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53-458: Wye House is a historic residence and former headquarters of a historic plantation house northwest of Easton in rural Talbot County, Maryland . Built in 1781–1784, it is a high-quality and well-proportioned example of a wooden-frame Southern plantation house . It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1970. The Wye plantation was created in the 1650s by a Welsh Puritan and wealthy planter , Edward Lloyd. Between 1780 and 1790,

106-751: A " plantation house ," the residence of the owner, where important business was conducted. 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 it developed. The majority of slaveholders held 10 or fewer enslaved people, often to labor domestically. By

159-480: A central hall dividing them. In the South, they usually had full-width one-story shed extensions to the front and rear. These sheds could manifest as open porches, enclosed rooms, or a combination of the two. This I-house with sheds came to be commonly referred to as "Plantation Plain". It also proved to be one of the most adaptable folk house types to changing architectural tastes, with some even having neoclassical porticoes and other high-style elements added to them at

212-450: A descendant of the hall and parlor and the central-passage house-types. The central-passage house continued to be popular and could be either single-pile (one room deep) or double-pile (two rooms deep). If it had a porch, it was under a separate roof attached to the main house. I-houses were always two stories high, always single-pile, with side gables or a hipped roof. They were at least two rooms wide, with latter examples usually having

265-584: A functioning farmhouse . Although some plantation houses were planned as grand mansions and were built all at once from the ground up, many more began as fairly rudimentary structures that either stayed that way, were replaced, or were enlarged and improved over time as fortunes improved. In most areas of the South, the earliest settlers constructed houses to provide basic shelter suited to their local climate, not to establish permanence or demonstrate wealth or power. In colonial Delaware , Georgia , Maryland , North Carolina , South Carolina , and Virginia ,

318-473: A fusion of stylistic influences. Houses that were basically Greek Revival in character sprouted Italianate towers, bracketed eaves, or adopted the asymmetrical massing characteristic of that style. Although never as popular as Greek Revival, fully Gothic Revival and Italianate plantation houses began to appear by the 1850s, after being popularized by the books of men such as Alexander Jackson Davis , Andrew Jackson Downing , and Samuel Sloan . The Gothic Revival

371-599: A large portion of the National Defense Reserve Fleet , called the "James River fleet" or the "ghost fleet", consisting of " mothballed " ships, mostly merchant vessels, that can be activated within 20 to 120 days to provide shipping for the United States during national emergencies, either military or non-military, such as commercial shipping crises. The fleet is managed by the U.S. Department of Transportation 's Maritime Administration and

424-519: A later date. Another house type, the Creole cottage , came from the areas along the Gulf Coast and its associated rivers that were formerly part of New France . It was always one-and-a-half stories, with a side-gabled roof, and often had upper floor dormer windows. However, it accommodated a full-width front porch under the main roof, with doors or jib-windows opening from all of the rooms onto

477-472: A palace". Even Gaineswood , now a National Historic Landmark due to it being considered a lavish example of a plantation house, began as a two-story hewn-log dogtrot that was eventually enveloped within the brick mass of the house. After the period of initial settlement, more refined folk house types came from the older portions of the South, especially the I-house , thought by architectural scholars to be

530-512: A survey identified 175 sturgeon remaining in the entire river, with 15 specimens exceeding 5 feet (1.5 m). Due to its potential for generating mechanical power for rotating machinery such as grist mills, hydroelectric power, and as a water route for trade, many dams have been built across the James River since the time of European settlement of the region. While most of these dams have been removed or failed, several dams still exist along

583-555: Is the last bridge east of the Deepwater Port of Richmond and head of ocean-going navigation at the fall line of the James River. West of this point, potential flooding is more of an engineering concern than clearance for watercraft. The following is a list of extant highway bridges across the James River with one or both ends within the City of Richmond. The following is a partial, incomplete list of extant highway bridges across

