THIS OLD PLACE
I live on land which, at one time, served as a working plantation which was used a rather unusual way from others we read of in the Old South.
The house large brick house was bulldozed a few years ago to make room for the housing development in which we now live. The original, red brick, L-shaped house, was twenty to fourteen rooms, depending on how you chose to count them. I knew the house well because my first wife lived there ? was born there, in fact, as was her father. The back portion of the L-shaped house was built in 1844. The larger front section was finished the next year. It so happens that our present house is located down the slop of a gentle hill the old brick house named by the original owners - the Weller Family as ?Lofton?,on the edge of the area where out-sized bricks where sun-dried for the building of the big house.
There were slave quarters buildings along the edge of the ridge just behind and to the south of the big house. Foundation stones remaining to my time indicate there were at least three such cabin-like structures of ?shotgunned? style with doors at each end and a limestone, cook-in size fireplace mid-way on the south side of east side of each of them.
Activities continued year-round at ?Lofton?. As did, most farms in the area they raised grain crops for feed and fodder, pasturing by processing leather. They raised hogs and took in hides and pelt from wilderness hunters and trappers which they put on barges from a primitive warehouse on the banks of North River just below the sand pit area which exists to this day. I have heard several versions of the business transactions which followed. Some say the Weller family barged the materials downriver to Port Republic where they sold them to ?gondalow? brokers. Other accounts suggest the Weller family might have been, at least for a time, associated with the building of the those huge produce barges which were built to ship produce and products - including pig iron from local furnaces - to the Chesapeake Bay market.
There are many other stories concerning the old house and acreage. We will get to the telling of some of those stories, in time, but for now, let's take a moment to think of ?Lofton? plantation as having been a novel economic factor which was important to residents of the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.
A.L.M. July 4, 2004 [c442wds]
