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Greenfield (Fincastle, Virginia)
Greenfield, also known as Col. William Preston Plantation, Preston House, and Botetourt Center at Greenfield, is a historic plantation site located at Fincastle, Botetourt County, Virginia. It is the site of a large forced-labor farm AKA enslaved people established in the mid-18th century by Colonel William Preston (1729-1783) before he moved to Smithfield in 1774. an''Accompanying five photos''/ref> The plantation house was destroyed by fire in 1959. The remaining buildings are kitchen/quarters (c. 1832) and saddlebag slave dwelling (c. 1850). It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ... in 2011, and was delisted in 2022. References Plantation houses in Virginia Houses on the National Register of Histori ...
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Fincastle, Virginia
Fincastle is a town in Botetourt County, Virginia, United States. The population was 755 at the 2020 census. It is the county seat of Botetourt County. Fincastle is part of the Roanoke Metropolitan Statistical Area. History The town of Fincastle was originally settled by Scotch-Irish and German immigrants from Pennsylvania who arrived in the region in the mid-18th century. John Miller erected a sawmill which became the nucleus of the early village of Fincastle. In 1770, Botetourt County was separated from Augusta County, and Miller's home was selected as the meeting place for the court. Two years later, Israel Christian donated of land and laid out the streets and lots for the new town of Fincastle. The town's name was selected to honor George, Lord Fincastle, the eldest son of Virginia's Lieutenant Governor, Lord Dunmore. In 1773, the first log courthouse was built on the designated court square at the center of Fincastle. Around the same time, a brick church was construct ...
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Plantations In The American South
A plantation complex in the Southern United States is the built environment (or complex) that was common on agricultural plantations in the American South from the 17th into the 20th century. The complex included everything from the main residence down to the pens for livestock. Until the abolition of slavery, such plantations were generally self-sufficient settlements that relied on the forced labor of enslaved people. Plantations are an important aspect of the history of the Southern United States, particularly the antebellum era (pre-American Civil War). The mild temperate climate, plentiful rainfall, and fertile soils of the southeastern United States allowed the flourishing of large plantations, where large numbers of enslaved Africans or African Americans were held captive and forced to produce crops to create wealth for a white elite. Today, as was also true in the past, there is a wide range of opinion as to what differentiated a plantation from a farm. Typically, th ...
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Botetourt County, Virginia
Botetourt County ( ) is a US county that lies in the Roanoke Region of the Commonwealth of Virginia. Located in the mountainous portion of the state, the county is bordered by two major ranges, the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Appalachian Mountains. Botetourt County was created in 1770 from part of Augusta County and was named for Norborne Berkeley, known as Lord Botetourt. It originally comprised a vast area, which included the southern portion of present-day West Virginia and all of Kentucky. Portions were set off to form new counties beginning in 1772, until the current borders were established in 1851. Botetourt County is part of the Roanoke Virginia Metropolitan Statistical Area, and the county seat is the town of Fincastle. As of the 2020 census, the county population was 33,596. History First proposed in the House of Burgesses in 1767, Botetourt County was created in 1770 from Augusta County. The county is named for Norborne Berkeley, Baron de Botetourt, more c ...
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Slavery In The United States
The legal institution of human chattel slavery, comprising the enslavement primarily of Africans and African Americans, was prevalent in the United States of America from its founding in 1776 until 1865, predominantly in the South. Slavery was established throughout European colonization in the Americas. From 1526, during early colonial days, it was practiced in what became Britain's colonies, including the Thirteen Colonies that formed the United States. Under the law, an enslaved person was treated as property that could be bought, sold, or given away. Slavery lasted in about half of U.S. states until abolition. In the decades after the end of Reconstruction, many of slavery's economic and social functions were continued through segregation, sharecropping, and convict leasing. By the time of the American Revolution (1775–1783), the status of enslaved people had been institutionalized as a racial caste associated with African ancestry. During and immediately ...
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William Preston (Virginia Soldier)
Colonel William Preston (December 25, 1729 – June 28, 1783) played a crucial role in surveying and developing the western colonies, exerted great influence in the colonial affairs of his time, enslaved many people on his plantation, and founded a dynasty whose progeny would supply leaders of the South for nearly a century. He served in the Virginia House of Burgesses and was a colonel in the militia during the American Revolutionary War. He was one of the fifteen signatories of the Fincastle Resolutions. He was a founding trustee of Liberty Hall (later Washington and Lee University) when it was made into a college in 1776. Personal life William Preston was born on Christmas Day in 1729, in Limavady, Ireland, to Col. John Preston and his wife, Elizabeth. Elizabeth's father, Henry Patton, was a prominent shipwright and merchant, and her brother, James Patton, served with distinction in the Royal Navy. The Crown granted him between 100,000 and 120,000 acres in America to permit ...
