Poplar Forest

History

The land upon which Poplar Forest was built shows archaeological evidence of having been populated by native peoples from the Paleo-Indian through Late Woodland periods. The 4,000 acre property was legally defined by a 1745 patent in which William Stith assumed ownership, but did not live on the land. He passed ownership to his daughter Elizabeth Pasteur and her cousin Peter Randolph, who maintained ownership until 1764. John Wayles purchased the original property in 1764 and slowly added an additional 819 acres prior to 1770; he was the first to use slave labor on the property.

Wayles’ daughter Martha was married to Thomas Jefferson, and the couple inherited the full 4,819 acres when Wayles passed away in 1773. The Jeffersons did not immediately continue developing Poplar Forest, nor were they frequent visitors to the property – their focus was on developing Monticello, Thomas’s political and legal career, and raising their family. Martha Jefferson passed away in 1782, and Thomas spent time away from Virginia in public service following her death. Even in Jefferson’s absence, the plantation was generating revenue from slave labor under the watch of a general steward and a team of overseers; the slave labor force at Poplar Forest produced annual tobacco and wheat crops after 1790.

Jefferson conducted annual visits to Poplar Forest beginning in 1810 and ending in 1823; the house was completed in 1816 and his visits ranged from a few days to weeklong stays. He frequently brought his granddaughters Ellen and Cornelia Randolph to the house after it was completed in 1816, and always traveled to Poplar Forest with a small cadre of enslaved men and women who were based at Monticello. Jefferson maintained sole ownership of the property and the slaves until 1790, when he gave 1,000 acres and six slave families to his daughter Martha and her husband Thomas Mann Randolph Jr. Randolph would later divide and sell the rest of Jefferson’s landholdings; he also sold many of Jefferson’s slaves to repay debts.

Jefferson sought to find permanent residents for the property, and his grandson Francis W. Eppes and wife Mary Elizabeth moved to Poplar Forest shortly after their 1823 marriage. The Eppses sold Poplar Forest in November 1828 to William Cobbs; Cobbs assigned the task of managing the property to his son in law Edward Hutter in 1840 following his marriage to Cobb’s daughter Emma. The Cobbs and Hutter families maintained ownership of Poplar Forest into the twentieth century; the Hutter’s son Christian purchased the property in the late nineteenth century and used it as a summer home and working farm into the 1940s using labor from both black and white hired farmhands and tenant farmers.

Christian Hutter sold the property to James Watts’ family in 1946; the Watts family operated Poplar Forest as a dairy farm and worked with Phelps Barnum and W. Stuart Thompson to restore the house to the way it appeared during Jefferson’s time. They also did significant landscape development, and sold a majority of the remaining land to a developer who constructed a nine-hole golf course and a lake along the eastern and southern part of the property.

Dr. James Johnson purchased the house and 50 acres of land from the Watts family in 1980, and sold it to the nonprofit Corporation for Jefferson’s Poplar Forest. The organization has worked in recent years to reacquire land within the original plantation boundaries, and as of 2008 owned 617 acres of the original property.

Architectural Design

Thomas Jefferson was a self-taught architect known for his work at Monticello and the Virginia State Capitol; he frequently borrowed designs from classical sources, and was attracted to Palladio's classical architecture in Rome as well as designs from 16th century France. When construction began at Poplar Forest in 1806, Jefferson was still President of the United States and supervised the construction from Washington, DC. Jefferson designed Poplar Forest as his personal retreat house.

The octagonal house may be the first of its kind to have been built in the United States. The house at Poplar Forest is made of brick and has an octagonal floor plan; it consists of a central square space and three sides made of elongated octagon rooms. There is an entry hall on the remaining side of the house, which is two smaller rooms divided by a short entry hall. There is a skylight in the central dining room and its dimensions are 20’ x 20’ x 20’, which makes it a perfect cube. Jefferson also elected to add pedimented porticoes on low arcades that were attached to both the northern and southern facades as well as the east and west stairwells. Scholars agree that the retreat house at Poplar Forest is an excellent example of octagonal symmetry; Jefferson's design for the building reflects a consistent geometric approach likely made possible by his well-known proficiency in algebra, geometry, trigonometry and Newtonian calculus.

Preservation

The property is currently owned by the Corporation for Jefferson’s Poplar Forest. By different owners, the main house underwent many alterations, and the plantation's area was incrementally reduced to 50 acres (20 ha) at the time of acquisition by the Corporation for Jefferson’s Poplar Forest. There was a fire in 1845; the Cobbs and Hutter families chose to rebuild in the Greek revival style and to add an attic story for sleeping; this modified the interior plan of the house. The original walls, chimney, and columns remained after the renovation. The Corporation is using early nineteenth century building materials including heavy timber fram construction, hemp sash cord, iron hardware from Colonial Williamsburg to restore Poplar Forest to Jefferson’s original architectural vision. The Corporation is also using nineteenth century building techniques in their restoration work including column rendering and burning limestone to produce traditional lime mortar and plaster.

Slavery at Poplar Forest

Slaves were present on the property from the 1766 through 1865, when slavery was formally abolished in the United States. Present-day knowledge of the slave populations and their contributions to Poplar Forest is based on both archaeological and archival evidence. John Wales used slave labor to originally develop roadwork on the property, and when Thomas and Martha Jefferson inherited the land that included Poplar Forest from Wales, they also inherited 135 enslaved men, women, and children as well as other tracts of land in Amherst, Cumberland, Charles City, Goochland, and Powhatan counties. Because Wayles chose to split his estate among several heirs, slave families were separated in order for his heirs to pay his debts.

