Virginia
Virginia the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States located between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" due to its status as the first English colonial possession established in mainland North America and "Mother of Presidents" because eight U. S. presidents were born there, more than any other state. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth are shaped by the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Chesapeake Bay, which provide habitat for much of its flora and fauna; the capital of the Commonwealth is Richmond. The Commonwealth's estimated population as of 2018 is over 8.5 million. The area's history begins with several indigenous groups, including the Powhatan. In 1607 the London Company established the Colony of Virginia as the first permanent New World English colony. Slave labor and the land acquired from displaced Native American tribes each played a significant role in the colony's early politics and plantation economy.
Virginia was one of the 13 Colonies in the American Revolution. In the American Civil War, Virginia's Secession Convention resolved to join the Confederacy, Virginia's First Wheeling Convention resolved to remain in the Union. Although the Commonwealth was under one-party rule for nearly a century following Reconstruction, both major national parties are competitive in modern Virginia; the Virginia General Assembly is the oldest continuous law-making body in the New World. The state government was ranked most effective by the Pew Center on the States in both 2005 and 2008, it is unique in how it treats cities and counties manages local roads, prohibits its governors from serving consecutive terms. Virginia's economy has many sectors: agriculture in the Shenandoah Valley. S. Department of Defense and Central Intelligence Agency. Virginia has a total area of 42,774.2 square miles, including 3,180.13 square miles of water, making it the 35th-largest state by area. Virginia is bordered by Maryland and Washington, D.
C. to the north and east. Virginia's boundary with Maryland and Washington, D. C. extends to the low-water mark of the south shore of the Potomac River. The southern border is defined as the 36° 30′ parallel north, though surveyor error led to deviations of as much as three arcminutes; the border with Tennessee was not settled until 1893, when their dispute was brought to the U. S. Supreme Court; the Chesapeake Bay separates the contiguous portion of the Commonwealth from the two-county peninsula of Virginia's Eastern Shore. The bay was formed from the drowned river valleys of the James River. Many of Virginia's rivers flow into the Chesapeake Bay, including the Potomac, Rappahannock and James, which create three peninsulas in the bay; the Tidewater is a coastal plain between the fall line. It includes major estuaries of Chesapeake Bay; the Piedmont is a series of sedimentary and igneous rock-based foothills east of the mountains which were formed in the Mesozoic era. The region, known for its heavy clay soil, includes the Southwest Mountains around Charlottesville.
The Blue Ridge Mountains are a physiographic province of the Appalachian Mountains with the highest points in the state, the tallest being Mount Rogers at 5,729 feet. The Ridge and Valley region includes the Great Appalachian Valley; the region includes Massanutten Mountain. The Cumberland Plateau and the Cumberland Mountains are in the southwest corner of Virginia, south of the Allegheny Plateau. In this region, rivers flow northwest, into the Ohio River basin; the Virginia Seismic Zone has not had a history of regular earthquake activity. Earthquakes are above 4.5 in magnitude, because Virginia is located away from the edges of the North American Plate. The largest earthquake, at an estimated 5.9 magnitude, was in 1897 near Blacksburg. A 5.8 magnitude earthquake struck central Virginia on August 2011, near Mineral. The earthquake was felt as far away as Toronto and Florida. 35 million years ago, a bolide impacted. The resulting Chesapeake Bay impact crater may explain what earthquakes and subsidence the region does experience.
Coal mining takes place in the three mountainous regions at 45 distinct coal beds near Mesozoic basins. Over 64 million tons of other non-fuel resources, such as slate, sand, or gravel, were mined in Virginia in 2018; the state's carbonate rock is filled with more than 4,000 caves, ten of which are open for tourism, including the popular Luray Caverns and Skyline Caverns. The climate of Virginia is humid subtropical and becomes warmer and more humid farther south and east. Seasonal extremes vary from average lows of 26 °F in January to average highs of 86 °F in July; the Atlantic Ocean has a strong effect on southeastern coastal areas of the state. Influenced by the Gulf Stream, coastal weather is subject to hurricanes, most pronouncedly near the mouth of Chesapeake Bay. In spite of its position adjacent to the Atlantic Ocean the coastal areas have a significant continental influence with quite large temperature differences between summ
Poinsett State Park
Poinsett State Park is located in Sumter County in the U. S. state of South Carolina. The park is best known for its botanical oddities, combining the flora of the Blue Ridge Mountains foothills and Piedmont of Upstate South Carolina, the xeric Sandhills and the Atlantic coastal plain. In Poinsett State Park one can see mountain laurels draped with Spanish moss; the park, called "weird and beautiful", is named after amateur botanist and South Carolina native Joel Roberts Poinsett, the first American ambassador to Mexico and popularizer of the poinsettia. There is no charge for admission to Poinsett State Park, but there are small fees for overnight camping and cabin rentals; the park is surrounded by the Manchester State Forest, both provide access to the Palmetto Trail, linked hiking and mountain bike trails, Manchester State Forest offers equestrian trails. Located on the High Hills of Santee and descending to the Wateree Swamp, the site was used by various Siouan tribes of Native Americans, including the Santee and Catawba for hunting.
