Jan Alexander
10/01/2005
Charles Hill Carter III, 11th generation heir to Shirley Plantation, 18 miles outside of Richmond, Va., tries to be discreet as he strolls his 700-acre estate. On days when he happens to be dressed down, the dozens of visitors passing through his house might mistake the portly 43-year-old Southern gentleman for the gardener. Carter scans the parking lot as a form of customer research; while most of the license plates are from East Coast states, he has recently spotted a few cars from as far away as Alaska.
He often stops to chat with Dennis Blanton, the director of archaeology at the plantation, who is digging for artifacts with a crew of student volunteers. Over the past few years, Blanton has discovered the foundation of the original house that Carter’s ancestors built in the 17th century. (The great house was completed in 1738.)
The Carters opened their home to visitors seven days a week in 1954. It was a way of diversifying the family business, which began as a tobacco farm in 1638; the plantation now raises other crops, not tobacco. Carter, who has led tours through the house and grounds since he was 8, considers artifact hunting an expansion of Shirley Plantation, which vies with Tuttle Farms of Dover, N.H., as the oldest family business in the United States, according to Family Business Magazine.
A number of famous figures emerged from the plantations that still lie along the James River between Richmond and Williamsburg. Neighboring Sherwood Forest Plantation is the birthplace of John Tyler, the 10th president. His descendant, Harrison Tyler, who happens to be Carter’s godfather, still owns three plantations in the area, including one named after another famous figure born nearby, Pocahontas. Berkeley Plantation, birthplace of William Henry Harrison, the ninth president, is also open to visitors, but Shirley is the only plantation still inhabited by descendants of the original family that is open to the public.
Visitors can traipse around the outbuildings—a dovecoat for keeping pigeons ready for roasting, barns, stable, smokehouse, root cellar, ice house—and the ground floor of the great house. (The family resides on the second and third floors.) The tour guides pull visitors in with tales about the wigged gentlemen and hoop-skirted ladies in the portraits: This one nearly ran the plantation into the ground, that one saved it; this lady was Ann Hill Carter, who was born and married here and often came back with her son, who grew up to be Confederate General Robert E. Lee. In 1862, the guides will go on, the women saw Union troops outside and offered to nurse the wounded, a decision that saved the house from being burned to the ground. Archaeologists over the years have found artifacts from the slave quarters, which Carter often exhibits in February during African American history month. “We deal with it as factually as possible,” he says.
Other plantation owners in the area have tried opening
their estates to visitors and found it either too invasive or too unstable as a
business venture. But owners of historic homes who are interested in such a
proposition, whether out of public spirit or entrepreneurship, can seek to
emulate a number of viable role models: the Piatt Castles in Ohio, the Biltmore
Estate in North Carolina and Boone Hall Plantation in South
Carolina.
According to Max van Balgooy, director of interpretation and
education for the National Trust for Historic Preservation in Washington,
historical home museums are probably the most popular type of museum in the
United States. He estimates that there are 10,000 to 15,000 such preserved homes
across the country, although most are publicly funded. The trust receives
frequent calls from those seeking advice on turning historic houses into public
spaces, and it can offer creative suggestions. “You can make the grounds
available just for weddings, music festivals or school groups,” van Balgooy
says, “or go the wholly commercial route. Donald Trump bought the Mira Lago
estate and turned it into a private club.”
Other considerations
include:
Location
“Instead of saying, ‘We have this house, let’s do tours,’
first find where the market is,” Carter says. The plantation area benefits from
the proximity of colonial Williamsburg, which is just 35 miles from Shirley
Plantation.
Foundation Or For-Profit
Turning the estate into a nonprofit
museum with an endowment from a foundation makes it possible to solicit
donations and run the operation tax-free. However, owners must cede much of the
control to the board of directors. A family business, on the other hand, must be
run by someone willing to be a decisive chief executive.
“Why my family
hasn’t hung me over a tree, I don’t know sometimes,” Carter says. His sister,
Harriet Pittman, kept sheep and collies at the farm. “I realized this is not
really our focus,” Carter says. “I don’t see a lot of revenues from the animals,
so they’re gone.”
Tourism, on the other hand, does produce modest revenue.
“Our business probably peaked in the late 1990s at more than 50,000 visitors a
year,” Carter says. Visits dropped after 9/11, and he estimates there will be
about 45,000 guests this year, at about $10 a head, though Southern decorum
makes Carter loath to discuss revenues. “I think,” he says, “it’s because after
the Civil War so many folks lost so much, it just wasn’t proper . . .
.”
Invest In History
The plantation showed a healthy profit through much of
the 1980s and early 1990s, but a capital improvement program that includes the
archaeological digging ended this run. However, Carter expects his efforts
to unearth history to yield returns in the future—not only from the tourist
trade, but also in terms of keeping future generations intrigued in a family
business that is so inextricable from the family history.
