About Stagville

Learn about the history of Stagville Plantation, Stagville Historic Site, and Horton Grove, as well as the important stewardship work that is done to preserve these historic resources and honor the ancestors that moved through this land.

Singing on the Land: Historic Stagville's Story

Historic Stagville State Historic Site, N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources | Oct 28, 2020

 

Historic Stagville preserves a small fraction of the plantation holdings of the Bennehan-Cameron families. From 1771 to 1865, the Bennehan and Cameron families profited from the forced labor of enslaved Africans and African Americans on this land. By the 1860s, the Bennehan-Cameron family-controlled over 30,000 acres of land and enslaved over 900 people. The Stagville farm and quarters was one of the oldest sections of this enormous plantation complex. Today Stagville is a historic site dedicated to interpreting the lives, culture, and labors of enslaved people on the Bennehan-Cameron plantations. 

 

The site has been preserved as a state historic site since 1978, including a Bennehan family plantation house (c. 1787-1799), four slave dwellings at Horton Grove (c. 1851), and a massive timber-framed barn (c. 1860). Most of the historic landscape features are gone, but the site includes the foundation of an enslaved family's house, a Bennehan family cemetery, and the foundation of a kitchen building. Historic Stagville State Historic Site continues to research and teach about the lives of enslaved and freed people. The site's history draws on architecture, archaeology, oral history, and written records kept by the Bennehans, Camerons, enslaved people, and overseers. To learn more about the site or plan a trip to Historic Stagville, please visit the Historic Stagville State Historic Site website.

Historic Stagville State Historic Site | May 12, 2021

 

In this episode, Delphine Sellars and Diquan Edmonds join Historic Stagville Site Manager Vera Cecelski in conversation at Horton Grove. Each speaker represents an organization that keeps and cares for land that was formerly part of the Cameron plantations: Historic Stagville State Historic Site, Catawba Trail Farm, and Triangle Land Conservancy’s Horton Grove Nature Preserve. They share the different ways each of them seek to transform plantation land into spaces for healing, through land conservation, community agriculture, and public history. Their talk was recorded on the grounds of Horton Grove, the only surviving slave dwellings from the Bennehan and Cameron plantations. To learn more about the site or plan a trip to Historic Stagville, please visit the Historic Stagville State Historic Site website.

Stagville in the News