RFP Staff/X
♦ Lest we forget the Josephus Hall House in Salisbury, N.C. is a plantation house where the slave master Dr. Josephus Hall and his family slept and were served by Black slaves held as property against their will. The Josephus Hall house was built in 1821 and was a working plantation where Black men and women, regarded by their oppressors as subhuman, worked under the brutal yoke of servitude. Overseers got the most work possible out of their slaves who endured long working hours and brutalization whenever the overseers saw fit. Let’s not romanticize plantation life for those who were held against their will.
Josephus Hall purchased the planation in 1859. In 1861 the property’s slave census showed 9 slaves recorded and most by a first name only.
The slave quarters and kitchen, a rudimentary red board shack with a kitchen table, still exists on the plantation house property. It is pictured in the gallery of photos below.
An article appearing in the lowcountryafricana.com in 2013 that reveals the Josephus Hall House slave quarters and kitchen. “Sleeping with the Past: Slave Dwelling Project Overnights at Hall House, Salisbury, N.C.”:
Photo Gallery of the Josephus Hall House Plantation and its Slave Quarters:
Josephus Hall’s Plantation and Plantation Slave Quarters:
Slave Quarters Kitchen Table:
A Romanticized Portrait of Plantation Life:
Josephus Hall House Historic Notes:
The Josephus Hall Plantation House:
A Slave Photographed on Right Side of the Lower Porch:
