The Mansion House at Berry Hill Plantation: Architecture and the Changing Nature of
Slavery in Antebellum Virginia
Author(s): Clifton Ellis
Source: Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture , 2006, Vol. 13, No. 1 (2006), pp. 22-48
Published by: Vernacular Architecture Forum
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20355367
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The Mansion House at Berry Hill Plantation: Architecture and the Changing
Nature of Slavery in Antebellum Virginia
Clifton Ellis
Berry Hill in Halifax County, Virginia, is considered one
of the finest examples of Greek Revival architecture in the
state. James C. Bruce, a successful entrepreneur and tobacco
planter, constructed the "mansion house," as he called it, and
its two Tuscan order outbuildings that flank the forecourt
in a two-year building campaign from 1842 (fig. 1). The
monumental octastyle Doric portico of the house evokes, as
it no doubt was meant to do, the Parthenon of the Athenian
Acropolis. This temple-fronted collection of buildings, set on
a gentle rise at the center of the plantation, announced the
ascendancy of a new style of architecture among the elite of
antebellum Virginia. Although several architectural histori
ans have canonized Berry Hill as among the great examples
of domestic Greek Revival style, none of them has looked
beyond the columns to understand the everyday workings of
the domestic life or to question what Berry Hill's unusual ar
rangement of spaces might imply.l A series of asymmetrical
massings and projections, the most notable of which is the
100-foot long service wing (fig. 2), lies behind Berry Hill's
temple front; the difficulty of explaining the peculiar jumble
of architectural configurations in plan and elevation that oc
cur at the rear of the building no doubt accounts for the lack
of critical analysis.
While Berry Hill's serene Grecian fa?ade represents a
change in fashion, the plan and form of the house announce
another equally significant change. With a dramatic departure
from plans of gentry houses of the eighteenth century in which
rules of symmetry were predictably consistent, Berry Hill's un
usual plan suggests that the Bruce family functioned differently
from their eighteenth-century predecessors. Recent work has
helped explain how gender and race were inextricably linked
Fig. 1. North elevation of Berry Hill, Halifax County, Virginia. (Virginia Department of Historic Resources, Richmond, VA)
22 Perspectives In Vernacular Architecture
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Fig. Z Service wing extending behind Berry Hill. (Photo: Author, 1999)
and in tension with each other in the elite antebellum Southern
slaveholding household, and how architecture formed part of
the response to these tensions. Importantly, the changes were
not only in plan but also in life within the house.
A close reading of the documentary evidence and of
the house itself reveals the hand of Eliza Bruce, James C.
Bruce's wife, at work in the planning (figs. 3 and 4).~ While the
fa?ade of Berry Hill shows a desire to present a fashionable,
even monumental face to society, the asymmetry behind the
scenes illustrates the results of Eliza's influence which, though
substantial, are out of sight, as might befit her status as a wife
and mother in the antebellum South. Eliza Bruce took an ac
tive role in planning and overseeing the construction of Berry
Hill, especially those service areas used by slaves whom she
supervised. Looking at Eliza in her role as a wife, a mother,
and as a mistress to slaves, allows us to consider Berry Hill as
an architectural response to two growing trends in antebellum
America: abolitionism and the cult of domesticity. Ultimately,
other members of the Bruce family adapted and perfected
Eliza's modification of Berry Hill in other houses they built,
thus codifying a spatial arrangement that facilitated the new
reality of social relationships between master and slave in an
tebellum Virginia. While this paper focuses narrowly on Eliza
Bruce and Berry Hill, its larger significance is to suggest the
ways in which antebellum architecture responded to a world
that increasingly relied on material objects to mediate the
complex human experience of daily life on a plantation.
James C. Bruce intended Berry Hill to be the focal point
of his plantation and the administrative center for his influ
ential business and agricultural empire. Bruce's investments
were diversified, and he owned substantial stock in numerous
banks, railroads, and canals in addition to bonds he held from
municipalities including Richmond, Petersburg, and Philadel
phia. He also owned two other plantations in Virginia and
one in Louisiana, and he would eventually buy three more
plantations on which to settle his sons. To place James Bruce
in context with other slaveholders we should consider that
by 1860 twenty-four percent of all white households owned
slaves. Of this number, twelve percent owned twenty or more
slaves, and less than one percent owned 100 or more slaves.
When James Bruce inventoried his slaves in 1852, he counted
402 enslaved African-Americans on his three plantations in
Virginia and on his plantation in Louisiana. Of this number,
108 slaves lived at Berry Hill. Another way to understand the
resources that Bruce commanded is to consider that when
the final bill for building Berry Hill was reckoned in 1844,
Bruce paid his builder $31,132.00 cash. That same year, he
paid William Pollard $300.00 for his services as overseer at
CuproN Ellis, The Mansion House at Berry Hill Plantation 23
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immn Cote* Bruce (UOm-m*)
Fig. 3. Portrait of James Bruce by George Cooke, 1837. (Courtesy of Fig. 4. Portrait of Eliza Douglas Bruce by George Cooke, 1837.
Ellen Tully) (Courtesy of Frederick Fisher)
Berry Hill. Without question James C. Bruce was among the
wealthiest Southern slaveholders.3
In March of 1842 Bruce signed a contract with a local
builder, Josiah Dabbs, to construct a house on Bruce's recently
acquired plantation called Berry Hill. As Bruce gave verbal
dictation, his assistant wrote the contract that described the
principal elevation and the disposition of the principal rooms
on the first floor of the house, along with two small offices
flanking a forecourt. Growing weary, and a little frustrated,
with the tedium of describing such an undertaking, Bruce
explained: "It's impossible to express every thing in a contract
of this kind, but a plan & drawing having been made there
can be no difficulty in understanding it." Bruce was referring
to a drawing of the Doric portico and a plan of the first floor
done by John Johnson, a friend who had taken courses in
drawing and civil engineering at West Point. The drawing no
longer survives, but the plan of the house can be reconstructed
from the precise building instructions within the contract (fig.
5; appendix A).4
Johnson drew a large central hall flanked by double
parlors to the east and a bedchamber and nursery to the
west. At the end of the central hall on axis with the front door
was the dining room, which projected ten feet south of the
main block of the house. To the east of this projection was a
greenhouse and to the west was a closet providing storage for
the dining room. Two sets of stairs gave access to the second
floor. The main stair rose in a double flight from the central
hall. The secondary stair was located in what Bruce called the
nursery passage between the dining room and nursery. It is
clear from the contract that Johnson drew only the first floor
and an elevation for the house. Other rooms are listed, but
not described, with the stipulation that they will be finished
"at the direction of Bruce."}
24 Perspectives In Vernacular Architecture
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LEGEND
Hall
Parlor
Greenhouse
Dining Room
Vestibule
Closet
Nursery
Nursery Passage
Clothes Closet
Chamber
Pantry
Kitchen
Laundry
Slave Room
$
Fig. 5. Conjectural reconstruction of the original plan of Berry Hill based on the 1842 bui
contract. (Drawing by Urs Peter Flueckiger adapted from those of the author)
Bruce also wrote further directions on a sheet of Eliza
Bruce's pink stationery, giving a more complete description of
the rest of the house, specifications on decorative materials,
and the dimensions of the rooms in the service wing (appendix
B). The pink stationery suggests that James and Eliza prob
ably discussed these specifications, perhaps one night in their
chamber, and while talking, he put pen to paper. These rooms
included five storerooms and workrooms in the basement and
five bedrooms upstairs, all corresponding in plan to those on
the first floor. Also described in the contract, but not drawn,
was the row of service rooms that projected dir
the dining room. This row of rooms included t
laundry, and two rooms for slaves.
These two documents?the contract and th
tions James and Eliza most likely wrote together
about their intentions. A primary concern was
monumental effect making an impressive public
with a temple fa?ade set within a forecourt and
diminutive temples. Johnson's plan of the first
as the building contract with Dabbs, and Bruce'
Clifton Ellis, The Mansion House at Berry Hill Pl
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instructions, focus on the disposition and decoration of the
grand public rooms. The men involved in the building of Berry
Hill house had a clear understanding of the symbolic role of
the house as the seat of an elite slaveholder.
Nevertheless, the house was not built in full accordance
with the plans of these men. During construction, substantial
changes were made to the service wing. Changing brick pat
terns and notable breaks in the brickwork offer clear evidence
of this. The main house at Berry Hill took its form in a build
ing campaign that had four distinct phases between 1842 and
1844. The main block of the house containing the public
rooms and private family rooms was built first, followed in
succession by the pantry wing, the service wing, and an exten
sion of the service wing (fig. 6). Identifying these four phases
of construction is important because it reveals an otherwise
undocumented logic at work. That logic belonged to Eliza,
the wife and mother of the Bruce household, and the mistress
of twenty-seven house slaves.7
James Bruce, with the help of his friend and draftsman,
John Johnson, had planned a monumental Greek temple with
grand public spaces served discreetly and efficiently by a one
story wing that projected from the rear of the house forming a
symmetrical 'T' in plan. While the Parthenon-inspired Greek
temple front of Berry Hill is unique to the upper South and to
Virginia in particular, the attached service wing is even more
unusual. Although summer kitchens were sometimes found in
the basements of gentry houses, kitchens and especially slave
quarters were otherwise always separate structures, usually
well removed from the main house with little thought having
been given to convenience of service.