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636-649: The Corinthian . The academic version of Greek Revival embraced the pure form of ancient Grecian architecture . Due to its popularity during a time of great wealth for many southern plantations, it was the Greek Revival that became permanently linked to the plantation legend. Though some houses were architect-designed, many, if not most, were designed by the owners or their carpenters from pattern books published by Asher Benjamin , Minard Lafever , John Haviland , and others. Greek Revival proved to very adaptable to

689-1005: The Elizabeth River and the Nansemond River join the James River to form the harbor area known as Hampton Roads . Between the tip of the Virginia Peninsula near Old Point Comfort and the Willoughby Spit area of Norfolk in South Hampton Roads , a channel leads from Hampton Roads into the southern portion of the Chesapeake Bay and out to the Atlantic Ocean a few miles further east. Many boats pass through this river to import and export Virginia products. The James River contains many parks and other recreational attractions. Canoeing, fishing, kayaking, hiking, and swimming are some of

742-784: The James River in Virginia , constructed mansions in brick and Georgian style, e.g. Shirley Plantation . Common or smaller planters in the late 18th and 19th century had more modest wood-frame buildings, such as Southall Plantation in Charles City County . In the Lowcountry of South Carolina , by contrast, even before the American Revolution , planters holding large rice plantations typically owned hundreds of enslaved people. In Charleston and Savannah,

795-601: The Kanawha River , a tributary of the Ohio River . For the most mountainous section between the two points, the James River and Kanawha Turnpike was built to provide a portage link for wagons and stagecoaches. However, before the canal could be fully completed, in the mid-19th century, railroads emerged as a more practical technology and eclipsed canals for economical transportation, ending the canal's progress at Eagle Rock . The Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O)

848-652: The University of Maryland . In 2011, excavation of the greenhouse, built by enslaved African people, brought a discovery of African charms laid to ward off bad spirits at the house's furnace and entrance. 38°51′12″N 76°10′06″W  /  38.853398°N 76.168406°W  / 38.853398; -76.168406 Plantation house in the Southern United States In the American South , antebellum plantations were centered on

901-637: The confluence of the Cowpasture and Jackson rivers in the Appalachian Mountains . It flows into the Chesapeake Bay at Hampton Roads . Tidal waters extend west to Richmond at the river's fall line (the head of navigation ). Larger tributaries draining to the tidal portion include the Appomattox River , Chickahominy River , Warwick River , Pagan River , and the Nansemond River . At its mouth near Newport News Point,

954-523: The "overall grade of the State of the James has improved to a B with a score of 66% from its failing health decades ago." The James River drains a catchment comprising 10,432 square miles (27,020 km ). The watershed includes about 4% open water and an area with a population of 2.5 million people (2000). The James River forms near Iron Gate on the border between Alleghany and Botetourt counties, from

1007-572: The 1840s. The dogtrot -type plan was common for many of these log houses. Rough vernacular architecture for early plantations was also true in Arkansas and Missouri although in their river regions. Admitted to the Union in the mid-1840s, early architecture in Florida and Texas generally showed a stronger Spanish Colonial architectural influence, blended with French and British forms. Some of

1060-671: The 1960s and 1970s, mishandling and dumping of the insecticide Kepone resulted in the contamination of large stretches of the James River estuary downstream of the Allied Signal Company and LifeSciences Product Company plants in Hopewell, Virginia . Because of the pollution, sections of the river were considered "dead" and unfit for human use, and many businesses and restaurants along the river suffered economic losses. In December 1975 Virginia Governor Mills Godwin Jr. shut down

1113-421: The James River to fishing for 100 miles, from Richmond to the Chesapeake Bay . This ban remained in effect for 13 years, until efforts to clean up the river began to show results. A decade of accumulated silt, lying above the contaminated riverbed, helped to reduce levels of the chemical. Since the 1970s, the health of the James River has improved substantially. The Chesapeake Bay Agreement of 1983, signed by

