The vast majority of Southern farmers who enslaved people held fewer than five slaves; these farmers tended to work the fields alongside the people they enslaved. There were an estimated 46,200 plantations in 1860, of which 20,700 had 20 to 30 enslaved people and 2,300 had a workforce of 100 or more, with the rest somewhere in between. The materials for a plantation's buildings, for the most part, came from the lands of the estate. Lumber was obtained from the forested areas of the property. Bricks were most often produced onsite from sand and clay that was
molded, dried, and then fired in a
kiln. If a suitable stone was available, it was used.
Tabby concrete was often used on the
Sea Islands.
Slave quarters Housing for enslaved people, although once one of the most common and distinctive features of the plantation landscape, has largely disappeared in much of the South. Many of the structures were insubstantial to begin with. Only the better-built examples tended to survive, and then usually only if they were put to other uses after
emancipation. The quarters could be next to the main house or well away from it. On large plantations they were often arranged in a village-like grouping along an avenue away from the main house but sometimes were scattered around the plantation on the edges of the fields where the enslaved people toiled, like most of the
sharecropper cabins that were to come later. The structures were often of the most basic construction. Meant for little more than sleeping, they were usually rough log or frame one-room cabins; early examples often had chimneys made of clay and sticks. Hall and parlor houses (two rooms) were also represented on the plantation landscape, offering a separate room for eating and sleeping. Sometimes dormitories and two-story dwellings were used. Earlier examples rested on the ground with a dirt floor, but later examples were usually raised on piers for ventilation. Most of these represent the dwellings constructed for enslaved people who worked in the fields. Rarely though, such as at the
Hermitage Plantation in Georgia and
Boone Hall in South Carolina, even those who worked in the fields were provided with brick cabins. More fortunate in their accommodations were those who served in the enslavers' houses or were skilled laborers. They usually resided either in a part of the main house or in their own houses, which were normally more comfortable dwellings than those of their counterparts who worked in the fields. Economic studies indicate that fewer than 30 percent of planters employed white supervisors for their slave labor. Some planters appointed a trusted slave as the overseer, and in Louisiana
free black overseers were also used.
Kitchen yard outside of Marion, Alabama. The main house is wood-frame with brick columns and piers. A variety of domestic and lesser agricultural structures surrounded the main house. Most plantations possessed some or all of these
outbuildings, often called dependencies, commonly arranged around a
courtyard to the rear of the main house known as the kitchen yard. They included a
cookhouse (separate kitchen building),
pantry, washhouse (
laundry),
smokehouse,
chicken house,
spring house or
ice house, milkhouse (
dairy), covered
well, and
cistern. The
privies would have been located some distance away from the plantation house and kitchen yard. The cookhouse or kitchen was almost always in a separate building in the South until modern times, sometimes connected to the main house by a covered walkway. This separation was partly because the cooking fire generated heat all day long in an already hot and humid climate. It also reduced the risk of fire. Indeed, on many plantations the cookhouse was built of brick while when the main house was of wood-frame construction. Another reason for the separation was to prevent the noise and smells of cooking activities from reaching the main house. Sometimes the cookhouse contained two rooms, one for the actual kitchen and the other to serve as the residence for the cook. Other arrangements had the kitchen in one room, a laundry in the other, and a second story for servant quarters. in Melrose, Louisiana The washhouse is where clothes, tablecloths, and bed-covers were cleaned and ironed. It also sometimes had living quarters for the laundrywoman. Cleaning laundry in this period was labor-intensive for the domestic slaves that performed it. It required various gadgets to accomplish the task. The wash boiler was a cast iron or copper cauldron in which clothes or other fabrics and soapy water were heated over an open fire. A wash-stick (a wooden stick with a handle at its uppermost part and four to five prongs at its base) was simultaneously pounded up and down and rotated in the washing tub to aerate the wash solution and loosen dirt. The items would then be vigorously rubbed on a corrugated
