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| From Hearth To Heritage |
Southern Hospitality
Jan Alexander
10/01/2005
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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.
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