187 YEAR OLD PLANTATION HOUSE RUINS EXPLORED | WHITEHEAD PLANTATION

okay we are at the old uh what's known as the simpson place here in waverly hall and this was originally the home of william whitehead now we spoke a lot about william whitehead in past videos william and his brother thomas were two of the very first settlers that came here in the 1820s late i'd say in 1826 or so this is where williams settled he drew this land in the land lottery of 1825 because he had i believe served in the war of 1812 if i'm not mistaken originally with this place there was well over i think 1500 2 000 acres when it was in full cultivation all out here all the way to the mulberry creek below here was in planted in cotton and other uh crops but when the harris county courthouse was built in hamilton in 1908 the the current courthouse it originally had a dome and i was always told that you could see the dome of that courthouse from the front porch of this house here looking across the fields that's how much cultivation there was in harris county the year 1908. of course by the end this was owned by the simpson family the white heads were gone from here and relocated into town dan i already see something that's caught my eye here this block you know what that was that's where you got on and off of a horse oh well yep that was a probably a proper name for it the horse mounting stone horse mounting stone that would have been out here near the front so that they could mount and dismount there was another one built into a wall up here but i think it fell years ago we'll see because we are this is the front yard of the old home you can see the magnolia tree [Music] and i also want to i want to stress that this was owned by william whitehead after the war and after his death the estate sold this plantation to wilkerson's parks wilkinson sparks didn't live here too many years he passed away and then it was sold sold to the robert simpson family now the robert simpson family owns it to this day and uh we have special permission to be here on this property to document this this is private property so we have just this one chance to video this and that's it bulb flowers all through this yard and look at this great magnolia tree that is probably one of the biggest i've seen there's another large tree behind it the cedar tree right here these big trees are amazing the house that was here was built uh in 1836 of course they had lived here since 1826 25-26 and uh they had lived in log cabins or whatever they could construct to uh you know temporary shelter but by 1835 36 mr whitehead had become very prosperous and he was able to construct a big two-story home here that was just magnificent and he had all the mantles imported from england they were brought to charleston and they were brought down to macon and he went to macon they say and got the medals and brought them here by wagon well the house was vacant the simpson family passed away and it was it was inherited down to their granddaughter and she lived in atlanta and this was in the 1960s when the civil war centennial was taking place and there was a lot of celebrations going on in columbus to that effect and they say that a lot of college kids came out here and would use this house as a party place because it was vacant and they would wear their confederate uniforms out here and they would have bonfires and different things and in 1963 i remember my daddy said that he had been down here with the owner of the house and she had shown him different things about it different features that was really unique but he said that at that time the mantles the windows everything had been stolen and it just made her sick and she's she uh she had an idea of who stole a lot of the things out of there and she identified a few things around town she pointed those windows out on different houses around waverly hall and said look there's the window out of the uh the dining room and there's the window out of the living room because some of the windows were unique in that they were four panes across instead of the regular three panes these were four panes in other words i think they were 12 over 12 in some of these windows window sash but anyway the house burned down in 1963 and of course there was no electricity to it it was never known how it burned it just burned and it drew crowds from everywhere because there was no uh there was no fire department at that time and all you could do is just watch it burn so everybody came down to watch the old whitehead simpson house burn and it was really sad to a lot of people but let's go up and look at what's left this way you see the steps him that is so cool [Music] so i've got to say dan has told me about this place for quite a while and this has been something that we've been hoping to get the chance to come and look at and i remember you described it to me as the terraced front yard which is absolutely beautiful and i mean the steps over there and this terraced wall that is amazing and there was a circular drive originally that came off the road and circled right up through here to those steps you can see the old road build here and then it circled back out to the road around that way it forked right down here and it went back to the barns and all of the what they call the slave quarters later that was tenant houses and all the dependency buildings were back in the back but this used to be a beautiful site here with all these bulb flowers you can see there they're actually still coming out of