Hope Plantation
Encyclopedia
Historic Hope Plantation an early federal house in the Palladian mode, is located Carolina Coastal Plain, near Windsor, North Carolina
Windsor, North Carolina
Windsor is a town in Bertie County, North Carolina, United States. The population was 2,283 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Bertie County...

, in the United States. The manor house
Manor house
A manor house is a country house that historically formed the administrative centre of a manor, the lowest unit of territorial organisation in the feudal system in Europe. The term is applied to country houses that belonged to the gentry and other grand stately homes...

 was built by David Stone
David Stone
David Stone was the 15th Governor of the U.S. state of North Carolina from 1808 to 1810. Both before and after his term as governor, he served as a U.S. senator, between 1801 and 1807 and between 1813 and 1814.-Biography:...

, a member of the coastal Carolina planter class, later Governor of North Carolina and a United States Senator. One of the finest examples of Palladian design built in timber, the manor house is slightly modified by neo-classical elements. The facade has five bays and a pedimented double portico with the original Chinese Chippendale balustrade. Crowning the house is a widow’s walk with matching railing. The interior of the house displays a height and grandeur rare in the region, and is furnished with a unique collection of period furniture, art and artifacts.

By the 1960s, the building had survived almost a century of neglect, and the citizens of Bertie County aided by other North Carolinians and a far-flung net of support, formed the Historic Hope Foundation, Inc. (a registered non-profit organization) to purchase and rescue the house.

Also on the site

The 1763 King-Bazemore House represents a fine example of vernacular architecture. It is one of the few remaining examples in North Carolina of mid-eighteenth century "hall and parlor
Hall and parlor house
A hall and parlor house is a type of vernacular house found in medieval to 19th century England, as well as colonial America. It is presumed to have been the model on which other North American house types have been developed such as the Cape Cod house and the Saltbox and influenced the somewhat...

" design. The home has been restored and furnished based on the 1778 inventory of owner, William King.

Outbuildings include a restored kitchen and the manor house’s original dairy, a smoke house and store buildings, an herb garden and a kitchen garden.

There are also extensive grounds (45 acres). The original grounds extended well beyond these and amounted to nearly 1000 acres (4 km²) of privately owned land, worked by over 200 slaves. The circa 1800 barn and the archeological sites make the basis for a walk which is often used as a fitness trail.

The Site and Context

The site on which the Hope Mansion is constructed was originally occupied by linguistic relatives of the Algonkian
Algonquian languages
The Algonquian languages also Algonkian) are a subfamily of Native American languages which includes most of the languages in the Algic language family. The name of the Algonquian language family is distinguished from the orthographically similar Algonquin dialect of the Ojibwe language, which is a...

, the Sioux
Sioux
The Sioux are Native American and First Nations people in North America. The term can refer to any ethnic group within the Great Sioux Nation or any of the nation's many language dialects...

 and the Iroquois
Iroquois
The Iroquois , also known as the Haudenosaunee or the "People of the Longhouse", are an association of several tribes of indigenous people of North America...

. North of the site were the Meherrin
Meherrin
The Meherrin Nation is one of eight state-recognized Nations of Native Americans in North Carolina. They reside in rural northeastern North Carolina, near the river of the same name on the Virginia-North Carolina border. They received formal state recognition in 1986. The Meherrin have an...

, and in the immediate area the Tuscarora. Although neither group seems to have had a permanent settlement, hunting artifacts abound.

A Charter to the Carolinas was granted by Charles II of England to eight Lords Proprietor in 1663 in gratitude for their support in helping him recover his throne after the execution of his father. They immediately began recruiting settlers both from England and from the English settlers in Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...

. In the 1720s the Lords Proprietor granted 1100 acres (4.5 km²) of land at the western end of the Albemarle Sound, near the Cashie River, to the Hobson family.

Francis Hobson and his wife Elizabeth (of Hope Parrish in Derbyshire, England) migrated to the new world to occupy the land. In 1765, after Francis’s death, Elizabeth inherited the property. When she married Zedekiah Stone, an emigrant from New England, the land became his and he named it “Hope” to honor her heritage.

The elder Stones built a house and began raising a family. The remnants of the their house and the probable location of the quarters of their enslaved servants and workers have been explored by expert archeologists.

David Stone, Elizabeth and Zedekiah’s son, was born in 1770. Despite his strong English heritage, he was raised as an American patriot, his father participating in early Provincial Congresses to support the revolutionary movement.

