Field Complex (1801-1817)

While changes were being wrought in the landscape around the mansion, at the Tobacco Barn Quarter and Mount Pleasant life continued on much as it had done in previous years.  Families would go to work in the fields at the rise of the sun in the sky, and would continue to work until the sun would set.  Children would be borne, and elders passed away and were respectfully buried in the Slave Cemetery.

Although the former detached kitchen was razed to the ground in the early-19th century, many of the other structures of the former Madison homestead continued to be used.  Indeed, one of these structures was the overseer’s house—likely the home of an enslaved individual who was given charge of the work of fellow workers.