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RE: General Cox of Powhatan County, VA

I found page 38 that mentions the other plantations

An Adventure in Faith, By James Solomon Russell of
Virginia

Published by Morehouse in 1936

Page 38

The St. Paul campus is full of interest, and it’s
historical background reaches back into ante-bellum
days, when the present site of the school was one of
the four plantations in the county owned by General
Cox of Powhatan County, an absentee landlord.

The plantations were Arthur Creek, Rose Creek, which the
school bought; Meherrin, and Pea Hill. Rose Creek was
a sort of supply station for the breeding and training
of slaves, from whence they were sent to other
plantations as needed. The General, in his periodic
visits to the county, made his headquarters at
Meherrin, where he had a stone house for his
residence. Rose Creek and Pea Hill had substantial log
houses for the overseerers, and mud and dirt houses
for the slaves.
All the plantations had these mud houses, and for
many years they were the center of much attraction on
our campus. Rose Creek had over a dozen and the others
nearly as many, some single and some double.
Until a few years ago, the houses here were still
standing in a fait state of preservation, but in the
last two or three years, they have fallen to the
ravages of time and the elements. Those at Pea Hill
met the same fate, but the Meherrin houses are still
in excellent condition and habitable.
These mud houses preserved traditions of the
ancestral homes of the Negro in Africa, both in
appearance and in materials. Board frames were first
put up in the size of the intended house. The mud
moistened, worked to the proper consistency, and mixed
with straw to secure adhesives, and then poured and
rammed into the chamber between the boards. The walls
were allowed to dry, and the top, usually clap boards
or shingles of heart pine, put on. Great care had to
be taken to protect the walls at the point of
structure with the roof from dripping water, which if
allowed to seep through, would soften them, and soon
cause decay. After the walls had hardened sufficiently,
the enclosing boards were removed. In most cases the
mud walls were kept whitewashed, a and in the course
of time the huts took on the appearance of a beautiful
white stone structure, the illusion being most
effective on moonlit nights.
On first coming into sight of Meherrin, around a turn
in the road, the solid fortress-looking stone house of
the owner, situated on an elevation overlooking the
Meherrin River, and surrounded by what in the distance
seems to be the stone houses of the retainers,
suggests a feudal castle of the old days. He dirt
houses on the School’s farm have crumpled into
nothing-ness and they and their site are now part of a
wheat field.




Links

St. Paul's College in Lawrenceville, VA

http://www.utoledo.edu/~wfraker/stpaul.html

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