Horton Grove was an area of houses for enslaved

African-American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American ...

s at the Bennehan-Cameron plantation complex, which included

Stagville Stagville Plantation is located in Durham County, North Carolina. With buildings constructed from the late 18th century to the mid-19th century, Stagville was part of one of the largest plantation complexes in the American South. The entire c ...

Plantation in the northeastern part of Durham County,

North Carolina North Carolina () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. The state is the 28th largest and 9th-most populous of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Georgia and So ...

. The slaves who lived at Horton Grove were held by the influential Bennehan and Cameron families. In 1860, 900 total slaves were held on the complex. The several structures still standing at Horton Grove are the only two-story slave residences remaining in

. The quarters at Horton Grove, which were constructed by slave craftsmen in the early 1850s, were the culmination of decades of gradual improvements at the plantation complex. The dwellings at Horton Grove represented the pinnacle of slave house development and include shuttered windows, multiple stories, brick chimneys, and raised stone foundations. These structures were occupied continuously until as late as the 1970s. After the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states th ...

, many of the former slaves stayed on the property as

sharecroppers Sharecropping is a legal arrangement with regard to agricultural land in which a landowner allows a tenant to use the land in return for a share of the crops produced on that land. Sharecropping has a long history and there are a wide range ...

and continued to live in these dwellings. Because of its historic and architectural significance, Horton Grove was listed in 1978 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 ...

. Archaeological finds on the site have provided insight into continuing practices of African heritage at Stagville, including the presence of

divining rods Dowsing is a type of divination employed in attempts to locate ground water, buried metals or ores, gemstones, oil, claimed radiations (radiesthesia),As translated from one preface of the Kassel experiments, "roughly 10,000 active dowsers in Ge ...

and communal cooking practices.

References

External links

Historic Stagville Foundation
- official site
Photos of Horton Grove
Houses in Durham County, North Carolina Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in North Carolina African-American history of North Carolina Open-air museums in North Carolina History museums in North Carolina African-American museums in North Carolina Museums in Durham County, North Carolina National Register of Historic Places in Durham County, North Carolina 1850 establishments in North Carolina Slave cabins and quarters in the United States History of slavery in North Carolina {{DurhamCountyNC-NRHP-stub