washboard until clean. By the 1850s, laundry was passed through a
mangle. Prior to that time, wringing out the items was done by hand. The items would then be ready to be hung out to dry or, in inclement weather, placed on a
drying rack. Ironing would have been done with a metal
flat iron, often heated in the fireplace, and various other devices. near
Sevierville, Tennessee The milkhouse was used to make
milk into
cream,
butter, and
buttermilk. The process started with separating the milk into
skim milk and cream. It was done by pouring the whole milk into a container and allowing the cream to naturally rise to the top. This was collected into another container daily until several gallons had accumulated. During this time the cream would sour slightly through naturally occurring bacteria. This increased the efficiency of the
churning to come. Churning was an arduous task performed with a
butter churn. Once firm enough to separate out, but soft enough to stick together, the butter was taken out of the churn, washed in cold water, and salted. The churning process also produced buttermilk as a by-product. It was the remaining liquid after the butter was removed from the churn. The products of this process were stored in the spring house or ice house. If it was cool enough, the meat could also be stored there until it was consumed. Few functions could take place on a plantation without a reliable water supply. Every plantation had at least one, and sometimes several, wells. These were usually roofed and often partially enclosed by latticework to exclude animals. Since the well water in many areas was distasteful due to mineral content, the
potable water on many plantations came from cisterns that were supplied with rainwater by a pipe from a rooftop catchment. These could be huge aboveground wooden barrels capped by metal domes, such as was often seen in Louisiana and coastal areas of Mississippi, or underground brick masonry domes or vaults, common in other areas.
Ancillary structures near
Forkland, Alabama Some structures provided subsidiary functions; again, the term dependency can be applied to these buildings. A few were common, such as the
carriage house and
blacksmith shop; but most varied widely among plantations and were largely a function of what the planter wanted, needed, or could afford to add to the complex. These buildings might include
schoolhouses, offices,
churches,
commissary stores,
gristmills, and
sawmills. Found on some plantations in every Southern state, plantation schoolhouses served as a place for the hired
tutor or
governess to educate the planter's children, and sometimes even those of other planters in the area. near
West Point, Mississippi Most plantation owners maintained an office for keeping records, transacting business, writing correspondence, and the like. near
Georgetown, South Carolina Church or
chapel structures were built for a variety of reasons. In many cases the planter built a church or chapel for the use of the slaves, usually recruiting a white minister to conduct the services. Some were built to exclusively serve the plantation family, but many more were built to serve the family and others in the area who shared the same faith. This seems to be especially true with planters within the
Episcopal denomination. Early records indicate that at
Faunsdale Plantation the mistress of the estate, Louisa Harrison, gave regular instruction to her slaves by reading the services of the church and teaching the Episcopal
catechism to their children. Following the death of her first husband, she had a large
Carpenter Gothic church built, St. Michael's Church. She remarried to Rev. William A. Stickney, who served as the Episcopal minister of St. Michael's and was later appointed by Bishop Richard Wilmer as a "Missionary to the Negroes," after which Louisa joined him as an unofficial fellow minister among the African Americans of the
Black Belt. at
Annandale Plantation near
Madison, Mississippi Most plantation churches were of wood-frame construction, although some were built in brick, often
stuccoed. Early examples tended towards the
vernacular or
neoclassicism, but later examples were almost always in the Gothic Revival style. A few rivaled those built by southern town congregations. Two of the most elaborate extant examples in the Deep South are the
Chapel of the Cross at
Annandale Plantation and
St. Mary's Chapel at
Laurel Hill Plantation, both Episcopalian structures in Mississippi. In both cases the original plantation houses have been destroyed, but the quality and design of the churches can give some insight into how elaborate some plantation complexes and their buildings may have been. St. Mary Chapel in
Natchez, Mississippi, dates to 1839, built in stuccoed brick with large
Gothic and
Tudor arch windows,
hood mouldings over the doors and windows,
buttresses, a
crenelated roof-line, and a small
