City: Durham, NC

Category: Tours & Attractions

Telephone: (919) 620-0120

Address: 5828 Old Oxford Hwy.

Description: What’s most interesting about the Historic Stagville plantation is not that at the start of the Civil War its owner was deemed to be the richest man in North Carolina, with family holdings of 30,000 acres and 900 slaves. What’s most interesting is that, unlike most other plantation sites, Historic Stagville offers glimpses of what the lives of those slaves were like. Most historic sites bear no trace of the slave quarters. At Historic Stagville, a collection of 71 acres divided into three tracts, visitors can see not only the 19th-century home of the Bennehan family plantation, but also four two-story, four-room buildings where the enslaved lived, and a giant timber-framed barn that bears witness to the craftsmanship of enslaved labor. In December, re-enactors stage a re-creation of holiday life in the plantation house and the slave quarters. The Bennehan-Cameron family that owned the Stagville land for most of two centuries left behind many historic papers that have helped historians create vivid pictures of life there, which inform the tour guides. The plantation is open Tuesday through Saturday. Call ahead to see what times tours will be offered each day. Admission is free.