the ground uh it being this close to spring but one thing that was always unique was the mounting stone here that's the wisteria robert this is where the horses would ride up or they would pull a buggy up close and this is where the ladies would step out right here onto this rock you see it comes out from that paris this was originally the top see it sticks out further than the rest of the wall it's fallen down over the years but i remember my daddy telling me that uh mrs galbraith told him that that was what that was for and that her grandmother as a little girl used to get on on and off of the buggy here but these are the steps going up to the first level okay you've got another terrace here with the rock wall now years ago this wall had a picket fence on it i remember the pickets still being here um [Music] fence and there was a gate here and the front yard was enclosed and it was all flower gardens and you can see the flower gardens flower beds are still outlined in rock so and you can still see the path going up to the house makes you wonder what was what special was growing in that little circle right there there was one there [Music] maybe a favorite rose bush or boxwood like i said people used to come here and dig up whatever they wanted and steal it and take it away but one thing they never did eradicate was the bulk flowers they're everywhere now the front door steps to the house to the front porch would have been right here this would have been the front porch now the house originally had a front porch that came out it had columns that held up the front portico um that was up above here and uh there was a balcony up here on the second floor but later the porch was added on to and it went down to the sides of the ends of the house on the front and then they had side porches on each side of the house but unlike a lot of the early settlement houses you can tell how far apart these chimneys are so you can imagine the hallway and the two big rooms on either side and it's my understanding that you went down the hall and came up stairs from the back and then onto a landing and then went upstairs again and at the top of the stairs there was a window that looked out over the backyard excuse me at the top of the stairs there was a balcony the front of the house in the back of the house were identical they always said that mr simpson could see his farm all the way to the mulberry creek from the back of the house and he could see all the way to the mccullough's place on the front of his house were there two chimneys yes this would have been the chimney in the room on this side of the house and that would have been the chimney in maybe the bedroom or the parlor then there were two rooms back here that have chimney on each end so the house had four chimneys four channels yes and the uh of course it was two-story and had fireplaces upstairs as well so these chimneys were two-story in height will i was going to ask if that was a well right behind the house that is the well that was the well that was on the back porch and supposedly it was filled in that looks like it's washed in over the years but i can remember when people used to drive down here and dump their garbage into that old well that explains all of the newer trash around up here the well and the kitchen the kitchen is back here you see some of the foundation of the kitchen the kitchen came all the way back here on this side there's a mound of dirt over there where there was a barn you know when we looked at colonel blackman's old plantation house and we noticed the uh handmade for local made bricks that were there were these bricks made around here on the whitehead plantation i would say these bricks were made here when mr whitehead wrote his last will and testament he included the names and occupations of a lot of his slaves his last will and testament was written before the civil war occurred mr whitehead lived until after the civil war but he never wrote a new will so they had to probate his old will when he died in 1874 i believe well upon his death and they probated that will all of that was recorded in the harris county courthouse so i believe that in his will there is certain named individuals such as uh it would name the slave's name and his occupation brick mason is one of those slaves i believe it lists blacksmiths it lists carpenters it goes into great detail it's a very very valuable historical document and fortunately they used it instead of just saying he had no will they did use that will although they they couldn't um none of those assets were still available as seen by the courts of course uh because freedom had taken place and had eradicated all of that is property so uh his estate was a very very touchy situation because he had a son who owned a plantation and his son had preceded him in death and his son was named in the will so there was a big court battle over how the estate was divided it got really nasty between members of the family after mr william white had passed away and it was something that that was tied up in the courts for a long time but eventually his estate was settled and this was sold to wilkerson sparks i'll show you this that's one of the lightning rods from the house the lightning rod would came down uh attached to this and this went in the ground somewhere that's the cable that went up to it there's another end to it right there see these screw together over there it still turns when did something like that date too lightning rods were very popular