The idea and the form for this attached service wing
most likely came from urban examples. Attached service wings
were common features in both free and slaveholding urban
households of the North and South. Examples can still be
found in New Orleans, Charleston, Richmond, Philadelphia,
and New York City, cities that both Bruce and Johnson knew
well and which Eliza Bruce had visited. In fact, of the several
Richmond properties that Bruce inherited from his father,
two were configured with service wings projecting to the rear.
The property on Main Street consisted of three contiguous
structures built flush to the western property line of the lot,
the whole forming an ell shape. The property was described
in a Mutual Assurance Society policy as "a dwelling with walls
of stone and brick, 3 stories high, covered with slate" and a
"brick kitchen covered with slate 2 stories high." (fig. 7) The
dwelling and the kitchen were connected by "a brick covered
way with a slate roof." The configuration of the house on
Main Street, and in another Bruce property on H Street, had
been established by 1822.9
The attached service wing should also be considered in
the context of a national trend during the early nineteenth
century toward the separation of service functions from gen
teel spaces and a growing preoccupation with creating more
discreet routes between the two. In part, then, the Bruces may
have been responding to a trend in segregating service and
public space, but when they decided to attach their service
functions to the house, they were departing from the long,
ingrained custom of Southern plantation architecture that
relegated all service to separate outbuildings removed from
the main house. In doing so, they created a unique house form
for a rural slaveholding household.
Although Bruce and Johnson had provided for a sym
metrical and perhaps even logical (on paper, at least) arrange
ment for service, they gave little thought to a configuration of
the service spaces as Eliza Bruce would use them. Moreover,
the service wing that Bruce and Johnson planned projected
directly back from the dining room, leaving little or no pos
sibility for windows to provide light and air to that important
public space. A full set of plans and elevations that included
service areas would have made this problem apparent, but
such plans were probably irrelevant to the men who were
planning Berry Hill. For Eliza, however, this omission was
crucial. The service wing as built was dramatically different
from that described in the contract and detailed on Eliza's
stationery. In addition to the closet behind the nursery, the
as-built configuration includes a pantry, servants' hall, and
call bell vestibule all of which are arranged to facilitate Eliza's
daily routine. When the errors of the as-planned service wing
were realized, the logical solution of simply moving it evidendy
proved unacceptable to Eliza, and as construction began, she
took a more active interest, directing changes to those spaces
that would be under her direct supervision.
There is documentary evidence for Eliza Bruce's role
in making these important modifications to the house as well
as evidence that she was involved in decisions concerning its
Grecian porch and interior decoration. The first is a diary
that she kept in the fall of 1840 as she and her husband took
a trip north, through Philadelphia and New York to Saratoga
Springs. She was a shrewd observer and took note especially
of the grand public buildings they visited. Chief among the
26 Perspectives In Vernacular Architecture
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Phase 1
Phase 2
Phase 3
Phase 4
Hau
Parlor
Greenhouse
Dining Room
Call Bell Vestibule
Servants* Hall
Nursery
Nursery Passage
Clothes Closet
Chamber
Interior of Colonnade Shed
Closet
Kitchen
Laundry
Slave Room
Privy
$
Fig. 6. Plan of Berry Hill as built, showing the four phases of construction. (Drawing by Urs Peter F
adapted from those of the author)
Clifton Ellis, The Mansion House at Berry Hill Plantat
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\
y
%?- ec t:* Jf+.J
?4
11**
m
^u ~Jt "?~* ^jr ^"
/ .?era*?? /C^AAy
'4
I
-^ -Jfa*
edfccJ^****??
'?>
?
Fig. 7. Mutual Assurance Society plat of 1822 showing the dwelling and attached service ell of a Bruce property on Main Str
(Library of Virginia, Richmond, VA)
examples of Greek Revival architecture in Philadelphia was
Girard College by Thomas U. Walter, which she declared
was "the most splendid building I ever saw, the pillars par
ticularly so." Comparing the work of William Strickland in
the city?the Exchange, Post Office, and the Second Bank
of the United States?Eliza liked "the U.S. Bank best" for
its fine portico. Of all the buildings the Bruces saw during
the trip, she was most impressed with the new Vermont Sate
Capitol by Ammi B. Young. She praised the building for "the
most beautiful granite I have yet seen," and for its "handsome
portico with six immense granite pillars." In each instance,
Eliza noted with approval the impressive Greek porticoes,
and by the time they began construction at Berry Hill two
years later, both James and Eliza were in accord about the
style they wanted.L1
The second piece of documentary evidence that points
to Eliza's role is her husband's addendum to the contract that
he wrote on his wife's stationery and in which he gave his wife
discretion in some of the aesthetic choices, primarily
colors and wall-paper. We know, then, that James defer
his wife's taste in certain aspects of the design; she, too,
stake in the appearance of the public rooms, and husban
wife appear to have been partners in some of the decis
The third, and most telling, piece of document
evidence is a series of letters between Eliza and James.
letters indicate that, although James Bruce was the undi
head of the family, Eliza's role as the head and director
domestic matters was unquestioned. In March of 1831,
example, she went to visit her sister in North Carolina, l
her husband in charge of the household. James wrote t
in a joking manner saying: "Your note of directions has
followed. I ought, however, to except housekeeping as t
not my forte. I kept the keys the first day, but I have no
one since. So that everything you have in the world is a
mercy of Darby and Julius."12
28 Perspectives In Vernacular Architecture
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The keys Bruce refers to are of course the keys that
Eliza Bruce carried at all times on her rounds of supervising
the household. Darby and Julius were trusted house slaves
who knew the routine of household chores and duties. Bruce
evidently tired of the constant interruptions of slaves asking
for keys, so he relinquished them. This letter acknowledges
Eliza's important role in arranging and maintaining the
household and her control of its domestic spaces. Moreover,
the anecdote speaks less of James Bruce's lack of domestic
abilities than it does of his wife's close attention to her duties
as mistress of her slaves.
Another letter from James Bruce to his wife is especially
suggestive. In August 1842, four months after Josiah Dabbs
began work at Berry Hill, James left on an extended trip and
was gone five weeks, leaving Eliza in charge of the building
campaign. In this letter James urges her to have the overseer
check on the ratio of lime to sand being used in the mortar for
the house. The timing of this letter is very important because
Josiah Dabbs was just laying the foundation of the house, and
significant changes were soon to be made in the organization
of the service rooms. The fact that James was away, and Eliza
was clearly left in charge, indicates that she was an active
participant in the changes made to the original plan.
Two-and-a-half years later, in 1844, the house was al
most finished and the Bruces moved in. There was still work
to be done, but on the advice of his doctor, James left for Cuba
in October to avoid the cold damp Virginia winter. He was
gone six months, and during that time he and Eliza exchanged
a series of interesting and valuable letters. When James left,
construction was still under way on parts of the house and
its outbuildings, and it was Eliza who made decisions about
construction details. The work Eliza initiated was considerable.
It included planting clumps of ornamental trees and laying
out her own series of terraced flower and vegetable gardens.
But in addition to the landscape, Eliza was also responsible for
very practical aspects of the finishing of the house. She found
that the brick used in the flooring of the kitchen was too soft, so
she had it taken up and replaced with flagstone. She initiated
the repair of chimney flues in her nursery and the building
of new brick chimneys for two slave houses. She also directed
the moving of several other slave houses to different locations
on the plantation. Of the latter, she reported: "They have just
moved Patsy's house. They found it heavy as the walls were
filled with brick. That is the last to move, and I'm very glad
of it for I am tired of the moving business."14
Eliza's sister-in-law Sally Bruce visited Berry Hill several
times while Bruce was away and witnessed the prodigious
amount of work that Eliza performed on the house and
grounds. She wrote James, "Sister E. was generally engaged
in improving the grounds and attending plantation affairs,
and I am sure you will find that things have not suffered from
your absence. Such absolute sway as she exercised would have
compensated me for the loss of 'Lord, King, and Governor.'"
Eliza and her husband had discussed some of these projects
before he left, but in many cases she was acting on her own
accord, as she indicated when she wrote: "I do hope you will
approve of all the work I've been doing." Two months later, af
ter having planned and supervised the moving of slave houses,
the building of stables and various other improvements to the
plantation, she exclaimed: "How delighted I will be to see you
again and resign my authority in your hands."15
While documentary evidence confirms Eliza Bruce's
role in the construction of Berry Hill, a close reading of the
house's fabric and plan reveals still more evidence of her
hand in the building process. The service spaces?pantry,
kitchen, and laundry?to which the contract referred were
spaces that Eliza would control with her keys in the new
house. The changes she initiated in Johnson's plan during her
husband's absence in August and September 1842 centered
on disposition of service spaces and circulation patterns, es
pecially as they related to the dining room and nursery, those
domestic spaces directly associated with her role as mother
and mistress.
As Dabbs was raising the walls of the basement foun
dation of the main block during the summer of 1842, Eliza
must have realized that the original arrangement would leave
the dining room with only one window that opened onto the
greenhouse. By August Dabbs had already raised the walls of
the house beyond the first floor when he received new instruc
tions, presumably from Eliza, but perhaps in consultation
with her husband, who was away. Regardless of who gave or
approved the change in Johnson's plan, the new arrangement
of service areas is so radically different from the original that
it must have been made on site. A close look at Berry Hill's
final plan and the building fabric itself indicates that the new
arrangement was made to suit the needs of Eliza.
In place of the closet behind the nursery Eliza planned a
two-story pantry wing projecting thirty-five feet south from the
nursery wall (figs. 8 and 9). This wing contains the pantry in
the basement and a servants' hall and closet on the first floor.