In 1793, David married Hannah Turner, and shortly before the marriage he was given the Hope tract by his father. David had graduated first in his class at Princeton, was widely read, and a correspondent of many of the new American intelligentsia (later with Thomas Jefferson). When he built, he built a grand mansion of European design. The house replicates almost exactly a plan in Abraham Swann’s The British Architect, a book known to have been in Stone’s library.

Exterior

The Palladian style was admired by Whigs
British Whig Party
The Whigs were a party in the Parliament of England, Parliament of Great Britain, and Parliament of the United Kingdom, who contested power with the rival Tories from the 1680s to the 1850s. The Whigs' origin lay in constitutional monarchism and opposition to absolute rule...

and by American patriots, particularly in the South, who thought of themselves as inheritors of Roman ideas and ideals. The absolute balance of the symmetrical structure reflects the sense of order inherent in the style.

The house is built on high brick piers, allowing a full “basement” storey above ground. Imposing entry stairs lead to the pedimented double portico on the facade. This is lightened by the intricacy of the Chinese Chippendale balustrade on both stories of the portico and the roof walk. Four stepped chimneys and eight windows on the two sides, reinforce the front to back symmetry. The rear of the house, from which the structure is now approached, has a single height portico, with the Chippendale motif repeated.

Near the house, the kitchen has been reconstructed on the original foundation footprint. The elegant dairy has been restored.

Interior

The interior of Hope reflects its uniqueness in rural eastern North Carolina. The rooms chiefly used by David Stone and for entertaining are on the upper floor. The bedrooms, the family sitting room and the dining room on the entry level. The central hallway, which stretches the double front doors to the back is an imposing double hall, with an archway diving the two ends. The staircase is partially enclosed. Upstairs, there is a large, imposing landing which may have been used as an upper parlour to catch breezes. This leads into the drawing room, which resembles a ball room. Also off the landing is David Stone’s library, which once held some 1400 volumes, a truly impressive collection for its time.

Also on this floor are smaller rooms which may have housed guests and are now interpreted as bedrooms. Best materials were used throughout, and although the timber was mainly local first-growth pine, a letter from a New York supplier, Joseph Sands, to David Stone in 1803, discusses marble and red stone for use in the fireplaces.

David Stone, a lawyer by training, died intestate. Thus, a complete inventory of his property was made by his administrator. Using this, the interior of the house was furnished by the Foundation with a degree of accuracy and appropriateness which has caught the attention of scholars.

The Rescue

The house was sold by David Stone’s son in 1836, and then passed through many hands. It endured decades of neglect. When rehabilitation of the structure was first considered and the state approached for aid by local citizens, in the 1960s, the Executive Director of the North Carolina Department of Archives and History said, “Hope is hopeless.”(Miracle, p. 8)

However, the Hope enthusiasts were not to be deterred and on February 2, 1965 the Historic Hope Foundation, Incorporated was chartered. The house was bought by the Foundation and a largely grass-roots restoration effort was launched.

By the late summer of the 1972, the restoration was complete.

Hope Today

The Historic Hope Foundation, Incorporated through its Board of Directors manages the Hope Mansion and subsidizes the opening of the buildings to the public (fee). An Administrator and Public Tourism Officer is appointed by the State of North Carolina.

The Foundation promotes several educational programs, and linkages with schools and universities.
It also sponsors social functions, primarily the Governor Stone Ball, as fund-raising events.

Sources

  • "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. Entries #70000411 and #71000570.
  • Bivins, John Jr., Furniture of the North Carolina Roanoke River Basin in the Collection of Historic Hope Foundation.: Journal of Early Southern Decorative Arts. Summer 1996.
  • Historic Hope Foundation, Inc., The Miracle of Hope Plantation. Windsor, NC: Historic Hope Foundation, Inc., 2002.
  • Iobst, Richard W., Personal Life of David Stone. (microfilm). Windsor, NC Historic Society.
  • Powell, William S., ed., Encyclopedia of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2006.
  • Smallwood, Arwin D., Bertie County: An Eastern Carolina History, Charleston, Arcadia Publishing, 2002 (extensive source notes published separately by the author).
  • Taylor, Melanie Johnson, David Stone: A Political Biography, Greenville, NC: East Carolina University, 1968.
  • Umfleet, LeRae S., Books Known to David Stone, “Patron of the Arts and Sciences”: An Exhibition of Volumes From His Reconstituted Library Plus Two Centuries of North Carolina Maps Dating From 1590, Exhibition Catelogue 1996.
  • Watson, Alan D., Bertie County, A Brief History, Raleigh, North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, 1982.

External links

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