The non-Siouan Congaree lived nearby and may have frequented the area. Before the American Revolution, the land was owned by a man named Levi, who built a dam to impound water for rice cultivation. Levi's Mill Pond was used to power a mill. Remnants of the mill are still present, the pond, improved by the Civilian Conservation Corps, is now known as Old Levi Mill Pond. In 1813 and 1814 the land was deeded to two members of the Singleton family, who owned many plantations in Sumter County; the best remembered Singleton today, Angelica Singleton Van Buren, was First Lady of the United States. Sumter County donated 1,000 acres for the park, which opened to the public in 1936. Many buildings still in use at the park were built by the Civilian Conservation Corps from locally quarried coquina rock. Coquina is a young limestone in which fossil seashells are still apparent. Poinsett State Park was the first of many parks built by the CCC in South Carolina; the park was closed in 1963 for a year, along with all of South Carolina's state parks, due to a Federal court order to desegregate the parks, it wasn't until 1966 that all its facilities were reopened.
The park's historical elements were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2016. Surveys have found 337 species of flowering plants within the park, including 65 species of trees and shrubs. Tree species include mountain laurel, white oak, black oak, turkey oak, water oak, pignut hickory, loblolly pine, longleaf pine, flowering dogwood, wax myrtle, American holly, baldcypress, swamp gum, water tupelo, red maple. Many species of animals can be found in the park, including copperhead snakes, cottonmouth snakes, American alligators, bobcats, but these are observed. Animals more encountered by visitors include golden silk orb-weaver spiders, largemouth bass, river frogs, spring peeper treefrogs, Carolina anole lizards, five-lined skinks, yellow-bellied slider turtles, banded watersnakes, coachwhip snakes, eastern hognose snakes, Rafinesque's big-eared bats, great egrets, wood ducks, turkey vultures, red-tailed hawks, belted kingfishers, red-bellied woodpeckers, blue-gray gnatcatchers, prothonotary warblers.
National Register of Historic Places listings in Sumter County, South Carolina Official page
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places is the United States federal government's official list of districts, buildings and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance. A property listed in the National Register, or located within a National Register Historic District, may qualify for tax incentives derived from the total value of expenses incurred preserving the property; the passage of the National Historic Preservation Act in 1966 established the National Register and the process for adding properties to it. Of the more than one million properties on the National Register, 80,000 are listed individually; the remainder are contributing resources within historic districts. For most of its history the National Register has been administered by the National Park Service, an agency within the United States Department of the Interior, its goals are to help property owners and interest groups, such as the National Trust for Historic Preservation, coordinate and protect historic sites in the United States.
While National Register listings are symbolic, their recognition of significance provides some financial incentive to owners of listed properties. Protection of the property is not guaranteed. During the nomination process, the property is evaluated in terms of the four criteria for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places; the application of those criteria has been the subject of criticism by academics of history and preservation, as well as the public and politicians. Historic sites outside the country proper, but associated with the United States are listed. Properties can be nominated in a variety of forms, including individual properties, historic districts, multiple property submissions; the Register categorizes general listings into one of five types of properties: district, structure, building, or object. National Register Historic Districts are defined geographical areas consisting of contributing and non-contributing properties; some properties are added automatically to the National Register when they become administered by the National Park Service.
These include National Historic Landmarks, National Historic Sites, National Historical Parks, National Military Parks, National Memorials, some National Monuments. On October 15, 1966, the Historic Preservation Act created the National Register of Historic Places and the corresponding State Historic Preservation Offices; the National Register consisted of the National Historic Landmarks designated before the Register's creation, as well as any other historic sites in the National Park system. Approval of the act, amended in 1980 and 1992, represented the first time the United States had a broad-based historic preservation policy; the 1966 act required those agencies to work in conjunction with the SHPO and an independent federal agency, the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, to confront adverse effects of federal activities on historic preservation. To administer the newly created National Register of Historic Places, the National Park Service of the U. S. Department of the Interior, with director George B.
