We Are Here

In 1816, in a swampland in northeastern North Carolina, Josiah Collins plants his dream. This is the story of how his unlikely dream becomes the third largest slave-holding plantation in North Carolina, and one of the largest plantations of the upper South. Eighty years pass under the ownership of Josiah Collins, I, II, and III, hundreds of acres of swamp become fields of crops and sawmill operations. The plantation is changed forever by the Civil War, and Josiah Collins IV becomes the first Collins to own no slaves.

Here you will find the stories of just a few of the 800 enslaved who lived and died at Somerset Place. They leave their indelible marks of language and humanity, lives of love, laughter, sorrow, songs, and tears on these pages. The museum is where you learn the history. This book is where you meet the people who wrote that history, planting, harvesting, cooking, healing, birthing, and burying. Finally, the last of the descendants must decide how to live with the freedom they have coveted for a lifetime, and is now theirs. Who are they now? Can they leave here? Where will they go? Where are their people? Along the now abandoned canal, dug by the enslaved so long ago, the tall grasses whisper in the breeze, we are here. Remember us.