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Smithfield (Blacksburg, Virginia)
Smithfield is a plantation house outside Blacksburg, Virginia, built from 1772 to 1774 by Col. William Preston to be his residence and the headquarters of his farm. It was the birthplace of two Virginia Governors: James Patton Preston and John B. Floyd. The house remained a family home until 1959 when the home was donated to the APVA. History The plantation site was part of 120,000 acres originally granted to James Patton by the British Crown. Patton was killed in the Draper's Meadow massacre in July 1755. The property was purchased by Patton's nephew, William Preston, who built the house from 1773 to 1774. Preston was an important colonial political figure, and may have been the author of the Fincastle Resolutions. He remained on the property, despite frequent threats from nearby Tories and Loyalists and Native Americans and the disruptions of the American Revolutionary War until his death from a stroke at a 1783 local militia muster. The property then passed to his wif ...
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Plantation House In The Southern United States
A plantation house is the main house of a plantation, often a substantial farmhouse, which often serves as a symbol for the plantation as a whole. Plantation complexes in the Southern United States, Plantation houses in the Southern United States and in other areas are known as quite grand and expensive architectural works today, though most were more utilitarian, working farmhouses. Antebellum American South In the Southern United States, American South, Antebellum South, antebellum plantations were centered on a "List of plantations in the United States, plantation house," the residence of the owner, where important business was conducted. Slavery in the United States, Slavery and plantations had different characteristics in different regions of the South. As the Upper South of the Chesapeake Bay colonies developed first, historians of the antebellum South defined planters as those who held 20 enslaved people. Major planters held many more, especially in the Deep South as i ...
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National Register Of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic value". A property listed in the National Register, or located within a National Register Historic District, may qualify for tax incentives derived from the total value of expenses incurred in preserving the property. The passage of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) in 1966 established the National Register and the process for adding properties to it. Of the more than one and a half million properties on the National Register, 95,000 are listed individually. The remainder are contributing resources within historic districts. For most of its history, the National Register has been administered by the National Park Service (NPS), an agency within the U.S. Department of the Interior. Its goals are to help property owners and inte ...
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Plantation Houses In Virginia
A plantation is an agricultural estate, generally centered on a plantation house, meant for farming that specializes in cash crops, usually mainly planted with a single crop, with perhaps ancillary areas for vegetables for eating and so on. The crops that are grown include cotton, coffee, tea, cocoa, sugar cane, opium, sisal, oil seeds, oil palms, fruits, rubber trees and forest trees. Protectionist policies and natural comparative advantage have sometimes contributed to determining where plantations are located. In modern use the term is usually taken to refer only to large-scale estates, but in earlier periods, before about 1800, it was the usual term for a farm of any size in the southern parts of British North America, with, as Noah Webster noted, "farm" becoming the usual term from about Maryland northwards. It was used in most British colonies, but very rarely in the United Kingdom itself in this sense. There, as also in America, it was used mainly for tree plantations, a ...
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Houses On The National Register Of Historic Places In Virginia
A house is a single-unit residential building. It may range in complexity from a rudimentary hut to a complex structure of wood, masonry, concrete or other material, outfitted with plumbing, electrical, and heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems.Schoenauer, Norbert (2000). ''6,000 Years of Housing'' (rev. ed.) (New York: W.W. Norton & Company). Houses use a range of different roofing systems to keep precipitation such as rain from getting into the dwelling space. Houses may have doors or locks to secure the dwelling space and protect its inhabitants and contents from burglars or other trespassers. Most conventional modern houses in Western cultures will contain one or more bedrooms and bathrooms, a kitchen or cooking area, and a living room. A house may have a separate dining room, or the eating area may be integrated into another room. Some large houses in North America have a recreation room. In traditional agriculture-oriented societies, domestic animals such ...
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Houses Completed In 1832
A house is a single-unit residential building. It may range in complexity from a rudimentary hut to a complex structure of wood, masonry, concrete or other material, outfitted with plumbing, electrical, and heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems.Schoenauer, Norbert (2000). ''6,000 Years of Housing'' (rev. ed.) (New York: W.W. Norton & Company). Houses use a range of different roofing systems to keep precipitation such as rain from getting into the dwelling space. Houses may have doors or locks to secure the dwelling space and protect its inhabitants and contents from burglars or other trespassers. Most conventional modern houses in Western cultures will contain one or more bedrooms and bathrooms, a kitchen or cooking area, and a living room. A house may have a separate dining room, or the eating area may be integrated into another room. Some large houses in North America have a recreation room. In traditional agriculture-oriented societies, domestic animals such as c ...
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Buildings And Structures In Botetourt County, Virginia
A building, or edifice, is an enclosed structure with a roof and walls standing more or less permanently in one place, such as a house or factory (although there's also portable buildings). Buildings come in a variety of sizes, shapes, and functions, and have been adapted throughout history for a wide number of factors, from building materials available, to weather conditions, land prices, ground conditions, specific uses, prestige, and aesthetic reasons. To better understand the term ''building'' compare the list of nonbuilding structures. Buildings serve several societal needs – primarily as shelter from weather, security, living space, privacy, to store belongings, and to comfortably live and work. A building as a shelter represents a physical division of the human habitat (a place of comfort and safety) and the ''outside'' (a place that at times may be harsh and harmful). Ever since the first cave paintings, buildings have also become objects or canvasses of much artis ...
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