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The Great Plantation: A profile of Berkeley Hundred and Plantation Virginia
The Great Plantation A profile of Berkeley Hundred and Plantation Virginia Author:Clifford Dowdey Through the individual story of one of Virginia's oldest and greatest plantations and planter families--Berkeley Plantation and the Harrison family--here is told the complete story of the rise, Golden Age, and decline of Virginia's plantation society. — Included are personal portraits, accounts of Indian massacres and Bacon's Rebellion, a section... more » on the founding of Williamsburg and its glorification under Governor Gooch, the daily life of the aristocrat, details of estate management.
Berkeley Hundred can be considered an archetype and its owners, the Harrisons, rose to national prominence. Benjamin Harrison V, signer of the Declaration of Independence, represented the high-water mark of both the family and society which produced him. Berkeley Hundred is still standing and still inhabited today, and this story should be a standard work on colonial history for years to come.
The Harrison family produced two presidents of the United States, governors of Virginia, a Signer of the Declaration of Independence, and an ancestor of Robert E. Lee. In their immediate region lived William Byrd, John Tyler, Martha Custis, Martha Jefferson (Thomas' wife), and Robert E. Lee's mother. These were the first families in Virginia who achieved power after settlement had been won.« less