Somerset Place

American Visions, April-May, 1995 by Bridgette A. Lacy

Many African Americans view plantations in one light only: as places of bondage and degradation, places where their ancestors were enslaved and mistreated. But at one plantation, Somerset Place, near Creswell, N.C., African Americans are given proper respect and are credited with being artisans and pioneers who helped build the South.

When Josiah Collins bought Somerset Place in 1816 from his two partners, the plantation was well on its way to becoming one of the largest and wealthiest in the state. Three generations of the Collins family--aided by 400 enslaved men, women and children--expanded Somerset's holding to cover more than 100,000 acres surrounding Lake Phelps.

Somerset's slaves worked as carpenters, millers, blacksmiths, bricklayers, tailors, cooks, gardeners and general laborers, transforming swampy land into a profitable rice business.

That was then; today, Somerset Place is a state historic site, a 27-acre symbol of the accomplishments and culture of the African-American people. if only the plantation's cypress trees could talk, today's visitors would hear how 16 slaves were sold in 1853 because they tried to poison the overseer. And if the water in the canal that runs in front of the house could speak, they would hear how three of Josiah Collins' sons died before they reached manhood.

But of course trees and water can't whisper about what happened, so tourists are left to use their imaginations as they walk through the site's eight buildings--including the Collins mansion, the kitchen, the smokehouse, the bathhouse, the kitchen ration house and the dairy--some of which are original and some of which are reproductions.

Pictures of the last generation of Somerset slaves and the first generation of free blacks hang on the wall of Colony House, which once served as a guest house and a school for the Collins children.

That the role of the enslaved community is interpreted alongside that of the owners of the land is largely due to Dorothy Redford, Somerset's site manager. Redford ended up at Somerset after a decade-long effort to trace her roots, a process that took her from her Portsmouth, Va., home through a series of small North Carolina towns to the state's eastern shore. Tracing deeds in a courthouse one day, she turned up the bill of sale connecting her Little John ancestor to Somerset, a place that she had never heard of. Determined to press on, Redford eventually established the names of 21 slave families at Somerset.

In 1986, the descendants of these families and those of the white families connected to Somerset all gathered for a homecoming. Two thousand people showed up at Somerset Place that day.

Almost a decade later, Somerset remains a gathering spot where blacks and whites can reflect on the best and worst in themselves.

State Highway 64 takes visitors to Creswell, where they'll find signs pointing the way to Somerset Place, which lies eight miles southeast of Creswell.