Somerset Homecoming
Recovering a Lost Heritage
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
In 1860, Somerset Place was one of the most successful plantations in North Carolina — and its owner one of the largest slaveholders in the state. More than 300 slaves worked the plantation’s fields at the height of its prosperity; but nearly 125 years later, the only remembrance of their lives at Somerset, now a state historic site, was a lonely wooden sign marked “Site of Slave Quarters.”
Somerset Homecoming, first published in 1989, is the story of one woman’s unflagging efforts to recover the history of her ancestors, slaves who had lived and worked at Somerset Place. Traveling down winding southern roads, through county courthouses and state archives, and onto the front porches of people willing to share tales handed down through generations, Dorothy Spruill Redford spent ten years tracing the lives of Somerset’s slaves and their descendants. Her endeavors culminated in the joyous, nationally publicized homecoming she organized that brought together more than 2,000 descendants of the plantation’s slaves and owners and marked the beginning of a campaign to turn Somerset Place into a remarkable resource for learning about the history of both African Americans and whites in the region.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
It is a tribute to the coauthorsD'Orso is a Virginia journalistthat Redford herself seems to be telling us this marvelous story directly, in her own clear voice. She was born into a black family of Columbia, N.C., in 1943, lived for periods in New York and, when she was 33, became a social worker in the South. She felt then the need to learn about the people she came from and began a research project that took 10 years. She discovered that although libraries and other archives contain a wealth of historical information about white familiesthe records quoted here add considerable interestthere were no black histories. She realized she had to look in county courthouses for bills of sale for slaves. There are moments of drama, high humor and sorrow in Redford's odyssey. It's a joy to share her triumph at identifying her forebears, then bringing together 2000 of their descendants in 1986. The homecoming was at Somerset Place, the plantation in North Carolina where their ancestors were slaves. Redford heads a project to rebuild Somerset as a national heritage. Photos not seen by PW. BOMC and QPBC alternates.