Gothic spire crowning the whole. Although construction records are very sketchy, the
Chapel of the Cross, built from 1850 to 1852 near
Madison, Mississippi, may be attributable to
Frank Wills or
Richard Upjohn, both of whom designed almost identical churches in the North during the same time period that the Chapel of the Cross was built. near
Natchitoches, Louisiana Although some prewar plantations had a commissary that distributed food and supplies to enslaved people, the plantation store was essentially a postwar addition to the plantation complex. In addition to the share of their crop already owed to the plantation owner for the use of his or her land, tenants and sharecroppers purchased, usually on credit against their next crop, the food staples and equipment that they relied on for their existence. This type of
debt bondage, for blacks and poor whites, led to the
Farmers' Alliance in the late 19th century that began to bring blacks and whites together for a common cause. This early populist movement is largely credited with helping to cause state governments in the South, mostly controlled by the planter elite, to enact various laws that disenfranchised poor whites and blacks, through
grandfather clauses,
literacy tests,
poll taxes, and various other laws. Plantation barns can be
classified by function, depending on what type of crop or livestock were raised. In the upper South, like their counterparts in the North, barns had to provide basic shelter for the animals and storage of
fodder. Most plantations in the Deep South did not have to provide substantial shelter to their animals during the winter. Animals were often kept in fattening pens with a simple
shed for shelter, with the main barn or barns being utilized for crop storage or processing only. (foreground) and rice pounding mill (background) at
Mansfield Plantation near
Georgetown, South Carolina Rice plantations were common in the
South Carolina Lowcountry. Until the 19th century, rice was threshed from the stalks and the husk was pounded from the grain by hand, a very labor-intensive endeavor.
Steam-powered rice pounding mills had become common by the 1830s. They were used to
thresh the
grain from the inedible
chaff. A separate chimney, required for the fires powering the steam engine, was adjacent to the pounding mill and often connected by an underground system. The
winnowing barn, a building raised roughly a story off of the ground on posts, was used to separate the lighter chaff and dust from the rice. in
Thibodaux, Louisiana Sugar plantations were most commonly found in Louisiana. In fact, Louisiana produced almost all of the sugar grown in the United States during the prewar period. From one-quarter to one-half of all sugar consumed in the United States came from Louisiana sugar plantations. Plantations grew
sugarcane from Louisiana's colonial era onward, but large scale production did not begin until the 1810s and 1820s. A successful sugar plantation required a skilled retinue of hired labor and enslaved people. The most specialized structure on a sugar plantation was the
sugar mill (sugar house), where by the 1830s the steam-powered mill crushed the sugarcane stalks between rollers. This squeezed the juice from the stalks and the cane juice would run out the bottom of the mill through a strainer to be collected into a tank. From there the juice went through a process that removed impurities from the liquid and thickened it through evaporation. It was steam-heated in vats where additional impurities were removed by adding lime to the syrup and then the mixture was strained. At this point the liquid had been transformed into
molasses. It was then placed into a closed vessel known as a
vacuum pan, where it was boiled until the sugar in the syrup was crystallized. The crystallized sugar was then cooled and separated from any remaining molasses in a process known as purging. The final step was packing the sugar into
hogshead barrels for transport to market. Cotton plantations, the most common type of plantation in the South prior to the Civil War, were the last type of plantation to fully develop. Cotton production was a very labor-intensive crop to harvest, with the fibers having to be hand-picked from the
bolls. This was coupled with the equally laborious removal of seeds from fiber by hand. Following the invention of the
cotton gin, cotton plantations sprang up all over the South and cotton production soared, along with the expansion of slavery. Cotton also caused plantations to grow in size. During the financial panics of 1819 and 1837, when demand by British mills for cotton dropped, many small planters went bankrupt, and their land and slaves were bought by larger plantations. As cotton-producing estates grew in size, so did the number of slaveholders and the average number of enslaved people held. ==Social and labor organization==