Hartzog Jr. established an administrative division named the Office of Archeology and Historic Preservation. Hartzog charged OAHP with creating the National Register program mandated by the 1966 law. Ernest Connally was the Office's first director. Within OAHP new divisions were created to deal with the National Register; the division administered several existing programs, including the Historic Sites Survey and the Historic American Buildings Survey, as well as the new National Register and Historic Preservation Fund. The first official Keeper of the Register was an architectural historian. During the Register's earliest years in the late 1960s and early 1970s, organization was lax and SHPOs were small and underfunded. However, funds were still being supplied for the Historic Preservation Fund to provide matching grants-in-aid to listed property owners, first for house museums and institutional buildings, but for commercial structures as well. A few years in 1979, the NPS history programs affiliated with both the U.
S. National Parks system and the National Register were categorized formally into two "Assistant Directorates." Established were the Assistant Directorate for Archeology and Historic Preservation and the Assistant Directorate for Park Historic Preservation. From 1978 until 1981, the main agency for the National Register was the Heritage Conservation and Recreation Service of the United States Department of the Interior. In February 1983, the two assistant directorates were merged to promote efficiency and recognize the interdependency of their programs. Jerry L. Rogers was selected to direct this newly merged associate directorate, he was described as a skilled administrator, sensitive to the need for the NPS to work with SHPOs, local governments. Although not described in detail in the 1966 act, SHPOs became integral to the process of listing properties on the National Register; the 1980 amendments of the 1966 law further defined the responsibilities of SHPOs concerning the National Register.
Several 1992 amendments of the NHPA added a category to the National Register, known as Traditional Cultural Properties: those properties associated with Native American or Hawaiian groups
Borough House Plantation
Borough House Plantation known as Borough House, Hillcrest Plantation and Anderson Place, is an historic plantation on South Carolina Highway 261, 0.8 miles north of its intersection with U. S. Route 76/US Route 378 in the High Hills of Santee near Sumter, South Carolina. A National Historic Landmark, the plantation is noted as the largest assemblage of high-style pisé structures in the United States; the main house and six buildings on the plantation were built using this technique, beginning in 1821. The plantation is notable as the home of Confederate Army General Richard H. Anderson; the original house built in 1758 served at different times during the American Revolution as headquarters for both British General Lord Cornwallis and Continental Army General Nathanael Greene. The second house was built in 1820 of rammed earth by William Wallace Anderson, M. D. On October 7, 1821, his wife, the former Mary Jane Mackensie, gave birth there to their son, Richard H. Anderson, the future Confederate Army general.
Stateburg was called Stateborough, when the town was laid out, Borough House was the only residence in it, hence the name. In 1850-1852, Dr. Anderson chaired the committee that built the Church of the Holy Cross of rammed earth across the road from Borough Hall. In 1851, Joel Roberts Poinsett, American statesman and botanist, died while visiting Dr. Anderson and was buried in the churchyard across the road. On March 23, 1972, Borough Hall plantation was added to the National Register of Historic Places and declared a National Historic Landmark. List of National Historic Landmarks in South Carolina National Register of Historic Places listings in Sumter County, South Carolina History of Church & Joel R. Poinsett Paper on Rammed Earth with a History of Church of the Holy Cross Borough House Plantation, Sumter County, at South Carolina Department of Archives and History Historic American Buildings Survey No. SC-362, "Borough House, West Side State Route 261, about.1 mile south side of junction with old Garners Ferry Road, Sumter County, SC", 66 photos, 4 color transparencies, 30 measured drawings, 55 data pages, 7 photo caption pages HABS No.