Clifton Ellis, The Mansion House at Berry Hill Plantation 29
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Nursery Passage
Fig. 8. Lifted isometric of the pantry wing of Berry Hill. (Drawing by John Houser adapted from those of the author)
The first floor of the pantry wing is on level with the first floor
of the main block of the house. A door in the north side of the
nursery opens into the closet passage running perpendicular
to the nursery and leading to a large locked closet, two steps
above the passage, where china, silver, and linens were stored.
To the east of the closet passage is the servants' hall, a stag
ing area from which slaves served the dining room. Between
the servants' hall and dining room is a vestibule, open to the
colonnade to the south and accessible by lockable doors from
the dining room to the west and the nursery passage to the
north. In this vestibule hung eleven call bells that were con
nected to the front door and to every major room in the house.
The pantry is located directly under the closet of the pantry
wing and is sheltered on the east and south by the colonnade.
This important storage room has two points of access, one
of which is a lockable door in the closet on the first floor that
opens into a stair leading down to the pantry. Although the
pantry is on the same level as the basement, it has no access
to the other storerooms in that part of the house. The other
point of access to the pantry is a lockable door in the south
30 Perspectives In Vernacular Architecture
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fw^WH^T ^J?i^*9ll92w Y^^^^I^^K ^ s.^SBBfc?^^^B^BiBvv^'
S pi H m BIP i ": ^I??ISBh
^-_?i-,,-,, -????^^^^^^^^S
/7?. 9. View ofthe pantry wing ofBerry Hill showing the louvered shed over th
wall that opens onto the colonnade leading to the kitchen.
Eliza removed the service wing entirely from the main block
of the house, locating it ten feet west of the pantry wing and
connecting the two wings by a curtain wall with a door that
gave access to the west yard of the main house. Plans for a
colonnade connecting the nursery passage to the service wing
were retained, but its new circuitous route extended down and
around the pantry wing, along the curtain wall, and thence
along the entire length of the service wing.
This wing, which was central to Eliza's operation of
the household, seems to have been an ad hoc plan conceived
during construction. The brick walls of the pantry wing are
not bonded to the main block of the house, but rather abut
the main house, which means that this wing was added after
the walls of the main block of the house were raised beyond
the first floor. When this change was made, Dabbs evidently
miscalculated his vertical measurements since he had to raise
the closet on the first floor by two s
headroom for the pantry below. This
for an awkward means of access to b
the nursery on her way to the pantr
steps in order to enter the closet and
pantry (fig. 8). The pantry wing show
attempts to reconcile Eliza's needs an
space with the practicalities of constr
Although original plans for the
for two slave rooms in addition to th
Eliza's new plans provided only for a
an unheated storeroom all of which o
nade. Shortly after Dabbs had finish
the service wing, however, Eliza once
decisions and instructed him to add t
privy to the south end of the service
to convert the storeroom into a habit
Clipton Ellis, The Mansion House at Be
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Dabbs to build a fireplace and chimney for the room. Once
again, brickwork indicates these changes. The fireplace and
chimneystack in the storeroom are abutted, not bonded, to the
south wall. The two slave rooms and privy were built in the
last campaign and thus were abutted to the south wall of the
service wing. In his final billing, Josiah Dabbs charged Bruce
for all these changes to the plan.
With these changes, Eliza Bruce had created an efficient
and practical, if peculiar, domestic arrangement. Her world
centered on her role as mother and mistress, and she created
in the southeast corner of Berry Hill a command center from
which she discharged her duties. Central to her scheme were
the call bell vestibule and the nursery passage. The eleven call
bells in the vestibule, each connected to a major room in the
house, were arranged in ascending order according to tone.
Each room, then, was given a specific bell tone that slaves, who
were waiting in the servants' hall, would recognize as belong
ing to a specific room and would answer accordingly.
The nursery passage with its service stair that runs from
basement to attic was one of the most important features of
the design. Located at the core of the house, it served both as
a barrier to the most private realm of the household and as
a discreet means of access to public, private, and work areas.
Doors from the passage opened onto the colonnade at the rear
of the house, to the central hall, and to the nursery. Although
the nursery passage was a discreet, segregated circulation
space for slaves, Eliza also used it for access to work spaces
in the basement where there were two large storerooms with
lockable doors corresponding to the parlors above; a large
central space corresponding to the central hall and dining
room above; and two workrooms corresponding to the cham
ber and nursery. Eliza called the two workrooms her "cloth
rooms," and it was here that she supervised the work of slave
weavers and seamstresses who made clothes for the plantation
slaves. With the nursery passage and the reconfiguration of
the original service wing, Eliza had created a compact cluster
of spaces from which she could easily supervise and survey
the household.
The nursery passage, the bell vestibule, and the servants'
hall, together forming the nexus of service at Berry Hill, were
innovations that eighteenth-century Virginians would hardly
have recognized. As Dell Upton has shown, there is evidence
that during the eighteenth century, slaves had remarkable
freedom to move about their master's house. Slaves waited
for summons everywhere in the house?in the passage, in the
dining room, outside the chamber, or even in the chamber
itself. They were ubiquitous in the great house of the eigh
teenth century, although often ignored. Upton argues that
their freedom of movement came in part because slaves were
considered non-persons. Architectural barriers that existed
were more to separate class, not race.
At Berry Hill, however, slaves were confined to the ser
vants' hall to await a call bell to summon them to other parts
of the house. Once summoned, they did not move through
public spaces until absolutely necessary. Rather, they moved
through a narrow, vertical core within the house?the nursery
passage. Thus, the plan diverges significantly from the room
arrangement and circulation pattern of the traditional eigh
teenth-century Virginia great house. The Berry Hill household
teemed with the activity of twenty-seven slaves who cooked,
cleaned, laundered, tended the gardens, made clothes, pro
visioned the pantry and smokehouse, and performed any
number of tasks for the comfort of the white family. Eliza
sought to control the movement of her slaves through her
house with architectural and mechanical devices.l
Berry Hill's plan, then, reflects a growing desire to keep
slavery hidden from view and embodies an attempt to recon
cile two distinct households, one white, one black; one free, one
enslaved. The movement of slaves through Berry Hill house
was closely regulated, and the goal was to keep slaves out of
sight of the white household and its guests. When it became
apparent that slaves walking along the colonnade had a clear
view into the dining room, the Bruces built a shed with louvers
over that part of the colonnade to block visual contact between
the black and white household (fig 10). Confined to a room
when not otherwise employed, and screened by architectural
devices as they moved through the house, slaves at Berry Hill
seemed virtually invisible.
These observations of Berry Hill's plan and construction
give rise to a fundamental question: Why were the Bruces, an
elite household of the antebellum period, more concerned
with confining their servants than were their colonial counter
parts? The answer to that question lies in understanding the
purpose of the great house in colonial and early antebellum
Virginia society.
In the eighteenth century, men of the ruling class like
John Tayloe of Mount Airy, for example, focused on their
public personae. Men of the gentry displayed themselves
in public at every opportunity?at weekly services in the
Anglican Church and at monthly meetings of the court. The
gentry controlled both the political and religious institutions
32 Perspectives In Vernacular Architecture
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^^^*^53^^^^^^^^^^^^^?^'V ^V"^B SS
Fig. 10. The louvered shed addition to the pantry wing blocks visual contact between slaves ascending
the stairs and the white household otherwise visible beyond the dining room window, partially seen in
the upper right. See Fig. 9, exterior view of shed. (Photo: Author, 1999)
to which Virginians were bound by law. For the gentry, public
life was a high calling. The formal, restrained, calculating
nature of the gentry's public life was also present in their
family life. Although the gentry sometimes expressed deep
emotion, even passion in their private lives, familial relations
were characterized by the same choreographed expressions
of status and deference they practiced in public life. Main
taining a family's position in political, religious, and social
affairs was paramount, and family members all played a role
to this end.20
Clifton Ellis, The Mansion House at Berry Hill Plantation 33
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Women, however, wielded little authority in the public
rituals that confirmed gentry status. When Robert Carter was
absent from his table, the privilege and responsibility of toast
ing and carving fell not to his wife, but to the tutor of Carter's
children, Philip Fithian. Although he was Mrs. Carter's social
inferior, presiding at table was his prerogative as a male.
Women held forth in their bedchambers, the private spaces
removed from but adjacent to the public areas. Here they
received and entertained women of their own class, dressed
their children, and attended to household matters. Although
women often brought substantial dowries to a marriage that
allowed their husbands to carry out impressive building cam
paigns, they never initiated such campaigns themselves. For
example, Sarah Taliaferro Brookes, widow of William Brookes
of Essex County, Virginia, finished Brookes Bank, the house
begun by her husband. Sarah Brookes did not change the plan
of the house that her husband had begun; she had no need
and presumably no desire to do so. By and large, building was
men's business in the eighteenth century, and the structures
they built, houses, courthouses, and churches were meant to
enhance their own roles in the political and social order.21
Tayloe and other members of the ruling elite used archi
tecture to reinforce these notions of an ordered society. A Vir
ginia great house like Tayloe's Mount Airy was not a family's
home as much as it was one man's attempt to link himself to
the institutions from which power and authority were derived
in Virginia society, the county and colonial government, and
the established Church. Thus, the great house was meant for
public display and experience. Houses followed strict ordering
principles of classicism that accentuated the importance of the
planter's house as a locus of power. Mount Airy and houses
like it were bids for and confirmation of intergenerational
power, and the audience for such an architectural statement
was other white males. Tayloe's house suggests the extent to
which large segments of the population, specifically women
and slaves, could be and were ignored in favor of a calculated
expression of patriarchal power and position.22
Mount Airy is based on the ordering principles of Re
naissance Classicism as popularized by pattern book authors
such as James Gibbs (fig 11). In fact, Mount Airy is most likely
based on Plate 54 of Gibbs' Book of Architecture published in
1725. It has a forecourt defined by flankers arranged around
a major axis and a minor cross axis, both of which reinforce
the principle of bi-lateral symmetry. As Upton's analysis has
shown, in the plan of Mount Airy the major axis continues
through the house, bisecting the plan and maintaining the
? fe.
