At the dawn of the Civil War, Somerset Place was a wealthy planter's estate and home to more than 300 enslaved men, women, and children. Because of the war, it was transformed into a shadowy remain that proved home to no one. The stories surrounding that transformation provide a microscopic view of social, emotional, economic, and legal impacts of the war on individual Southerners of different races and genders.
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Somerset Place is a representative state historic site offering a comprehensive and realistic view of 19th-century life on a large North Carolina plantation. Originally, this atypical plantation included more than 100,000 densely wooded, mainly swampy acres bordering the five-by-eight mile Lake Phelps, in present-day Washington County. During its 80 years as an active plantation (1785-1865), hundreds of acres were converted into high yielding fields of rice, corn, oats, wheat, beans, peas, and flax; sophisticated sawmills turned out thousands of feet of lumber. By 1865, Somerset Place was one of the upper South's largest plantations.
From Somerset's earliest days through the end of the Civil War, people of different races, legal, and economic status lived on the property. A labor force of almost 200 men, women, and children was assembled before 1790. They were black and white, enslaved and free. Over the life of the plantation, three generations of owners, around 50 white employees, two free black employees, and more than 850 enslaved people lived and worked on the plantation.
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