SC-242, "Borough House, Dr. Anderson's Office", 8 photos, 2 measured drawings, 8 data pages, 1 photo caption page HABS No. SC-345, "Borough House, Playhouse", 4 photos, 4 data pages, 1 photo caption page HABS No. SC-346, "Borough House, Hay Barn", 5 photos, 4 data pages, 1 photo caption page HABS No. SC-363, "Borough House, Dependency", 1 photo, 1 measured drawing, supplemental material HABS No. SC-364, "Borough House, Dry Well Shelter", 4 photos, 10 data pages, 1 photo caption page HABS No. SC-365, "Borough House, Hooper Tombs", 1 photo, 5 data pages HABS No. SC-366, "Borough House, Kitchen-Storehouse", 10 photos, 1 measured drawing, 9 data pages, 1 photo caption page HABS No. SC-367, "Borough House, School", 12 photos, 12 data pages, 1 photo caption page HABS No. SC-368, "Borough House, Weaving House", 4 photos, 9 data pages, 1 photo caption page HABS No. SC-369, "Borough House, Cook's House", 3 photos, 11 data pages, 1 photo caption page HABS No. SC-511, "Borough House, Chicken Brooder", 4 photos, 2 photo caption pages TopoQuest map of Borough Plantation
Lenoir Store
The Lenoir Store built in 1869 is an historic general store building located at 3240 Horatio Road in the High Hills of Santee community of Horatio, South Carolina. It stands on the same site where the Lenoir family has operated a general store since before 1808 and "is the oldest business establishment in Sumter County". Since 1900 it has served as the post office for Horatio Zip Code 29062. On July 3, 1997, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places; as of that date, it was still being operated by members of the Lenoir family. Lenoir is pronounced len-wa by some of its more northern members. List of Registered Historic Places in South Carolina Names in Sumter District
Slavery in the United States
Slavery in the United States was the legal institution of human chattel enslavement of Africans and African Americans, that existed in the United States of America in the 18th and 19th centuries. Slavery had been practiced in British America from early colonial days, was legal in all Thirteen Colonies at the time of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, it lasted in about half the states until 1865, when it was prohibited nationally by the Thirteenth Amendment. As an economic system, slavery was replaced by sharecropping. By the time of the American Revolution, the status of slave had been institutionalized as a racial caste associated with African ancestry; when the United States Constitution was ratified in 1789, a small number of free people of color were among the voting citizens. During and following the Revolutionary War, abolitionist laws were passed in most Northern states and a movement developed to abolish slavery. Northern states depended on free labor and all had abolished slavery by 1805.
The rapid expansion of the cotton industry in the Deep South after the invention of the cotton gin increased demand for slave labor to pick cotton when it all ripened at once, the Southern states continued as slave societies. Those states attempted to extend slavery into the new Western territories to keep their share of political power in the nation. Southern leaders wanted to annex Cuba as a slave territory; the United States became polarized over the issue of slavery, split into slave and free states, in effect divided by the Mason–Dixon line which delineated Pennsylvania from Maryland and Delaware. During the Jefferson administration, Congress prohibited the importation of slaves, effective 1808, although smuggling via Spanish Florida was not unusual. Domestic slave trading, continued at a rapid pace, driven by labor demands from the development of cotton plantations in the Deep South. More than one million slaves were sold from the Upper South, which had a surplus of labor, taken to the Deep South in a forced migration, splitting up many families.
New communities of African-American culture were developed in the Deep South, the total slave population in the South reached 4 million before liberation. As the West was developed for settlement, the Southern state governments wanted to keep a balance between the number of slave and free states to maintain a political balance of power in Congress; the new territories acquired from Britain and Mexico were the subject of major political compromises. By 1850, the newly rich cotton-growing South was threatening to secede from the Union, tensions continued to rise. Many white Southern Christians, including church ministers, attempted to justify their support for slavery as modified by Christian paternalism; the largest denominations—the Baptist and Presbyterian churches—split over the slavery issue into regional organizations of the North and South. When Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 election on a platform of halting the expansion of slavery, seven states broke away to form the Confederacy; the first six states to secede held the greatest number of slaves in the South.
Shortly after, the Civil War began. Four additional slave states seceded after Lincoln requested arms in order to make a retaliatory strike. Due to Union measures such as the Confiscation Acts and Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, the war ended slavery before ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment in December 1865 formally ended the legal institution throughout the United States. Africans first came to the New World with Christopher Columbus in 1492. Juan Las Canaries was a crewman on the Santa Maria. Not much longer after, the first enslavement occurred in what would be the United States. In 1508, Ponce de Leon established the first settlement near present-day San Juan and began enslaving the indigenous Tainos. In 1513, to supplement the dwindling Tainos population, the first African slaves were imported to Puerto Rico; the first African slaves within the continental United States arrived via Santo Domingo to the San Miguel de Gualdape colony, founded by Spanish explorer Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón in 1526.
The ill-fated colony was immediately disrupted by a fight over leadership, during which the slaves revolted and fled the colony to seek refuge among local Native Americans. De Ayllón and many of the colonists died shortly afterwards of an epidemic and the colony was abandoned; the settlers and the slaves who had not escaped returned to Haiti, whence. On August 28, 1565, St. Augustine, Florida was founded by the Spanish conquistador Don Pedro Menendez de Aviles and he brought three African slaves with him. During the 16th and 17th centuries, St. Augustine was the hub of the slave trade in Spanish colonial Florida and the first permanent settlement in the continental United States to include African slaves.60 years in the early years of the Chesapeake Bay settlements, colonial officials found it difficult to attract and retain laborers under the harsh frontier conditions, there was a high mortality rate. Most laborers came from Britain as indentured laborers, signing contracts of indenture to pay with work for their passage, their upkeep and training on a farm.