- ^?tf
P??e^i
M??&*
"ESftW*
/7?. 11. JVorth elevation of Mount Airy, Richmond County, Virginia. (Library of Congress, HABS, VA, 80-WAR, V, 4-19)
34 Perspectives In Vernacular Architecture
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bi-lateral symmetry established by the plan of the forecourt
and by the main elevation of the house (fig. 12). A visitor who
follows this axis from the forecourt through the house and into
the garden beyond finds an almost identical elevation to the
one presented in the forecourt.
The difference between these elevations is minor. The
main elevation has a trabeated loggia, while the garden eleva
tion has an arcaded loggia. The visitor who follows the major
axes at Mount Airy experiences this colonial great house,
almost in its entirety. The house is readily discernible in all
three dimensions and is offered up as a public display of power
and position within the social order. The notion that a colonial
great house should have identical, or at least symmetrical el
evations was common throughout the eighteenth century and
carried forward into the early nineteenth century.
Several examples from the antebellum period indicate
the persistence of symmetry in the planning of a great house.
In 1808 Joseph Carrington Cabell dithered over whether to
buy a particular house in Amherst County and thus establish
his seat in Virginia's piedmont. The wealthy and influential
Issac Coles of Albemarle County wrote Cabell advising the
young scion to quit his temporary lodgings in Williamsburg,
purchase the house, and make "a home ... that you should be
master of...." Efforts to maintain power through architecture
continued throughout Virginia's antebellum period, as centers
of power shifted westward, to the Piedmont and beyond.
Coles, himself descended from colonial gentry, knew that es
tablishing an architectural presence in a region was paramount
to maintaining privileged status, and he told the young Cabell,
"Until you do this [build a house] you can have no real weight
or influence in society." Cabell took the advice, purchased the
modest house and remodeled it into a five-part Palladian villa,
naming it Edgehill. Joseph's cousin Samuel and his brother
George settled nearby, Samuel building a five-part dwelling
and George building a three-part dwelling. Dozens of such
five- and three-part villas were built in Virginia's piedmont
well into the 1840s.25
Such symmetrical arrangements were heavily ingrained
in the Virginia mindset. When Waller Holladay began plan
ning his house in Spotsylvania County in 1810, he employed
a local builder to draw up plans. The builder first proposed
a traditional center-passage plan, one room deep, with an
Garden
t
pfn
Forecourt
hu? ti Munin1 ni wihi'EU Triii'"in'Tiui"'uii'"ii[i?'TP
Fig. 12. Dell Upton's analysis of the axial procession at Mount Airy. (Drawing by Urs Peter Flueckiger adapted from
those by Thomas Tileston Waterman)
Clifton Ellis, The Mansion House at Berry Hill Plantation 35
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odd wing attached to one end as Holladay's bedchamber.
Holladay rejected the plan and several other asymmetrical
plans his builder proposed. In the end, he built a symmetrical
two-story house with a center passage flanked on either side
by two rooms. In front of the house, he created a forecourt,
much more modest than that at Mount Airy, but a forecourt
nonetheless. Here he placed an office on one side and a school
room on the other. To the rear of the house, he created the
same arrangement with a smokehouse/dairy and a kitchen.
The Caballs and Holladay are but four examples; scores of
other elite Virginia families continued to build impressive
symmetrical houses throughout the antebellum period with
Holladay's two-room-deep center-passage plan being the
most common.
More significantly, the elite of antebellum Virginia
continued to follow a long embedded mental template of
social organization within an elite household. By 1750, elite
Virginians had established four social spaces as essential: the
hall, dining room, chamber, and passage. The hall was the
most formal and public room of the house and usually was
accessed only through the passage. The dining room was semi
public, with access to the passage and the private chamber, and
it often had an exterior door that allowed direct service from
the detached kitchen. The chamber was the most private room
of the house and often had access only from the dining room.
The passage was public and controlled circulation to all other
rooms of the house. The terms "parlor" and "drawing room"
later replaced the term "hall," and the term "passage" was
later supplemented with "hall" and "central hall." The Bruces
used these terms interchangeably, referring to their double
parlors alternately as "parlor" and "drawing room," and to
the main stair hall as "passage" and "hall." Regardless of the
changing terminology, the function of these spaces remained
unchanged; they were the basic and constant components of
all elite houses whether they were five-part villas or double-pile
center-passage in plan.
This social organization was further refined in a hier
archy of public and private space during the third quarter
of the eighteenth century when democratic rhetoric of the
Revolution challenged the rule of the Virginia gentry. Men
like Thomas Mann Randolph of Tuckahoe began to "close"
their houses. Tuckahoe's distinctive H-plan consisted of two
wings, each of them one-room deep with a central passage,
connected by a long, formal saloon. With public entrances
on each elevation, Tuckahoe once invited visitors to enjoy a
full enfilade of the family's space through two stair halls and
the saloon giving access to parlors and a dining room. When,
however, his middling neighbors began to assume themselves
"in every respect, [his] equal," Randolph and his family re
treated to the south wing of the house and confined visitors of
all ranks to the saloon or north stair hall. This move toward a
more private zoning of the great house gained momentum at
the turn of the century when Virginians, like elite Americans
in general, experienced a psychological shift toward a regard
for the self, a phenomenon that emphasized the individual
and the development of closer personal relationships more
fulfilling to the self. Consequently, Virginians began to regard
the immediate family in a more intimate light, and sought to
nurture close familial relationships. The social organization
of private and public spaces in Virginia's elite households
remained unchanged for more than a hundred years.
At Berry Hill, the Bruces maintained this social orga
nization. Public and semi-public space lies to the east of the
central hall in the form of double parlors, with the north parlor
being the more public. The south parlor is semi-public space
by virtue of the pocket doors that separate the two rooms.
The Bruces made the dining room public space by locating it
on direct access with the front door and by closing it from the
hall with a glazed pocket door. To the west of the central hall
is a suite of private rooms, principally the Bruces' chamber
and the nursery. There are, however, more private areas west
of the central hall including the nursery passage, servants'
hall, closet, and call bell vestibule. It is these additional pri
vate spaces that make Berry Hill a unique and informative
specimen of antebellum domestic architecture, with a plan
and elevations very different from those of the traditional
Virginia great house.
Berry Hill is a significant divergence from the eigh
teenth-century ideal of creating a sequential spatial experience
along a direct axis through a house whose identical entry and
garden facades created an impression of a unified whole. The
visitor to Berry Hill follows the major axis established by the
forecourt into the central hall, but the axis ends at the door to
the dining room. This door is glazed, and this transparency
suggests a continuation of the axis. But once in the dining
room, there is no public exit for the visitor. Windows on either
side of the fireplace provide light and ventilation, but they
are not meant to provide an axial vista or access to gardens
beyond. In fact, there are no gardens at the rear of the house.
The gardens lie to the east. A stroll through these gardens re
quires the visitor to retrace the entry sequence?back through
the central hall, onto the portico, into the forecourt, and then
36 Perspectives In Vernacular Architecture
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eastward through an arched trellis gate in the garden wall, and
into the terraced gardens where berms, plantings, and paths
determine views of and access to the house (fig. 13).
On entering the garden, the visitor descends a series
of terraces, down and away from the house. Originally, the
view of the house from the gardens revealed a perfectly blank
wall, covered in stucco and scored to resemble ashlar. This
treatment of stucco has a long tradition, and it reinforces the
monumental nature of the house itself. From this view, Berry
Hill looks like the pristine temple it was meant to recall. The
descending terraces of the garden follow the topography of
the land, which slopes eastward away from the house. While
n
Garden Wall Service Yard
Garden
LL
Fig. 13. Analysis of non-axial procession at Berry Hill. Compare to the analysis of Mount Airy in fig. 12.
(Drawing by Urs Peter Flueckiger adapted from those of the author)
Clifton Ellis, The Mansion House at Berry Hill Plantation 37
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the terraces heighten the effect of the vista toward the house,
they also obscure a significant feature of Berry Hill's plan?the
service wing that contains a kitchen, a laundry, three slave
dwelling rooms, and a privy. This service wing extends more
than 100 feet south of the house, yet the visitor is never aware
it. To ensure the invisibility of the service wing, Eliza built a
five-foot high brick wall separating the gardens from the ser
vice and side yards of the house (fig. 13). The wing is not visible
from any public room in the house, nor is it discernible from
any public space on the exterior of the house. Lines of vision
are focused firmly on the temple-like profile of the house.