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1166-602: The James River west of Richmond. The Monitor-Merrimac Memorial Bridge-Tunnel prohibits bicycles, but bicyclists may take the Jamestown Ferry . After a fatal accident on the Boulevard Bridge , the City of Richmond requires bicycles to travel on the sidewalk for the length of the bridge. The James River Reserve Fleet is the anchorage ( 37°07′13″N 76°38′47″W  /  37.120393°N 76.646469°W  / 37.120393; -76.646469 ) for

1219-634: The James River. The Native Americans who populated the area east of the Fall Line in the late 16th and early 17th centuries called the James River the Powhatan River , named for the Powhatans who occupied the area. The Jamestown colonists who arrived in 1607 named it "James" after King James I of England as they constructed the first permanent English settlement in the Americas along

1272-585: The activities that people enjoy along the river during the summer. From the river's start in the Blue Ridge Mountains to Richmond , numerous rapids and pools offer fishing and whitewater rafting. The most intense whitewater stretch is a 2-mile (3 km) segment that ends in downtown Richmond where the river goes over the fall line . This is the only place in the country where extensive class III (class IV with above average river levels) whitewater conditions exist within sight of skyscrapers. Below

1325-400: The banks of the river about 35 miles (56 km) upstream from the Chesapeake Bay . The navigable portion of the river was the major highway of colonial Virginia during its first 15 years, facilitating supply ships delivering supplies and more emigrants from England. However, for the first five years, despite hopes of discovering gold ores, these ships sent little of monetary value back to

1378-561: The brutal conditions of the plantation in his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave . The nearby hamlets of Unionville and Copperville are now home to many descendants of the people who were enslaved at Wye House. This has created an interesting dynamic, with the descendants of the enslavers and the enslaved living within a very short distance of one another. The Wye House plantation gained media attention in 2006 for archaeological investigations led by

1431-646: The confluence of the Cowpasture and Jackson Rivers in Botetourt County 348 miles (560 km) to the Chesapeake Bay . The river length extends to 444 miles (715 km) if the Jackson River is included, the longer of its two headwaters, it is the longest river in Virginia. Jamestown and Williamsburg , Virginia's first colonial capitals, and Richmond , Virginia's current capital, lie on

1484-411: The earliest plantation houses tended to follow British-derived folk forms such as the hall and parlor house -type and central-passage house -type. Grander structures during the later colonial period usually conformed to the neoclassically -influenced styles, although some very early and rare Jacobean structures survive in Virginia. And in the southern portion of what became the state of Louisiana ,

1537-467: The early 1800s. Although large portions of Alabama and Mississippi were settled at roughly the same time, there were areas of these states, along with portions of western Georgia and southeastern Tennessee, that did not see wide-scale settlement until after the Indian removal in the 1830s. Very little formal architecture existed within these newly settled areas, with most dwellings being of hewn logs into

1590-407: The economy was drastically altered. Planters often did not have the funds for upkeep of their existing houses and new construction virtually ceased on most plantations. The new sharecropping method kept many plantations going, but the days of extravagance were over. James River (Virginia) The James River is a river in Virginia that begins in the Appalachian Mountains and flows from

1643-618: The elite also held numerous enslaved people to work as household servants. The 19th-century development of the Deep South for cotton cultivation depended on large plantations with much more acreage than was typical of the Upper South; and for labor, planters held hundreds of enslaved people. Until December 1865, slavery was legal in parts of the United States. Most enslaved people labored in agricultural production, and planter

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1696-471: The fall line east of Richmond, the river is better suited for water skiing and other large boat recreation. Here the river is known for its blue catfish , reaching average sizes of 20 to 30 pounds (9.1 to 13.6 kg), with frequent catches exceeding 50 pounds (23 kg). In the Chesapeake watershed, the James River is the last confirmed holdout for the nearly extirpated Atlantic sturgeon . In May 2007

1749-403: The falls at Richmond, many James River plantations had their own wharves, and additional ports and/or early railheads were located at Warwick , Bermuda Hundred , City Point , Claremont , Scotland , and Smithfield , and, during the 17th century, the capital of the colony at Jamestown. Navigation of the James River played an important role in early Virginia commerce and in the settlement of

