But all kidding aside,nice digs!
I’m surprised that in the humid south any old cabin built in around the 1850’s would still be standing. Either they fall down naturally or I’m surprised that someone over the years had not knocked them down. Maybe they purposefully kept them?
They’re in pretty bad shape, but if they’re like my house, they were probably built of cedar felled on the farm and cut into planks. I can take pics from the outside if anyone’s interested. I supposed they could also be sharecropper’s cabins, but I never heard the family had sharecroppers, but they did have slaves and then hired hands.
StG
Well then there is another issue. Around where I grew up in the north any old building would get torn down and people would reuse the lumber. So I’m surprised nobody tore it down just for that.
Around a farm there’s always a use for a shed. They were used for storage. But you can tell they weren’t always storage because they have chimneys. I’ll take pics tomorrow.
StG
IMHO you should try to preserve these structures. They have historical significance, but more than that they were people’s homes. Those people likely have descendents alive today, and for the decendents of slaves their family history may not extend much further than that. An important memory from my childhood was discovering that we lived less than a mile from the Riley House whereJosiah Hensonlived as a slave. Josiah is considered the inspiration for the character of Uncle Tom in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s famous novel.
On returning to his early home as a free man years later:
The slaves cabins aren’t on my land. The 500 acre farm was split up into a number of tracts when the old lady’s heirs didn’t want the place. I got the farmhouse, the barn and 14 acres. The slaves cabins are three parcels down. The slave graveyard is about 1/2 mile behind the house, and the graves are only marked by standing stones, not headstones or anything. Farms like this are all over Tennessee.
StG
Wouldnt those old cemetaries and other historical artifacts make it hard to develop the land? I know up here years ago it was a big problem when they wanted to fill in what was once a civil war trench.
Urbanredneck - It’s not unusual to see an old family cemetery still standing in the front of a strip mall or in front of a McDonald’s around here. And as for civil war artifacts, there are people who metal detect and look for buttons and belt buckles and minie balls, but there was so much fighting around here that we have theStones River Battlefield and cemetery for that. And the area my farm is on is unlikely to be developed for some time - it’s too rocky for lots of septic systems, and too far away from the city for sewer to come out any time soon.
StG
Half the buildings in the New Orleans French Quarter and surrounding neighborhoods still have a separate slave quarters building in the back.
Yep, not uncommon in Virginia either. The office park where we have our offices was developed over land that contained a small private cemetery, and by law you cannot get rid of the cemetery. So it’s fenced off with nice wrought-iron fencing and all the markers are there, it’s kept in pretty good condition now (better than it had been previously.) Lots of office workers around here are surprised when I tell them it’s a cemetery, it isn’t immediately obvious as the complex of buildings here was built with a lot of green space and paved walking areas with benches and stuff. At first glance if you weren’t aware this was something that was done, you might think it’s just a monument or something in the middle of the park-like area, because it’s really just a stone obelisk and a few markers fenced off. But no, it’s a legitimate cemetery where the family that used to own several hundred acres around here used to bury their dead.
Slaves were around a long time before America was even founded. Blacks were not the only ones to be enslaved. I don’t believe bad behavior rubs off on property.
History is history, good and bad. Better to see it and try to understand it than burn it down or sweep it under the rug, IMHO.
Pics of cabin. This was definitely on the farm property before the farm was broken up. Zweisamkeit would be the person to tell us whether this looks like a slave cabin or not. It appears to have to entrances, but only one chimney. If two families shared it, I would expect them each to have a fireplace.
StG
Interesting pics, I don’t know too much about your typical slave quarters, but I would at least guess that if that’s originally a slave hut then that isn’t the original roof. I doubt that many if any slave huts had metal roofing, but if it was later converted into quarters for paid farm hands or something I could see it being reroofed in metal at some point. Otherwise it looks pretty similar to pictures from the 1860s of slave huts, although if this had originally been a large plantation I would expect to find the huts in a row along “streets.” So it’d be interesting if there are any signs of other buildings having previously been to the side of this one.
Martin Hyde - All the buildings on the farm had metal roofs (House, barn, kitchen, henhouse, pig house) so they went for it big time.
StG