Analysis of Berry Hill's plan and paths reveals the sig
nificant difference between it and other Virginia plantation
houses. The visitor to a house like Tayloe's Mount Airy or
Hollady's Prospect Hill experienced a full processional path
from the entrance, through the house, and into the gardens
beyond. From this vantage point, the visitor was invited to
admire another symmetrical elevation carefully composed
to complement the gardens for which it was a backdrop. At
Berry Hill, the visitor's progression along the axis abruptly
stops; there is no public space beyond the dining room. Berry
Hill's rear elevation is a collection of asymmetrical masses and
projecting wings that contain the service functions and that
clearly make concessions to Eliza's needs and desires as mis
tress of the household. As if to distinguish his own place within
this architectural conglomeration, James Bruce instructed
his builder to extend the Doric entablature around the rear
of the main block of the house, a move that lent decorative
emphasis to that part of the building that already dominated
the smaller projections and massings.
The asymmetrical elevations and corresponding plan
at Berry Hill reveal a dramatic shift in the domestic arrange
ments of the Bruce household. The extensive service wing
indicates that the Bruces were more concerned with service
and convenience than with long-accepted, even expected,
traditions of design principles founded in axis and symmetry.
Although the Bruces retained the basic social organization of
space?passage, dining room, hall, chamber'?these spaces
were reconfigured in a manner without precedent in Virginia.
This abandonment of time-honored formal aesthetics and
traditional spatial arrangements in the planning of a great
plantation house probably indicates the influence of Eliza
Bruce on the planning of Berry Hill.
~~- ^V+X*y^Zm
Fig. 14. Staunton Hill, Charlotte County, Virginia. View of service wing, c. 1890. Note the larger, castellated massing of the house beyond. Unlike
Berry Hill, Staunton Hill's service wing is linked more directly to the house itself This link is emphasized visually by the matching Gothic Revival
motifs. (Virginia Historical Society, Richmond, VA)
38 Perspectives In Vernacuiar Architecture
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Berry Hill served as a model for other Bruce family
houses. When Charles Bruce, the younger half-brother of
James C, decided to build his house in 1848, he also employed
John Johnson as his designer, and together they conceived a
house called Staunton Hill in neighboring Charlotte County
that followed the plan of Berry Hill very closely (figs. 14 and
15). An imposing essay on the Gothic Revival, Staunton Hill
boasts an octagonal entry vestibule leading to a hall with a
double flight of stairs, like those at Berry Hill, beyond which
lays the dining room. To the west of this impressive enfilade
is a suite of triple parlors that overlooks a detached conserva
tory. To the east of the center hall is a suite of private rooms
J???
LEGEND
Entrance Vestibule
- Stair Hail
Triple Parlor Suite
Dining Room
Nursery Passage
Closet
Servants5 Hall (?)
Nursery
Sitting Room
Chamber
Laundry (?)
Kitchen (original)
Slave Room (original configuration lost)
Woodshed (demolished)
Greenhouse (demolished 1932)
Fig. 15. Plan of Staunton Hill. Areas labeled F through M were modified in 1932. Area G had partitions added. Area L is the original kitchen, but
areas K, L, and M lost most of their original configurations in the 1932 remodeling. (Drawing by Urs Peter Flueckiger adapted from those by the
Historic American Building Survey, HABS VA,20-BROOK.V,1)
Clifton Ellis, The Mansion House at Berry Hill Plantation 39
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beginning with a sleeping chamber for the Bruces behind
which there originally was a closet, sitting room, and nursery,
and a service stair hall that led to a closet that served the din
ing room. The plan of Staunton Hill is clearly based on that
of Berry Hill, including the service wing, which is set slightly
to the side of the house and extends back ninety-five feet. A
call bell system, no longer evident, served the house prob
ably in the same manner as the one at Berry Hill. Although
similar in plan, some of the awkward connections between
the private space of the family and the service space of the
slaves have been resolved, particularly the one that leads to
the dining room. Whereas Berry Hill has a louvered shed that
blocks visual contact along the slaves' service route, there are
no devices at Staunton Hill to screen slave movements; the
entry from the service wing to the main block of the house
has been configured to connect directly, and more discreetly,
to the service stair hall within the house.
Staunton Hill was heavily remodeled in the 1930s, and
the original closet, nursery, and service wing were reconfigured.
Nevertheless, the form of the original house was not changed
and enough original fabric remains on the interior so that the
house's debt to Berry Hill is clear. Charles Bruce and his wife,
Sarah Seddon, obviously drew directly from Berry Hill their
ideas for how a slave household should be arranged.
Morotock, the mansion house for the one-thousand acre
estate that James C. Bruce gave to his son, William Ballard,
upon his marriage to Maria Morson, shows a thoughtful reso
lution to the awkward attachment of the service wing. Ballard's
house, built in 1859, is much more modest than that of either
his father or uncle. Simple in fenestration and massing, the
only embellishment is a one-story Tuscan porch across the
front of the house. In plan, Morotock follows more closely
the traditional center passage plan so common to Virginia
(fig. 16). The passage runs directly through the house from
the front porch to the rear porch. To one side of the passage
is a single parlor behind which is a dining room. A single
hinged door opens from the parlor into the dining room. To
the other side of the passage is a chamber that communicates,
like those of Berry Hill and Staunton Hill, through a closet
with a nursery beyond. Although most great houses had by
this time relegated sleeping chambers to the second floor, the
Bruces continued the long tradition of maintaining a chamber
on the first floor.
Service to the house followed the idea but not the physi
cal arrangement of Berry Hill and Staunton Hill. A two-story
shed addition, original to the house, spans the rear elevation
(figs. 17 and 18). The addition contains a service stair hall
that runs from the basement to the second floor. A closet oc
cupies part of the space behind the dining room, and the area
between the service stair and closet is an open porch giving
access to both the hall and the dining room. Curiously, the
service shed is symmetrical in elevation, though clearly it was
not meant to be viewed by guests.
To the west of the house is a service wing arranged very
much like that at Berry Hill. The wing is removed ten feet to
the west and is connected to the house by a curtain wall with
a door giving access to the side yard. The wing consists of a
kitchen and laundry separated by a large chimneystack and
with a privy at the very rear of the wing. Compared to service
wings at Berry Hill and Staunton Hill, the one at Morotock is
modest indeed, a mere forty-two feet long. Missing from the
wing, of course, are rooms for slaves. All of the cellar rooms,
however, have fireplaces and might have served as rooms for
slaves. At the foot of the stair hall in the basement, a series
of call bells survive and hang over the door of the southwest
basement room. Slaves awaited summons either in this base
ment room or in the stair hall.
As they did at Berry Hill, slaves served Morotock by
moving vertically through a narrow stair passage. The service
stairs open on each floor onto a porch, with the first floor
porch giving access to the center hall and the dining room,
and the second floor porch giving access to the center hall only.
Unlike the service stairs at Berry Hill and Stauton Hill, those
at Morotock are not contained within the main block of the
house. Rather, that vertical core of service rises at the very
back of the house, in the service shed that stretches parallel
across the rear elevation. This service shed could have been
included under one roof with the main block of the house but
instead is pulled in at the sides of the house and covered by a
shed roof. This distinctive massing makes the service addition
read simultaneously as integral to, yet separate from the main
mass of the house (figs. 17 and 18). Slave service at Morotock
is pushed entirely out of the main block of the house and is
literally peripheral to the household. Morotock resolved the
awkward massing found at Berry Hill, and in doing so created
another means for segregating servants from the household
they served. Fifteen years after the completion of Berry Hill,
another generation of Bruces confirmed the efficacy of its
service arrangements.
40 Perspectives In Vernacular Architecture
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Passage
Parlor
Dining Room
Closet
Service Closet
Porch
Entrance to Ground Level from
Service Wing
Entrance to Main Level from
Service Stair
Closet
Nursery
Clothes Closet
Chamber
Kitchen
Laundry
Privy
?
Fig. 16. Plan of Morotock, Charlotte County, Virginia. (Drawing by Urs Peter Flueckig
At Morotock, however, there is another equally signifi
cant change in architectural buffers. The house is more closed
to public access of any kind than Berry Hill. The spacious cen
tral passage is divided into two sections by a pair of louvered
pocket doors. When the doors are pulled together, the louvers
allow air to pass through the hall, but the wide and graceful run
of stairs at the back of the passage is then closed to the view
of visitors. Similarly, the double and triple parlors that were
so important to the designs of Berry H
are missing at Morotock. Instead, both
the parlor and the dining room, are clos
to the passage by single hinged doors. T
the passage, parlor, and dining room are
and they disguise what is actually a hou
to public scrutiny, a household that has t
itself. The successive plans of Berry Hi
Clifton Ellis, The Mansion House at Berr
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Figs. 17 and 18. Views of the two-story service shed at Morotock. The service shed was conceived as an integral part of the main
house, but the shed's scale and proportions and its separate roof structure make clear the visual distinction between servant and
served space. (Photos: Author, 1999)
42 Perspectives In Vernacuiar Architecture
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Morotock suggest that the Bruce family was growing increas
ingly wary of the world beyond their parlors. In their houses
we see a preoccupation with privacy and an emphasis on
discreet service to the white family.
This inward turning might be explained in part by the
changing role of women during the early nineteenth century.
Women?wives and mothers?took on a newly emphasized
role as nurturers in the new republic. It was they who imparted
meaning and values to the new concept of family. The notion
of family life revolved around women who were charged with
creating a home: a haven from the larger world for their hus
bands, and a moral and virtuous atmosphere for their children.
