Once the lifeblood of large estates and farms throughout the American South and East, antebellum plantations today serve as windows into one of the most controversial eras of U.S. history. Though many of these grand homes have been lost, scores more still exist, some as National Memorial sites, National Historic Landmarks, or National Historic Places. Award-winning historian Robin Lattimore explores the history of antebellum plantations in this concise guide to the working estates that dotted the U.S. landscape before the Civil War, many of which still remain. Whether Greek Revival, Federal, or Tidewater in style, antebellum plantations were grand and stately, reflecting the wealth and power of their often slave-owning landowners. From an examination of the architecture of antebellum plantations to a look at the plantation system and its effects on the South, Southern Plantations is a beautiful account of these windows to the past.

Provides information about what daily life was like on a southern plantation, including how slaves worked and dressed and what they ate.

The great majority of the South's plantation homes have been destroyed over time, and many have long been forgotten. In Lost Plantations of the South, Marc R. Matrana weaves together photographs, diaries and letters, architectural renderings, and other rare documents to tell the story of sixty of these vanquished estates and the people who once called them home. From plantations that were destroyed by natural disaster such as Alabama's Forks of Cypress, to those that were intentionally demolished such as Seven Oaks in Louisiana and Mount Brilliant in Kentucky, Matrana resurrects these lost mansions. Including plantations throughout the South as well as border states, Matrana carefully tracks the histories of each from the earliest days of construction to the often-contentious struggles to preserve these irreplaceable historic treasures. Lost Plantations of the South explores the root causes of demise and provides understanding and insight on how lessons learned in these sad losses can help prevent future preservation crises. Capturing the voices of masters and mistresses alongside those of slaves, and featuring more than one hundred elegant archival illustrations, this book explores the powerful and complex histories of these cardinal homes across the South.

Designed for both professional and amateur genealogists and other researchers, this index provides a detailed guide to materials available in the extensive Records of Ante-Bellum Southern Plantations microfilm set. By using this index to identify specific collections in which materials pertinent to a specific family name, plantation name, or location may be found, and then reviewing the details in the appropriate Guides (see Preface), the researcher may pinpoint the location of desired materials. The items indexed include deeds, wills, estate papers, genealogies, personal and business correspondence, account books, slave lists, and many other types of records. This new edition also includes a list of all of the manuscript collections included in the microfilm set.

Working Cures explores black health under slavery showing how herbalism, conjuring, midwifery and other African American healing practices became arts of resistance in the antebellum South and invoked conflicts.

Reconstruct 19th-century plantation: splendid main house with colonnades, two wings, carriage house, slave quarters, fence, more. Complete instructions, exploded diagrams.

Remembering Enslavement explores plantation museums as sites for contesting and reforming public interpretations of slavery in the American South. Emerging out of a three-year National Science Foundation grant (2014–17), the book turns a critical eye toward the growing inclusion of the formerly enslaved within these museums, specifically examining advances but also continuing inequalities in how they narrate and memorialize the formerly enslaved. Using assemblage theory as a framework, Remembering Enslavement offers an innovative approach for studying heritage sites, retelling and remapping the ways that slavery and the enslaved are included in southern plantation museums. It examines multiple plantation sites across geographic areas, considering the experiences of a diversity of actors: tourists, museum managers/owners, and tour guides/interpreters. This approach allows for an understanding of regional variations among plantation museums, narratives, and performances, as well as more in-depth study of the plantation tour experience and public interpretations. The authors conclude the book with a set of questions designed to help professionals reassemble plantation museum narratives and landscapes to more justly position the formerly enslaved at their center.

Old Plantation Days is a memoir in the form of a letter that Nancy Bostick writes reflecting on her life on a plantation and her marriage and parenthood afterward during the Civil War. Excerpt: The South as I knew it has disappeared; the New South has risen from its ashes, filled with the energetic spirit of a new age.

Tracing the geographical changes in plantation agriculture and the plantation regions after 1865, Aiken shows how the altered landscape of the South has led many to the false conclusion that the plantation has vanished. In fact, he explains, while certain regions of the South have reverted to other uses, the cotton plantation survives in a form that is, in many ways, remarkably similar to that of its antebellum predecessors.

Rich survey ranges from pioneer cabins to French Provincial and Neoclassic revivals. Extensive commentary on each building, with over 100 detailed illustrations, including 36 floor plans. Bibliography.