As Jefferson turned more attention to Poplar Forest, he brought slaves from Monticello, Elk Hill, Indian Camp, and Judith's Creek and increased the slave population at Poplar Forest. Jefferson kept consistent records of the slaves living at Poplar Forest; these records show that the slave population fluctuated between as few as 28 and as many as 95 individual slaves were working at Poplar Forest between the years 1774 and 1819. As an active participant in the slave trade, Jefferson sold and purchased slaves throughout the time he owned Poplar Forest, including a sale of 40 slaves from his various properties in Bedford County, VA in the 1790s. The Eppses inherited the house, about 1,075 acres of land, and several enslaved men and women after Jefferson’s death in 1825.

Slave labor was vital to Poplar Forest’s economic success. Beginning in 1790, the slaves at Poplar Forest initially grew tobacco and livestock for profit, and later began growing wheat.

Archaeology

There have been several archaeological digs at Poplar Forest; the first remnants of buildings used by African American slaves were discovered in 1993 when staff members were checking the ground for objects of historical significance before planting trees. This exercise revealed that the ground on the hillside east of the poplar grove had been farmed; this discovery led to the discovery of a small cellar of a structure dating to Jefferson's time at the property. Subsequent excavations revealed details pertaining to the physical structures in which the enslaved community lived and worked. Documentary evidence suggests that the slave housing structures at Poplar Forest were made of logs and that each house had two rooms that each measured 12.5 x 15 feet; this is corroborated by archaeological evidence that suggested that the slave structures contained root cellars designed by the occupants, which were used to store clothing, tools, and iron hardware. Archaeologists used soil stains to discover storage pits, burned tree roots, and postoles; this analysis also yielded fragments of glass, ceramics, and iron which were discovered to have been parts of plates, bottles, and cooking pots.One other structure discovered is believed to have functioned as a smokehouse as well as a residence, while a third is believed to have been built later than the other two, and used primarily as housing.Soil analysis also suggests that there were fences in the slave quarters.

More recent excavations focused on an area believed to have held paper mulberry trees; Jefferson planted two rows in order to help create naturalistic wings to complement the Palladian style of his retreat house. Archaeologists at Poplar Forest found stains in the ground indicating areas in which trees were previously planted, and their goal is to analyze the levels of charcoal and pollen to determine which areas were most likely the original location(s) for the paper mulberry trees. Other ongoing and future excavation plans include the area surrounding an antebellum slave cabin as well as Jefferson’s ornamental plant nursery.

Future excavations will be geared towards determining the landscape as it was when Jefferson designed and spent time at Poplar Forest so that the present-day museum can re-create Jefferson's vision for visitors.

In addition to yielding archaeological evidence of slave life at Poplar Forest, these excavations suggested that maps of Poplar Forest created in Jefferson's time were incomplete and did not illustrate the extent to which slaves were present. Current scholarship suggests that the enslaved men and women at Poplar Forest lived and worked at one of three sites:

Old Plantation/North Hill Site

The Old Plantation/North Hill is believed to have been established in the 1770s/1780s and was the site of the oldest slave farm structures at Poplar Forest dating from 1764, and maps suggest that the original structures included an overseer house, large barn, and slave housing built over the course of 40 years. Scholars also refer to this area as the Old Quarter, and it was located to the south and west of the main house.

Wingos Quarter Site

The Wingo quarter farm dates from 1790-1812 at Poplar Forest and was operational when Jefferson owned Poplar Forest; he gave the land on which it was located to Martha and Thomas Mann Randolph as a wedding present.

Site A.

This is the newest of the three sites; current scholarship indicates that it was built in the 1830s and was operational until emancipation.

Communities

Records show that by the 1790s, there were seven different slave families represented at Poplar Forest. Jefferson encouraged common-law unions amongst the slaves, and recorded the birth dates of each slave born on the property. Jefferson kept records of family connections - surviving records have allowed scholars to conclude that multiple generations of single families were enslaved at Poplar Forest and had relatives strewn about other plantations in Virginia. Jefferson's surviving notes paired with archaeological evidence discovered during excavations of the slave sites at Poplar Forest tell us that three carpenters were able to construct a slave cabin in three days and that the slaves most often lived next to their field or shop work sites.

Known Individuals

This is a partial list of known individuals who were enslaved at Poplar Forest.

Hannah was not born at Poplar Forest, but served there from the time she was a teenager until ca.1821. She married and had a family with a fellow slave, was literate, and worked for a time as Jefferson's housekeeper.

James (Jame) Hubbard was purchased by Jefferson when he was 30, and went on to oversee field laborers at Poplar Forest. He fathered six children with a fellow slave named Cate and fostered several others, and worked as a hogkeeper when he was older. Scholars are also able to trace his family members and their roles at Poplar Forest, which included Nace, Hannah, Nancy, Joan, James, and Phill.

Phill was born at Poplar Forest to James Hubbard and his wife Cate. Phill briefly worked at Monticello before returning to Poplar Forest, where he married Hanah and had a son. He died at age 33, reportedly of poisoning.

William (Billy) was born at Poplar Forest and violently rebelled against slavery by attacking an overseer on more than one occasion. Jefferson sent him and three others to Louisiana, where William attempted to run away, but was caught and sold.

John Hemings never lived at Poplar Forest, but documentary records show that he was responsible for much of the interior woodwork in the retreat house at Poplar Forest.

Present-Day

The Corporation for Thomas Jefferson's Poplar Forest has been in charge of Poplar Forest since 1984, when the 501(c)(3) organization purchased 50 acres of land and the original buildings with the goal to preserve the estate for the educational benefit of the public. The Corporation currently operates Poplar Forest as a historic house museum and cites their mission as seeking to both preserve Thomas Jefferson's personal retreat and inspire visitors to explore Jefferson's legacy.

Poplar Forest first welcomed visitors in 1986, and presently conducts guided tours thematically dedicated to the main retreat house and the enslaved community. The property is a National Historic Landmark.