered. The people of Cleveland want to demolish the house where that crazy loon kept three girls prisoner. It’s a common reaction. But antebellum houses are not places of singular evil. They’re rich in history, and are filled with stories, both mundane and significant, both beautiful and ugly. We recently visited Rose Hill Mansion and few things were more moving to me as a human being as reading the framed, handwritten inventory of slaves. And when I read those names, knowing that they lived and died on the very ground I was walking on, well, you can’t get the same thing reading about them in a book. ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2014, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-old-rice-plantation-is-up-for-sale-and-i-am-disturbed/684651/33 "2014-03-29T02:37:11Z")
The US capital and the white house were both built by slaves. We cant change the past. Here is a thought. come up with a way of checking genealogy and maybe have reunions for any descendants of former slaves of the plantation. Who knows, maybe some of them have some stories passed down that could add to the history of the place. Many black families in the south have re-connected by similar ways because many slaves after freedom, took their masters names and the families have used that slave connection to promote reunions. Some can be in the hundreds in attendance. ---
**Author:** ![StGermain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stgermain/32/2868_2.png) [@StGermain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StGermain)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2014, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-old-rice-plantation-is-up-for-sale-and-i-am-disturbed/684651/34 "2014-03-29T14:34:00Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > Nice roof for 1849, too 🙂 > > I don’t think there were very many houses like that built. Mitchell was angry about Tarra depicted in the film. In the novel, it was just a big house. > My Great Aunt lived in a house that was built in the film style, but it was a normal size house. Slaves built the kitchen where my ancestors slept at first, then the slave quarters, then the rest of the house. > The slave quarters had been used as a smoke house after the war, and was a dilapidated, hundred year old store house when I saw it as a child. I was afraid to go inside. I wish I had. Thanks, I just finished replacing the old roof two months ago. I went from corrugated metal to standing seam. ([Pic from before I painted last year and replaced the roof this year.](http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j127/StG61/House2.jpg)) I still have the old kitchen from my farm, too. The granddaughter of the previous owner said she remembered her grandpa moving it back from the house when they installed indoor plumbing in 1961. They used log rollers and pulled it with mules, while the grandma was still inside, cooking so the family and field hands could have lunch. StG ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2014, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-old-rice-plantation-is-up-for-sale-and-i-am-disturbed/684651/35 "2014-03-29T14:52:39Z")
> [@StGermain](#): > > They used log rollers and pulled it with mules, while the grandma was still inside, cooking so the family and field hands could have lunch. > > StG Being of slight stature, I was the guy under the damn house, squirting oil as it passed over me while my FIL manned the come-along. :dubious: A friend of my had a house very much like that in Tull, Arkansas. Is your house in the South? ---
**Author:** ![StGermain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stgermain/32/2868_2.png) [@StGermain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StGermain)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2014, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-old-rice-plantation-is-up-for-sale-and-i-am-disturbed/684651/36 "2014-03-29T16:27:16Z")
I’m outside of Nashville (Music City, or “Tune Town”). StG ---
**Author:** ![Napier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce73a5/32.png) [@Napier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Napier)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2014, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-old-rice-plantation-is-up-for-sale-and-i-am-disturbed/684651/37 "2014-03-29T18:42:08Z")
> [@panache45](#): > > The death camps from the Holocaust have not been destroyed. They stand as a witness to the past and a reminder for the future. This is certainly true. I’ve visited Dachau and there seems to be a very careful and deliberate effort to bear witness through its display. Penfeather’s citation, in contrast, gives us this cheery quote: “Beautiful Chiavari chairs, sparkling crystal chandeliers, perfectly manicured lawns, magnificently presented cuisine—details like these have differentiated Southern Oaks Plantation from other venues since our inception.” ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2014, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-old-rice-plantation-is-up-for-sale-and-i-am-disturbed/684651/38 "2014-03-29T19:52:39Z")
> [@StGermain](#): > > [My house was built in 1849](http://s79.photobucket.com/user/StG61/media/South_zps92c7b51b.jpg.html?sort=3&o=2) and there are still slaves’ cabins standing in the parcel next to mine. Should I tear down my house? > > StG Do you treat them well? ---
**Author:** ![StGermain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stgermain/32/2868_2.png) [@StGermain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StGermain)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2014, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-old-rice-plantation-is-up-for-sale-and-i-am-disturbed/684651/39 "2014-03-29T22:25:45Z")
> [@kayaker](#): > > Do you treat them well? So well that some of them never left and are buried behind my back pasture. StG ---
**Author:** ![Rhythmdvl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/85f322/32.png) [@Rhythmdvl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rhythmdvl)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2014, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-old-rice-plantation-is-up-for-sale-and-i-am-disturbed/684651/40 "2014-03-29T23:45:22Z")
> [@StGermain](#): > > So well that some of them never left and are buried behind my back pasture. > > StG DO NOT leave the television unattended. And make sure your entire family has a plan to step into/not step into the light. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-old-rice-plantation-is-up-for-sale-and-i-am-disturbed/684651.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-old-rice-plantation-is-up-for-sale-and-i-am-disturbed/684651.md?page=3)