1802-610: The governors of Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, the mayor of the District of Columbia, and the EPA, established baseline environmental protections and promoted regional cooperation conducive to river clean-up. This original agreement has evolved as the Chesapeake Bay Program . The James River Association (JRA), founded in 1976, began publishing State of the James reports in 2016. In their 2023 report, JRA concluded that

1855-528: The highly angled path the dam takes across the river. While not identified in the National Inventory of Dams, a very low head weir structure is found below Bosher Dam in Richmond on either side of Williams Island. Known as the "Z-Dam" for its zigzag course on the south side of the island, the current structure was built in 1932 and serves to direct water into Richmond's water treatment facility on

1908-637: The hot and humid climate of the South, with colloquial adaptations of the style seen from one region, and sometimes from one town, to another. Greek Revival would remain a favorite architectural style in the agrarian South until well after the Civil War, but other styles had appeared in the nation about the same time as Greek Revival or soon afterward. These were primarily the Italianate and Gothic Revival . They were slower to be adopted in whole for domestic plantation architecture, but they can be seen in

1961-518: The interior, although growth of the colony was primarily in the Tidewater region during the first 75 years. The upper reaches of the river above the head of navigation at the fall line were explored by fur-trading parties sent out by Abraham Wood during the late 17th century. Although ocean-going ships were unable to navigate beyond present-day Richmond, portage of products and navigation with smaller craft to transport crops other than tobacco

2014-508: The late 18th century, most planters in the Upper South had switched from exclusive tobacco cultivation to mixed-crop production, both because tobacco had exhausted the soil and because of changing markets. The shift away from tobacco meant they had slaves in excess of the number needed for labor, and they began to sell them in the internal slave trade. There was a variety of domestic architecture on plantations. The largest and wealthiest planter families, for instance, those with estates fronting on

2067-507: The main house was built by his great-great-grandson, Edward Lloyd IV , using the profits generated by the forced labor of enslaved people . It is cited as an example between the transition of Georgian and Federal architecture , which is attributed to builder Robert Key. Nearby the house is an orangery , a rare survival of an early garden structure where orange and lemon trees were cultivated, and which still contains its original 18th-century heating system of hot-air ducts. During its peak,

2120-428: The main houses of plantations, primarily because they were the most likely to survive and usually the most elaborate structures in the complex. Also, until fairly recent times, scholars and local historians usually focused on the life of the plantation owner, that is, the planter, and his or her family rather than the people they held as slaves. All romanticized notions aside, the plantation house was, at its most basic,

2173-532: The north bank. The less than 5 feet tall dam does not serve any power or navigation purpose. In the Hampton Roads area, the river is as much as 5 miles (8.0 km) wide at points. Due to ocean-going shipping upriver as far as the Port of Richmond , a combination of ferryboats , high bridges and bridge-tunnels are used for highway traffic. Crossings east to west include: The SR 895 high-level crossing

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2226-405: The plantation's owners enslaved more than 1,000 people to work lands that totaled more than 42,000 acres (17,000 ha). Though the land has shrunk to 1,300 acres (530 ha) today, it is still owned by the descendants of Edward Lloyd, now in their 11th generation on the property. Frederick Douglass was enslaved on the plantation, from around the ages of seven and eight, and spoke extensively of

2279-638: The plantations reflected French Colonial architectural types, some with Spanish influences, that remained in trend well after the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. Following the Revolutionary War , Federal and Jeffersonian -type neoclassicism became dominant in formal plantation architecture. Large portions of the South outside of the original British colonies, such as in Kentucky and Tennessee , did not see extensive settlement until

2332-488: The porch, and was usually raised high above the ground on a full raised basement or piers. It was a common form for many early plantation houses and town houses alike in the lower reaches of Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi. When the cotton boom years began in the 1830s, the United States was entering its second neoclassical phase, with Greek Revival architecture being the dominant style. By this point trained architects were also becoming more common, and several introduced