Religion and popular literature reinforced these ideal roles for
women. Family life became characterized by deeply emotional
displays of affection between husband and wife, mother and
child. Unlike the colonial gentry that Jan Lewis and others
have described, the elite of antebellum Virginia celebrated an
intimate family life far removed from the scrutiny of a larger
public arena. This new cult of domesticity helped romanticize
the house itself and attached to it sentimental emotions mak
ing the house much more than a monument to male position
and authority. It is precisely this new ideal of domesticity,
this expanded role of women as nurturers and protectors of
the values of home and hearth, that Harriet Beecher Stowe
capitalized on in Uncle Tom's Cabin at mid-century. Andrew
Jackson Downing exploited these sentiments and portrayed
the cottages and villas in his books as physical manifestations
of a new cultural ideal. Houses themselves became much more
than bricks and mortar or board and batten. They came to
be seen as possessing special moral powers. The concept of
the house changed; it became a "home."29
There was another factor operating in this period as
well, and that was the tendency of elite Virginians to with
draw into the privacy of their families. They sought to protect
themselves from the outside world?the world of commercial
and industrial capitalism that rapidly developed during the
first quarter of the century. Moreover, the attacks of Northern
abolitionists called into question not only the Southern eco
nomic system, but also the very culture and way of life that
this economic system spawned. Slaveholding families across
the South not only withdrew from the larger world and its
critics, but also became suspicious of their own environments,
as slave rebellions and rumors of rebellions periodically swept
through their communities. Virginians grew even more wary
of their slaves after Nat Turner led a slave revolt in South
ampton County in 1831, killing sixty whites, most of them
women and children. Turner's group of rebels numbered
only about seventy, and the insurrection was put down in two
days. But the fear of slave rebellion always lurked under the
smooth fa?ade that Southerners presented to the world. The
psychological impact from Turner's rebellion?the fear, panic,
and suspicion raised among all whites?was predictably much
larger and longer-lasting than the actions of one small band
of insurgents might have warranted. The repercussions of the
rebellion reverberated throughout Virginia for the rest of the
antebellum period.30
Turner's rebellion created in Eliza Bruce's mind a
permanent and haunting anxiety, and she expressed what
for her would be a life-long fear for the safety of her family.
Five years after the massacre she wrote her absent husband
saying, "I frequently feel very uneasy at night about the
insurrection, but I endeavor to feel resigned and to depend
on a higher power." In another letter, again while Bruce was
away, she expressed anxiety over being alone on the planta
tion. "Except for the overseer, I have not seen a white face in
over a month." And in yet another letter, she reported that
a neighbor's slave had tried to poison her mistress's coffee
and she asked her husband to bring back "a good strong lock
for the door."31 Often alone on a plantation with more than
a hundred slaves, Eliza's fears of death at the hands of her
servants were not unreasonable.
The plans of Berry Hill, Staunton Hill, and Morotock
suggest the increasing tensions aroused by domestic slavery. At
Berry Hill, Eliza seems to have resolved to create a secluded
haven to which she could retire when her husband was away.
Architectural barriers provided what was probably a physical
and psychological buffer for her. These devices also added
to the perception of cheerful, efficient service even as they
disguised much of the real work that slaves performed at
Berry Hill. Such provisions for silent and invisible service,
however, did not mean that service was always performed at
tentively or willingly. Oftentimes the ideal of silent, invisible
service and the reality of a plantation mistress's work collided.
Some house slaves clearly resented the long, grueling hours
and tedious tasks they performed for the Bruces. James com
mented more than once on the difficulty of training a good
house servant, and Eliza complained of slaves who carelessly
performed the work required of them. Having summoned
a slave to bring more wood for the fire in the nursery, Eliza
commented with exasperation, "I am so tired of the dirt they
bring in on their feet."32
Clifton Ellis, The Mansion House at Berry Hill Plantation 43
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This one line, isolated in a letter to her husband, tells
much about Eliza's relationship with her slaves. Although
one slave performing a single chore prompted her complaint,
Eliza saw this one instance as indicative of a general problem
with slave service. Clearly, slaves were tracking dirt through
the house on a regular basis, and while Eliza did not have to
clean the floors herself, she had to direct another slave to clean
up. This incident shows that some house slaves did not take
initiative, nor did they willingly perform chores that were their
responsibility. Moreover, there were disturbing implications to
her slaves' lack of attention to duty. The house slaves at Berry
Hill practiced an overt and, for Eliza, an exasperating form of
resistance. This subtle, but direct challenge to her authority
irritated her. However, she chose to avoid confrontation. She
learned that while pulling a bell crank might give the illusion
of efficient service, the simple act of summoning could give
rise to a host of problems.
Eliza Bruce gave careful consideration to the way in
which slaves would move through the spaces she planned, and
she tried to make their movement both discreet and efficient by
using call bells to summon them. She sought to render them
invisible. But out of sight was not out of mind. For slaves at
Berry Hill mansion house, the call bells were another audible
manifestation of power and control over their lives. Yet, while
spaces confined them and bells directed them, Eliza Bruce's
slaves resisted her authority. Their dirty footprints betrayed
a contentious relationship, a contest of wills that could not
be resolved by even the most careful architectural arrange
ments.
The house at Berry Hill plantation was the result of
a slow, and ultimately doomed, attempt to devise an archi
tectural resolution for issues raised by the changing nature
of slavery within the slaveholding household. Berry Hill's
unusual plan was a result of this change and illustrates the
ways in which architecture and material objects were used to
mitigate the ever increasing tension inherent in the daily life of
an antebellum plantation. The Greek temple that James and
Eliza Bruce built presented a proud and confident facade to
the outside world, but behind that facade they created a haven
and retreat from the same world they sought to impress. Inside
the mansion house, Eliza built an environment regulated by
aural commands and spatial barriers in which she and her
family could ignore the scrutiny of a world that increasingly
questioned and criticized the nature of their "family, white
and black."
Appendix A
Articles of agreement made and entered into this 1st
day of March one thousand eight hundred and forty two be
tween Jas. C. Bruce of the county of Halifax of the one part
and Josiah Dabbs of the other part witnesseth That the said
Josiah Dabbs hath this day agreed to Build for the said Jas.
C. Bruce a dwelling house and out houses of the following
plan and dimensions
The house is to be located on the Berry Hill Estate,
where the house that Geni. Edward Carrington formerly
resided in,
The main building to be Sixty four feet by fifty two with
a projection of ten feet in the center of the building in rear,
which projection forms a part of the dining room the balance
of the dining room to extend in the main building taking up
a part of the passage the whole of this part of the building is
to be 2 stories high besides the basement and the rooms and
finish of the same to be done and finished after the direction
of said Bruce according to a plan & drawing made by Mr.
Jno. E.Johnson, to have a portico in front supported by eight
collums, the floor & steps of which are to be of nice cut stone
granite, and the whole of the external finish of this part of the
building to be of the doric Order of Architecture. There is to
be a green house in rear of this building, which is to extend as
far back as the dining room and on the Opposite Side thereof
a large closet to correspond, in the outward appearance, with
the green house, there is to be a line of out buildings extend
ing directly back of the dining room, which row of buildings
are to be one story high, to be so arranged as to make one
room for pantry, one for Kitchen, one for a Laundry and two
rooms for Servants, to have a covered way, in front of them
six feet wide, the size of these rooms to be as the said Bruce
may direct. There is to be two offices in the yard 18 x 24 feet
one story high, all of which are to made of brick well burned
and laid in good cement, and the whole of the buildings to
be covered with tin in the best manner.
All the rooms in this main building to be papered, the
two drawing rooms to be elegantly papered. There is to be
ten marble mantelpieces two of which pure white to cost at
least one hundred & fifty Dollars, there are to be eleven Ma
hoggany Doors the said Dabbs to furnish all the materials for
the completion of this house to paint, paper, and make a turn
Key Job, and the building to be at the said Dabbs' risk until
delivered, the front and two Sides to be Stuccod. in the best
manner, the Sills to Doors & window are to be of cut stone
44 Perspectives In Vernacular Architecture
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Marble wash boards in all the rooms on the first floor, the glass
to the windows in the two drawing rooms to be of plate glass,
the locks, & hinges etc. on the first floor to be Silver plated
those above to be of the best kind not plated, the said Dabbs
to pull down the old house.
It's impossible to express every thing in a contract of
this kind, but a plan & drawing having been made there can
be no difficulty in understanding it.
The said Bruce pays to the said Dabbs three thousand
dollars on the 15th Inst. six thousand dollars when the walls
are completed and and fourteen thousand five hundred when
the house is finished and delivered according to contract.
The size of the doors, windows & proportions generally
to be approved by the said Bruce.
An entablature after the Doric order to extend around
the portico and 2 sides of the house 61/2 feet broad according
to drawing intended to accompany this contract.
Witness our hands this 1st of March 1842.
James C. Bruce
Josiah Dabbs
Appendix B
4 rooms in the basement?2 with plank floor and 2 for
storerooms with shelves, etc. 5 rooms on second floor-?The
windows in the two Parlours and the Chamber window, the
Hall and dining room doors of plate glass. 11 Mahogany
doors?Best plated bolts and Locks. The ceiling to the two
parlours curved and divided into compartments. All the
rooms papered?The two parlours with the handsomest
kind of paper?The Hall and dining room the second best
handsome but not the most expensive?The chamber and
other rooms over the house such paper as costs about $1.25
a roll. Mrs. Bruce to have the selection. Flues in every dress
ing room?the library, and Hall. Portico 8 columns. 8 feet
wide and granite floor and steps all across the front?To the
back of the dining room?Pantry with fire place, shelves and
presses?18 by 16?kitchen 18 by 20?Laundry 18 by 18?2
Servants rooms. Portico extending from nursery to the extreme
back building?Closets at the back of the nursery 16 by 14
with shelves and Flue?greenhouse 18 by 12 glassed front
and side?with wooden shuters also?Venetian door to the
Hall?Flue for Stove?
