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The plantation holdings of the Bennehan-Cameron families were among the largest in pre-Civil War North Carolina, and among the largest of the entire South. By 1860, the family owned almost 30,000 acres and nearly 900 slaves. Stagville, a plantation of several thousand acres, lay at the center of this enormous estate. Liggett and Myers Tobacco Company donated Historic Stagville to the State of North Carolina in 1976. At the time, it was the largest corporate gift to the state ever made. The North Carolina Department of Cultural Resource, Division of State Historic Sites, now administers the site. Historic Stagville now serves as an instructional tool for the visiting public and teaches them about Southern plantation life and North Carolina material culture. Today, Historic Stagville's property consists of 71 acres, separated in three tracts. On this land stand numerous historically significant structures, including the late 18th-century Bennehan House, four two-story, four-room slave houses, a pre-Revolutionary War yeoman farmer's house, and a massive timber framed barn, as well as a modern visitor center and the Bennehan Family cemetery. When touring the site it is important to remember that most of the early landscape has been significantly altered over time. Remaining landscape features include: the old road bed located to the right of the Bennehan House, numerous Osage Orange trees and other historic plantings, and the foundation remains of several dependencies and a slave house, all of which are now part of Historic Stagville's archaeological record. The Bennehan and Cameron families left immense collections of personal and business papers in two local repositories: The Southern Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the North Carolina State Archives. These surviving family letters and documents provide detailed accounts of activities on the plantation and greatly enhance our understanding of life in Orange County (now Durham County) and in North Carolina. We continue to use these resources extensively as we refine the interpretation of Historic Stagville. Stagville has been nationally recognized as a significant historic resource; the Bennehan House was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973, and Horton Grove was registered in 1978. |