from 1870s on up i would say anywhere between 18 1880 and 1920 the big thing was lightning rod salesman you probably heard look at this plaster or mortar on the back is it painted i believe it was painted white white washed these chimneys were very very well kept in their day very well maintained and then these would be the bricks that were made on this land dan were both of these chimneys where they field stone on the bottom and brick on top i don't know this one on the front was most definitely brick because these rooms up here would have been the parlor or the master bedroom and they would have been considered much nicer so they would have had brickwork on them you can't tell because the foundation is covered up but i believe they were brick all the way up gotcha i see less brick on this one but i see more brick on the on the one across from it so i guess the way that one fell it just didn't cover it up this is the flower tip or storm fit i guess it depended on what it was needed for but after the storm of 1875 every home in this part of the country had a storm pit dug but this one i believe was probably used because the simpson family was known for their flowers as a matter of fact that's how they made a living later after cotton was no longer king after the bold weevil the simpson family raised fig trees and they would divide up little fig trees into pots and they would take them up and ship them on the train from waverly hall and they sold them through mail order to different you know all over the country but uh mrs simpson was known for her flowers uh selling bulbs of all kind of different flowers irises and different things but main thing they were known for was the uh sale of fig slips as they would call fig sprouts i'm sorry pig sprouts they also she was uh they sold milk and buttermilk and eggs and they were very well known for that a lot of the old plantation houses i've seen don't have uh cellars underneath and whereas you see a lot of houses up north that have a cellar hole so would this have been in place of something like that yes sellers were not that common around here there were a few of the old homes that had it just for keeping things like potatoes sweet potatoes they had to play a half place to keep those but uh storm sellers really gained in popularity after the storm of 1875. so many people around here lost their homes and and one whole family was wiped out the kennen family but uh this one looks like it might have had a concrete lid around it at one time i mean a concrete base with a wooden top looking at your foot it looked like quicksand this is a rooster yes [Music] i'm waving the whole trash yeah so hey dan look at this chimney here this one is a brick all the way down to the base yeah isn't that beautiful it is bricks made right here and this would have been you said there were side porches right here and back in the days of the plantation any business with the head of the farm was taken up on the side porch if you came here and you had business you came to the side door and it didn't matter who you were if you were the uh governor if you came here you came to the side door if you had business but if you came here socially you came to the front door if you were invited or if it was a social call but that was just plantation society etiquette and all the big homes like this one had a side entrance that went into the uh master bedroom which would have been mr whitehead's room on this side of the house much more this is some more of the uh cable that ran from the lightning rod down to the ground it still has the insulator on it one of the insulators foreign so now dan this was the whitehead plantation and samantha street was born on the whitehead plantation where do you think she was born at in relation to this house i would imagine that the uh tenant houses were down here in the back somewhere i know that there used to be one across the road the chimney if it is still there because it was a bigger house and it was still inhabited in the late 1960s i remember it i remember that there was a man looked after this place for the family that owned it and uh he kept a cornfield across the road it was a beautiful flat corn field as far as you could see and there was a house over there and it burned i believe but uh somewhere around here there's probably still foundations of houses back in here uh they could have been closer to the cemetery it could have been across the road i believe there was a house at some time on that hill across from the cemetery but the cemetery is what 500 yards from here yeah but this is where samantha street would have been born somewhere up in here she would have known every square foot of this place she knew the family she knew everything about this place she probably laid in and out of these doors of this house probably on these very steps she and all of the many others that lived here worked on this place you

Channel: Sidestep Adventures

Views: 62,588

Keywords: chadgallivanter, chad, gallivanter, history, things to do, florida, florida travel, flagler beach, sugar mill, bulow plantation, florida history, state park, bulow plantation ruins, bulow creek state park, sugar mill ruins, florida plantation, bulow florida, unique florida state parks, chad gallivanter, things to do flagler beach, flagler beach history, texas, texas history, brazoria county, brazoria, emancipation, us history, abolition, plantation, civil war

Id: GprbomIrroU

Length: 29min 53sec (1793 seconds)

Published: Mon May 09 2022