Two offices by pitch in proportion with porticos. The
house and offices gutered. The glass for the windows in House
and Offices the best Boston crown glass.
Bruce Family Papers, Business Papers of James C. and
Alexander Bruce, Box 20, Special Collections, Alderman
Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville.
Acknowledgements
I am very grateful to Camille Wells who first took me to
Berry Hill and suggested its rich possibilities as a topic of study,
and who agreed to direct the dissertation that resulted from my
initial research. Her help has been invaluable. Ed Chappell,
Gina Haney, Willy Graham, Hal Sharp, and Mark Wenger
volunteered their valuable time, advice, and insights during
site visits to make measured drawings and during consulta
tions thereafter. I thank Judith Kucharski for her friendship
and for her patient and insightful readings of my first drafts.
I am also very appreciative of the patience and expert help of
the librarians and staff at the University of Virginia's Special
Collections, the Virginia Historical Society, and the Library
of Virginia. Generous grants from the Virginia Historical
Society and from the University of Virginia's College of Arts
and Sciences supported research for this article.
Endnotes
Tor references to Berry Hill, see Fiske Kimball, Domestic Ar
chitecture of the American Colonial and Early Republic (New York: Charles
Scribners' Sons, 1922), 180-82; Howard Major, The.Domestic Archi
tecture of the Early Republic: the Greek Revival (Philadelphia: Lippincott,
1926), 48; Talbot Hamlin, Greek Revival Architecture in America (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1944), 191; Roger Kennedy, Greek
Revival America (New York: Stewart, Tabori and Chang, 1989), 31,
139, 207; Mills Lane, Architecture of the Old South: Virginia (New York:
Abbeville Press, 1989), 188-89. For more recent work on the classical
revival see Barksdale Maynard, Architecture in the United States, 1800
1850 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002); Mills Lane, Archi
tecture of the Old South: Greek Revival and Romantic (Savannah: Beehive
Foundation, 1996); Page Talbot, Classical Savannah: Fine and Decorative
Arts, 1800-1840 (Savannah: The Telfair Museum of Art, 1995);
Wendy A. Cooper, Classical Taste in America, 1800-1840 (Baltimore:
The Baltimore Museum of Art, 1993); Gregory R. Weidman and
Jennifer E Goldsborough, Classical Maryland, 1815-1845 (Baltimore:
Maryland Historical Society, 1993).
2On the collaborative design process in early America see, for
example, Carl Lounsbury, " An Elegant and Commodious Building':
Clifton Ellis, The Mansion House at Berry Hill Plantation 45
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William Buckland and the Design of the Prince William County
Courthouse," Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 46:3 (Sept.
1987): 228-240; Catherine Bishir, "Good and Sufficient Language
for Building," in Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture IV, ed. Thomas
Carter and Bernard L. Herman (Knoxville: University of Tennessee
Press, 1991), 44-53; Jennifer Mauss, "So Many Fingers in a Virginia
Pie: Collaborative Design and the Making of Bremo," Arris, Journal
of the Southeast Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians 11 (2000):
1-18. Eliza's role in the design process is not necessarily atypical.
Design in early America was a collaborative undertaking and there
are many documented cases of builders and clients working together
to achieve a desired result. Fewer cases, however, document the role
of women in a building campaign. One such case, that of Ann Bar
raud Cocke, wife of John Hartwell Cocke, has been researched by
Jennifer Mauss. While Mauss notes correctly that Ann Cocke was
an eager and active participant in the collaboration and that "the
entire right half of the principal story is devoted to woman's space,"
Ann Cocke's role in the design process did not change the form or
social space of a traditional Virginia great house. That is, the plan
and elevations maintained a strict symmetry, and the plan adhered
to the long accepted Virginia norms of private and public space.
Eliza Bruce's participation in the building of Berry Hill, on the other
hand, produced a house form and organization of space that was
unprecedented in Virginia domestic architecture.
Statistics on slave ownership come from John Michael Vlach,
Back of the Big House: The Architecture of Plantation Slavery (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1993), 7-8. For the most recent
study of elite southern slaveholders see: William Kauffman Scarbor
ough, Masters of the Big House: Elite Slaveholders of the Mid-nineteenth
century South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2003),
1-18, 175-217. Scarborough examines 340 planters who owned 250
slaves or more. Many of these slaveholders drew capital from north
ern investments and had diversified investments beyond cash-crop
agriculture. James C. Bruce was typical of this planter class in that
he invested in stocks and bonds, canals and railroads, in addition to
his cash crops of Virginia tobacco and Louisiana sugar. James C.
Bruce's slaveholdings are recorded in: "Register of Negros, 1852,"
Bruce Family Papers, Business Papers (BFP, BP), mss. 2692, Box 13;
"List and Inventory of the Negros on the Plantation of Mssrs. Bruce
Seddon & Wilkins St. James Nov. 22, 1849," BFP, BP, Box 11.
4Berry Hill contract, BFP, BP 1842, UVA.
Tbid.
6BFP, BP, n.d., Box 20.
7Bruce periodically made lists of the slaves he owned. In all,
Bruce owned 402 slaves who worked four plantations in Virginia, two
plantations in Louisiana, and at his mill in Halifax County. Slaves at
Berry Hill plantation numbered 108, twenty-seven of whom worked
in what Bruce called the "mansion house." Of these house slaves, ten
were adults: three childless couples; one couple with six children; one
couple with one child; a single mother with nine children; and two
men and two women who appear to have been single and unrelated,
but who may have been married to slaves at neighboring plantations.
"Register of Negros," BFP, BP, Box 13.
8On the uniqueness of Berry Hill's temple front, see Hamlin,
Greek Revival, 191. On the origins of separating work space from
domestic space in early Virginia, see: Fraser D. Neiman, "Domestic
Architecture at the Clifts Plantation: The Social Context of Early
Virginia Building," in Common Places: Readings in American Vernacular Ar
chitecture, ed. Dell Upton and John Michael Vlach (Athens: University
of Georgia Press, 1986), 308; and Vlach, Back of the Big House, 43.
9Mutual Assurance Society. "Declarations of the Mutual
Assurance Society of Virginia," 1822, Alderman Library, UVA, Mi
crofilm #5794, Reel 13, nos. 6818-6821 John Michael Vlach, "The
Plantation Tradition in an Urban Setting," Southern Cultures 5.1: 52-69;
Bernard L. Herman, Town House: Architecture and Material Life in the Early
American City (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005),
135. Herman argues: "Servants achieved transparency through the
masters' blindness [to their existence] and servants' reading of their
masters' and mistresses' assumptions." (134 and 148-50) The careful
and deliberate arrangements at Berry Hill and comments by Eliza
Bruce, however, indicate that the Bruce slaves never achieved such
transparency and that, in fact, their master and mistress were very
much aware of their movements through the house.
10Elizabeth C. Cromley, "Transforming the Food Axis: Houses,
Tools, Modes of Analysis," Material History Review 44 (Fall 1996): 8
22. Cromley notes that "by the mid-nineteenth century, middle class
urban and suburban houses were conceived according to zones of
use: the social zone . . . [and] the service zone."
1 Journal of Eliza Bruce, BFP, 1838, Box 8.
12James C. Bruce JCB) to Eliza Wilkins Bruce (EWB), BFP,
4 March 1831, Box 4.
13JCB to EWB, BFP, 8 August 1842, Box 10.
14See various letters between James C. and Eliza Bruce dated
between October 1844 and March 1845, BFP, Box 10. For examples
of references Eliza Bruce made to her vegetable and flower gardens,
see EWB to JCB: BFP, 14 November 1844; 12 January 1845; 2 Febru
ary 1845, Box 10. For references to supervision of various building
campaigns still underway at Berry Hill, see EWB to JCB, BFP, 13
December 1844; 13 February 1845; 10 March 1845, Box 10, in which
replacing the brick kitchen floor with sandstone is discussed.
15SB to JCB, BFP, 24 December 1844, Box 10. EWB to JCB,
BFP, 13 December 1844; EWB to JCB, 2 February 1845, Box 10.
16Eliza identifies her workrooms in the basement in letters
to her husband. See EWB to JCB, BFP, 18 November 1844 and 20
November 1844, Box 10.
17Dell Upton, "White and Black Landscapes in Eighteenth
Century Virginia," Places 2 (1985), 59-72, reprinted in Material Life in
America 1600-1860, ed. Robert Blair St. George (Boston: Northeast
ern University Press, 1988), 357-369; Rhys Isaac, The Transformation
of Virginia, 1740-1790 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 1982), 299-323.
46 Perspectives In Vernacular Architecture
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18l am indebted to Mark Wenger for sharing his unpublished
manuscript describing the frequency of newspaper advertisements
regarding call bells and their possible relation to increased needs for
privacy. Mark Wenger, "House Bells and House Planning in Early
Virginia," unpublished manuscript. Mark Girouard discusses the
early uses by the English gentry of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries of call bells as a class barrier. This discussion is fundamen
tally different, however, from the use of call bells in a slaveholding
household. See Mark Girouard, life in the English Country House: A Social
and Architectural History (New York: Penguin Books, 1980), 219, 264.