2385-602: The sponsors. In 1612, businessman John Rolfe successfully cultivated a non-native strain of tobacco which proved popular in England. Soon, the river became the primary means of exporting the large hogsheads of this cash crop from an ever-growing number of plantations with wharfs along its banks. This development made the proprietary efforts of the Virginia Company of London successful financially, spurring even more development, investments and immigration. Below

2438-524: The style to the South. Whereas the earlier Federal and Jeffersonian neoclassicism displayed an almost feminine lightness, academic Greek Revival was very masculine, with a heaviness not seen in the earlier styles. Earlier neoclassicism had often used ancient Roman models and the Tuscan order , along with the Roman versions of the original three Greek orders. The original Greek orders were Doric , Ionic , and

2491-731: The top 8 percent of landowners. In his study of southwest Georgia, Lee Formwalt also defines planters in size of land holdings rather than enslaved people. Formwalt's planters are in the top 4.5 percent of land owners, translating into real estate worth $ 6,000 or more in 1850, $ 24,000 or more in 1860, and $ 11,000 or more in 1870. In his study of Harrison County, Texas , Randolph B. Campbell classifies large planters as owners of 20 enslaved humans, and small planters as owners of between ten and 19 enslaved humans. In Chicot and Phillips counties, Arkansas, Carl H. Moneyhon defines large planters as owners of twenty or more enslaved humans, and six hundred or more acres. Most historical research has focused on

2544-549: The upper course of the river. From the head of the river downstream to Richmond are found the following dams as identified by the current US Army Corps of Engineers National Inventory of Dams: The tallest dam is the Reusens Dam, which also has the greatest hydroelectric nameplate capacity and the greatest reservoir capacity. At 1,617 feet, the longest dam is the Cushaw Hydroelectric Project due to

2597-405: The wealthiest planters never built grand residences. One example was noted by Albert J. Pickett , an early Alabama historian. In 1850, he visited Nicholas Davis, the owner of the prosperous Walnut Grove Plantation. Despite owning more than 100 slaves, he was still living in the large log house he had built after his migration from Virginia in 1817. He told Pickett that he "would not exchange (it) for

2650-846: Was a term commonly used to describe a farmer with many enslaved humans. The term planter has no universally-accepted definition, but academic historians have defined it to identify the elite class, "a landowning farmer of substantial means." In the " Black Belt " counties of Alabama and Mississippi , the terms "planter" and "farmer" were often synonymous. Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman define large planters as owning over 50 enslaved people, and medium planters as owning between 16 and 50 enslaved humans. In his study of Black Belt counties in Alabama, Jonathan Wiener defines planters by ownership of real property, rather than of enslaved people. A planter, for Wiener, owned at least $ 10,000 worth of real estate in 1850 and $ 32,000 worth in 1860, equivalent to about

2703-621: Was completed between Richmond and the Ohio River at the new city of Huntington, West Virginia by 1873, dooming the canal's economic prospects. In the late-19th century, the Richmond and Alleghany Railroad was laid along the eastern portion of the canal's towpath, and became part of the C&;O within 10 years. In modern times, this rail line is used primarily in transporting West Virginia coal to export coal piers at Newport News . During

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2756-516: Was feasible. Produce from the Piedmont and Great Valley regions descended the river to seaports at Richmond and Manchester through such port towns as Lynchburg , Scottsville , Columbia and Buchanan . The James River was considered a route for transport of produce from the Ohio Valley . The James River and Kanawha Canal was built for this purpose, to provide a navigable portion of

2809-399: Was usually expressed in wood as Carpenter Gothic . Italianate was the most popular of the two styles. It was also most commonly built using wood construction when used for plantation houses, although a few brick examples, such as Kenworthy Hall , have survived. The outbreak of war in 1861 put an abrupt end to the building of grand mansions. Following the war and the end of Reconstruction ,

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