The colonies had agricultural economies. These indentured laborers were young people who intended to become permanent residents. In some cases, convicted criminals were transported to the colonies as indentured laborers, rather than being imprisoned; the indentured laborers were not slaves, but were required to work
Plantations in the American South
Plantations are an important aspect of the history of the American South the antebellum era. The mild subtropical climate, plentiful rainfall, fertile soils of the southeastern United States allowed the flourishing of large plantations, where large numbers of workers Africans held captive for slave labor, were required for agricultural production. An individual who owned a plantation was known as a planter. Historians of the antebellum South have defined "planter" most as a person owning property and 20 or more slaves; the wealthiest planters, such as the Virginia elite with plantations near the James River, owned more land and slaves than other farmers. Tobacco was the major cash crop in the Upper South; the development of cotton and sugar cultivation in the Deep South in the early 18th century led to the establishment of large plantations which had hundreds of slaves. The great majority of Southern farmers owned fewer than five slaves. Slaves were much more expensive than land. In the "Black Belt" counties of Alabama and Mississippi, the terms "planter" and "farmer" were synonymous.
While most Southerners were not slave-owners, while the majority of slaveholders held ten or fewer slaves, planters were those who held a significant number of slaves as agricultural labor. Planters are spoken of as belonging to the planter elite or to the planter aristocracy in the antebellum South; the historians Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman define large planters as those owning over 50 slaves, medium planters as those owning between 16 and 50 slaves. Historian David Williams, in A People's History of the Civil War: Struggles for the Meaning of Freedom, suggests that the minimum requirement for planter status was twenty negroes since a southern planter could exempt Confederate duty for one white male per twenty slaves owned. In his study of Black Belt counties in Alabama, Jonathan Weiner defines planters by ownership of real property, rather than of slaves. A planter, for Weiner, owned at least $10,000 worth of real estate in 1850 and $32,000 worth in 1860, equivalent to about the top 8 percent of landowners.
In his study of southwest Georgia, Lee Formwalt defines planters in terms of size of land holdings rather than in terms of numbers of slaves. Formwalt's planters are in the top 4.5 percent of landowners, translating into real estate worth six thousand dollars or more in 1850, 24,000 dollars or more in 1860, eleven thousand dollars or more in 1870. In his study of Harrison County, Randolph B. Campbell classifies large planters as owners of 20 slaves, small planters as owners of between 10 and 19 slaves. In Chicot and Phillips Counties, Carl H. Moneyhon defines large planters as owners of twenty or more slaves, of six hundred or more acres. Many nostalgic memoirs about plantation life were published in the post-bellum South. For example, James Battle Avirett, who grew up on the Avirett-Stephens Plantation in Onslow County, North Carolina and served as an Episcopal chaplain in the Confederate States Army, published The Old Plantation: How We Lived in Great House and Cabin before the War in 1901.
Such memoirs included descriptions of Christmas as the epitome of anti-modern order exemplified by the "great house" and extended family. On larger plantations an overseer represented the planter in matters of daily management. Portrayed as uncouth, ill-educated and low-class, he had the difficult and despised task of middleman and the contradictory goals of fostering both productivity and the enslaved work-force. Crops cultivated on antebellum plantations included cotton, sugar, rice, to a lesser extent okra, sweet potato and watermelon. By the late 18th century, most planters in the Upper South had switched from exclusive tobacco cultivation to mixed-crop production. In the Lowcountry of South Carolina before the American Revolution, planters in South Carolina owned hundreds of slaves; the 19th-century development of the Deep South for cotton cultivation depended on large tracts of land with much more acreage than was typical of the Chesapeake Bay area, for labor, planters held dozens, or sometimes hundreds, of slaves.
Antebellum architecture can be seen in many extant "plantation houses", the large residences of planters and their families. Over time in each region of the plantation south a regional architecture emerged inspired by those who settled the area. Most early plantation architecture was constructed to mitigate the hot subtropical climate and provide natural cooling; some of earliest plantation architecture occurred in southern Louisiana by the French. Using styles and building concepts they had learned in the Caribbean, the French created many of the grand plantation homes around New Orleans. French Creole architecture began around 1699, lasted well into the 1800s. In the Lowcountry of South Carolina and Georgia, the Dogtrot style house was built with a large center breezeway running through the house to mitigate the subtropical heat; the wealthiest planters in colonial Virginia constructed their manor houses in the Georgian style, e.g. the mansion of Shirley Plantation. In the 19th century, Greek Revival architecture became popular on some of the plantation homes of the deep south.
Common plants and trees incorporated in the landscape of Southern plantation manors included Southern live oak and Southern magnolia. Both of these large trees are native to the Southern United States and were classic sym
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