CHARLOTTE,
N.C. -- If visitors come to Rosedale Plantation expecting to
see something like Tara from "Gone With the Wind," they will
leave disappointed.
Rosedale
was grand for its time and place _ the backcountry of
Mecklenburg County in 1815. If you want to see something
that looks like Tara, said Camille Smith, go to Charleston.
Smith is a docent for the plantation.
Rosedale, a
green oasis dotted with ancient trees and bushes, sits on
8-1/2 acres of land on busy North Tryon Street, about three
miles from the heart of downtown. The house was built by
Archibald Frew, who came to this area in the 1790s.
"He and his
sister, Sarah, came," Smith said as she led a recent tour.
"Both were in their early 20s. They came with money, quite a
lot of money." Historians think that the Frews had inherited
their wealth from their parents and headed to this area,
where they may have had relatives, from the coast. Both
began to buy property.
Archibald
Frew's plantation spread across 911 acres, and on his land
he built a big, three-story house, with fine details. He
brought in artisans to paint the heart-pine doors to
resemble mahogany and a mantel in the front room to resemble
marble. He had molding carved, piece by piece, to form a
garland border that decorates the front room.
"There were
obviously signs of Archibald Frew putting a lot of money
into it," Smith said. Locals disapproved.
Slaves most
likely built the house, said Karen McConnell, Rosedale's
curator of education, although they don't have any records
of the construction. "Slaves did most of the manual labor
for that sort of thing," she said. They do know that
andirons that passed down through the family and are still
in the house were made by a slave.
Following a
common practice of his time, Frew hid a newspaper within the
mortar of the chimney to date his house. A scrap of the
newspaper with the date, 1815, and his signature is now
displayed behind a frame. The newspaper was from Richmond,
Va.; Charlotte didn't have a newspaper in 1815, Smith said.
Before the
tour began, Smith explained what the backcountry was like
when Frew moved there.
Most of the
settlers were poor, subsistence farmers who lived in log
cabins with dirt floors. Some people built plantations, but
they raised just enough food for the people who lived on
them, Smith said.
"They did
not generally sell crops for money."
During
their early years in the area, Archibald Frew ran a general
store and Sarah Frew married. After her first child was
born, her husband died, and she then married William
Davidson, the richest man in the county. His plantation was
much grander than Rosedale, and he owned about 80 slaves.
Frew owned just a few.
Frew kept
his store and also became a federal tax collector for
Mecklenburg County. He collected licensing money from local
merchants, who drew their income from area farmers. With
Frew's job came the responsibility of making up any tax
shortfalls.
"That was
usually not a problem," Smith said. At least, not until
1815, the year Frew finished his house. That April, on the
Indonesian island of Sumbawa, the biggest volcanic eruption
in modern history began. The eruption of Mount Tambora sent
so much ash into the atmosphere that 1816 became known as
"the year without a summer."
In
Mecklenburg County, the cold summer stunted crops, leaving
farmers with no money to buy from merchants. Merchants
couldn't pay their taxes.
"Archibald
was liable for 27,000 and some dollars," Smith said. Frew
couldn't pay, even when the debt was reduced to $6,000. The
government seized his house and put it up for auction.
Davidson, his brother-in-law, bought it and allowed Frew to
remain there until his death in 1824. The house stayed empty
until 1827, when one of Frew's nieces, Harriet, married
David Caldwell, a doctor. He bought Rosedale from her
father, and the descendants that lived in the house until it
closed were hers.
Harriet
Caldwell died of erysipelas, a skin infection that she
caught from a traveler who stopped at the house. When she
lay ill, she asked that her husband bring Cherry, one of the
plantation's former slaves, back to bring up her children.
Cherry, Smith said, smoked a pipe, and David Caldwell didn't
allow smoking in the house.
Cherry
slept in an upstairs room, where she would sit near the
fireplace and smoke after Caldwell retired for the night,
Smith said. She blew smoke up the chimney so that Caldwell
wouldn't smell it.
Today,
visitors can make a request in advance for a tour led by a
costumed docent who will tell of plantation life from the
point of view of Cherry and other slaves who worked there.
Through the
years, Rosedale's occupants made some changes but left the
basic structure intact. On one side, they removed stairs and
doors and replaced them with windows. They removed the
rotting portico and the shutters. They painted the gaudy
yellow trim white. They turned the downstairs master bedroom
into a kitchen.
The last
Caldwell descendant moved out of the house on Dec. 31, 1986,
Smith said. Restoration began the next day and went on until
1993, when the house opened for tours. The project was
complex and expensive, McConnell said, and workers kept
running into problems. Disaster struck when a huge support
beam, riddled by termites, collapsed. Plaster walls
crumbled, and a chimney collapsed.
Today, the
old chimney bricks, made by slaves, form the basement floor.
Bars on the basement windows are original and practical.
"They
didn't pen farm animals in," Smith said. "There was cooking
going on down here."
The
second-floor portico that rotted away in the 1800s has been
rebuilt. Walls are whole again, except for a cutout left to
show visitors how the house was constructed. Roman numerals
carved into the laths showed workers which pieces went
where.
The house
has been returned to its original look, with the
lemon-yellow trim, although the exterior could use a new
coat of paint. The master bedroom, which later owners had
converted to a kitchen, is a bedroom once more. The original
French wallpaper, which Frew bought from Philadelphia,
covers walls in three rooms. Although the wallpaper is faded
and stained, its designs are still visible.
So is the
graffiti written by schoolboys who boarded at Rosedale while
attending a classical academy nearby. They wrote names,
dates and phrases and drew faces atop the paper.
The
original paint, now discolored, and plaster, now cracked,
are visible on the third floor, which is set up like a
classroom. A small room behind it served as a home for a
tutor who taught the children of the house.
"It was
miserably hot in the summer, and it had no fireplace," Smith
said. One of Archibald Frew's daughters came back to her old
home as a tutor, Smith said.
Outside the
house, which is sparsely furnished, remnants of earlier eras
remain. Some of the boxwoods that Archibald Frew planted
survive, as do some mulberry trees that Caldwell planted.
Caldwell was one of several people in the county who tried
to start a silk industry, and mulberry leaves are the diet
staple for silkworms. The trees grew, but the venture
failed.
A swamp
chestnut oak, planted in 1984, shades the picnic area, and a
300-year-old tulip poplar stands next to its twin, felled by
the winds from Hurricane Hugo in 1989. The downed tree, its
roots intact, still puts out leaves.