19It has been suggested that the curious louvered shed provided
shelter over the colonnade and stairs and afforded headroom while
one ascended or descended the exterior stairs. Shelter and headroom,
however, could be provided more simply by building the colonnade
roof at an angle equal to that of the stairs. Although this solution
would bisect the window opening of the closet, it would still allow
direct light and ventilation. The elaborate solution of a louvered shed
can only have been intended as a visual barrier between the white
household sitting at table and the slaves who served them.
20T. H. Breen, "Horses and Gentlemen: The Cultural Sig
nificance of Gambling among the Gentry of Virginia," William and
Mary Quarterly 3rd series, 34 (April 1977): 239-257; Dell Upton, Holy
Things and Profane (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997),
219-232; Carl Lounsbury, "The Structure of Justice: The Court
houses of Colonial Virginia," in Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture III,
ed. Thomas Carter Hudgins and Bernard L. Herman (Columbia:
University of Missouri Press, 1998), 214-226; Jan Lewis, The Pursuit
of Happiness: Family and Values in Jefferson's Virginia (Cambridge: Cam
bridge University Press, 1983), 169-209; Kathleen M. Brown, Good
Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs (Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Press, 1996), 125-201; Isaac, The Transformation
of Virginia, 299-323.
21Hunter D. Farish, ed., Journal and Letters of Philip Vickers
Fithian: A Plantation Tutor of the Old Dominion, 1773-1774 (Richmond,
Virginia: The Dietz Press for Colonial Williamsburg, Inc., 1943),
54. I am grateful to Camille Wells for sharing her observation of
Fithian's account. The role of the bedchamber in the lives of colonial
Virginia women has been discussed by Mark Wenger, "Architecture
and Privacy in Early Virginia," a paper presented at the Vernacular
Architectural Forum Annual Conference, Annapolis, Md., 7 May
1998; On Sarah Taliaferro Brooke's role in building Brookes Bank
see: Barbara Mooney, "'True Worth is Highly Shown in Living Well':
Architectural Patronage in Eighteenth-Century Virginia," (PhD
diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1991), 433-453.
Mooney traces dowry money as the funding source for many build
ing campaigns in eighteenth-century Virginia. In her thorough and
thoughtful work, Mooney found documentation for one example
of a woman's building a house. Sarah Taliaferro Brooke, widow
of William Brooke, finished the house her husband began, but she
did so with the advice of a local Anglican minister. It is not known
at what point in the building campaign that Sarah Brooke entered,
but the plan and finish of the house is common to that of all great
houses built by men during the period. If Sarah Brooke was indeed
in control of planning, she built according to the requirements of
her class, without regard to gender or race.
22Upton, Holy Things and Profane, 219-232. For another view
of how Virginians communicated dominance see: Camille Wells,
"Planters Prospect: Houses, Outbuildings, and Rural Landscapes in
Eighteenth-Century Virginia," Winterthur Portfolio 28:1 (Spring, 1993):
1-31. From her analysis of advertisements in the Virginia Gazette,
Wells concluded that "academic architecture and formal landscape
design were seldom?not usually?the means by which landowning
planters expressed their command of the countryside." Rather,
"signs of work competently directed and resources well improved
were the most substantial, compelling demonstration that they could
... dominate.... their world." Wells also demonstrated, however, the
importance to the planters of continuing an architectural continuity
between generations in order to create a dynastic dominance over the
landscape. See Camille Wells, "Dower Play/Power Play," Perspectives
in Vernacular Architecture X, ed. Alison K. Hoagland and Kenneth A.
Breisch (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2003), 1-21.
23Upton, "White and Black Landscapes," 357-369.
24Upton, Holy Things and Profane; Upton, "White and Black
Landscapes," 357-369.
25Marlene Elizabeth Heck, "Building Status: Pavilioned
Dwellings in Virginia," in Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture VI, ed.
Thomas Carter Hudgins and Elizabeth Collins Cromley (Knoxville:
University of Tennessee Press, 1997), 46-59. The quotes from Isaac
Coles appear on page 46. Heck has identified "dozens more of
three- and five-part houses" beyond the Piedmont.
26Henry K. Sharp, "An Architectural Portrait: Prospect Hill,
Spotsylvania County, Virginia," (M. A. thesis, University of Virginia,
1996), 8-40.
27Dell Upton, "Vernacular Domestic Architecture in Eigh
teenth-Century Virginia," Winterthur Portfolio 17:2-3 (Summer-Au
tumn 1982): 95-119.
28Upton, "Vernacular Domestic Architecture," 95-119.
Camille Wells, "Virginia by Design: The Making of Tuckahoe and
the Remaking of Monticello," Arris, Journal of the Southeast Chapter
of the Society of Architectural Historians 12 (2001): 44-73. Wells finds
Randolph's quote in Anburey, Travels through the Interior parts of America,
II, 215. Through her analysis of Tuckahoe, Wells concluded that the
Randolphs maintained a "comparatively 'open'" house in which
relatives and guests of appropriate station might view any room
-even the two second-story bedrooms." (51) In her comparison of
Tuckahoe and Stratford Hall, both of which have a distinctive H
plan, Wells discovered that during the last quarter of the eighteenth
century, the Randolphs and the Lees of Stratford Hall did not alter
the houses, but changed the way in which their families used them.
Both families retreated to one of the wings, abandoning the saloon
Clifton Ellis, The Mansion House at Berry Hill Plantation 47
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and the other wing to guests and visitors. Wells sees the ultimate
expression of this retreat into private zones in Jefferson's Monticello.
Wells's interpretation that these retreats into private spaces were due
to a "discovery of the emotional self" (66) is based on her reading
of Daniel Blake Smith, Inside the Great House: Planter Family Life in
Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake Society (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1980), and Lewis, The Pursuit of Happiness. See note 29 for a fuller
discussion on the emergence of the modern family in America.
Heck, "Pavilioned Dwellings in Virginia," 54. Heck's analysis of the
pavilioned dwellings shows an adherence to these traditional social
spaces as late as 1843 when Henry George built a tripartite house
in Tazewell County, Virginia.
29Barbara Welter first coined the phrase "cult of domesticity"
in her ground-breaking article, "The Cult of True Womanhood,"
American Quarterly 18(1966): 151 -74; Ann Douglas further explored the
influence of women on the new nineteenth-century concept of family
and home in The Feminization of American Culture (New York: Knopf,
1977); Social historians who study the influence of the family on
societies have only recently turned their attention to the planter elite
of the antebellum South. Daniel Blake Smith traces the emergence
of the modern family (compassionate marriages and child-oriented
families) to the mid-eighteenth century. See Smith, Inside the Great
House: Planter Family Life in Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake Society, 281 -99.
Jan Lewis, however, traces this modern family to the early nineteenth
century and links this emotive, closely-knit nuclear family to the rise
of evangelical religion. See Lewis, The Pursuit of Happiness, 209-30.
Lewis draws on the work of Rhys Isaac and supports his claim that
this transformation of the family was post-Revolutionary. See Isaac,
The Transformation of Virginia, 1740-1790. Jane Censer has studied a
closed universe of planters that supports the conclusions of Lewis and
Isaac and goes further in portraying elite planter families as loving,
permissive, and egalitarian. See Jane Censer, North Carolina Planters and
Their Children, 1900-1860 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University
Press, 1984). Some scholars admit a change in familial expressions of
affection during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries but
believe that elite planter families were nevertheless strictly hierarchical
in nature and particularly patriarchal in their function. Their view is
that patriarchal planters held both wives and children in subordinate
positions. See Catherine Clinton, The Plantation Mistress: Woman's World
in the Old South (New York: Pantheon Books, 1982), 16-35, 164-79;
Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Within the Plantation Household: Black and White
Women of the Old South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 1988), 192-241; Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious
Patriarchs, 319-66. For an account of family life of both races and
all classes in a small community, see Brenda Stevenson, Life in Black
and White: Family and Community in the Slave South (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1996), xii-xiii, 9-37. Stevenson argues that slave
families were largely matriarchal and that slaves desired a variety of
marital and family organizations, not only the nuclear family. She
also argues that while whites looked to the family for gender and
familial roles, their lives and conduct were still very much influenced
by the values and expectations of the larger white community. For a
collection of short essays on the antebellum family see: Carol Bleser,
ed., In Joy and Sorrow: Women, Family, and Marriage in the Victorian South,
1830-1900 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992). On the influ
ence of domestic novelists on the works of Andrew Jackson Downing,
see Adam W Sweeting, Reading Houses and Building Books: A. J Downing
and the Architecture of Popular Antebellum Literature, 1835-55 (Hanover:
University Press of New England, 1996), 124-125; on Uncle Tom's
Cabin, see Charles Johnson's introduction in Harriett Beecher Stowe,
Uncle Tom's Cabin (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).
30For accounts and analysis of Nat Turner's revolt see: Scot
French, The Rebellious Slave: Nat Turner in American Memory (New York:
Houghton Mifflin, 2004); Kenneth S. Greenberg, ed., Nat Turner: A
Slave Rebellion in History and Memory (New York: Oxford University
Press). For accounts on slave resistance and slave revolts and their
effect on white attitudes toward their slaves, see Eugene Genovese,
Roll Jordan Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York: Pantheon,
1974), 587-660.
31EWB to JCB, BFP, 17 October 1836, and EWB to JCB 25
November 1836, Box 6.
32EWB to JCB, BFP, 22 November 1844, Box 10.
48 Perspectives In Vernacular Architecture
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