I. REMEMBERING SLAVERY: The King Plantation
Ed. note: The next three Untold Stories begin to remember the story of slavery in the Montevallo area. Each looks from a different angle at enslavement at King House on the University of Montevallo campus, one of many historic plantations in Alabama originally built by enslaved laborers. The series culminates in the story of Sukey, a woman enslaved by Edmund King who went to extraordinary lengths to keep the female side of her family whole. Sukey’s story provides insights into forces that have shaped African American family structure and values.
It's a touchy subject these days, slavery. "There are a lot of people who don't want to talk about it," remarks Black genealogist Peter Datcher. His work on family history in nearby Harpersville has gained wide recognition. He believes we have to talk about slavery.
“Our ancestors who made it out of slavery are as close as we have to superheroes.”
So let’s talk about slavery right here on the University of Montevallo campus.
The small brick house known as King House was at one time the "big house" of one of central Alabama’s wealth-making cotton plantations. Surrounded by academic buildings, it can easily go unnoticed. But in 1823, when completed, it was called Mansion House. Its owner, Edmund King, was a leading figure among local planter elite.
His restored mansion is on the National Register of Historic Places. The structure bears a plaque honoring it as the first brick house in the area and the first with glass windows.
Nothing is said about the enslaved people who made bricks from local clay to actually build the house.
Above are pictures of bricks, wood, floors and walls taken during King House’s restoration around 1973.
Between 1823 and 1863 King enslaved at least two generations of people of African descent, as many as fifty at any given time. Probably more. We cannot be sure of exact numbers and know only some of the names. Until 1870 the US Census records enumerated enslaved persons as property, listed by age and sex only under the name of the owner.
An inventory of King's estate in 1863 tells us that King House was the hub of a number of outbuildings -- stables, barns, sheds, a smoke house, slave quarters. It was surrounded by an orchard, gardens, and fields for crops and livestock. The crops included wheat and corn, probably for home consumption. King grew cotton and may have ginned it for his neighbors. He owned two cotton gins. In 1860 the plantation produced 10,000 pounds of baled cotton. (US 1860 Agricultural Production schedule.)
Livestock included two pair of working oxen, three mules, three horses and a colt, sixty-one pigs, forty-five sheep, forty-seven head of cattle, twenty-one ducks and seventy-six chickens. The King plantation sought to be self-sufficient as did other plantations in the area. Agricultural and domestic activity on this scale required a large labor force.
The inventory lists twenty-eight enslaved persons. Just before livestock.
We do not have pictures of the King Plantation. We can begin to imagine what it looked like by observing one of Alabama’s only working plantations. This is the Folsom-Moore-Webb-Holmes Plantation near the town of Marion.
We know a lot about Edmund King and his white family. We know little about the enslaved people who lived and worked on the property. Research on plantation households across the South allows some informed guesses. The "big house" -- often a modest structure like King House -- would have housed the master, mistress, and their white female children. The overseer and the family's white sons would occupy an adjoining wooden structure. Slave quarters, rough cabins housing one or two families, would have been located at varying distances from the "big house," with field hands living at the furthest remove. Typically cooks, washerwomen, milkmaids, and nurses lived closer in. Children's nurses sometimes slept on the floor to be near the children. (Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Within the Plantation Household, 102-3).
This is the only known portrait of Edmund King.
These days it is hard to summon up, even in imagination, the scenes of coerced labor enacted daily on the land surrounding King House. Stroll the University of Montevallo campus today, designed by a famous firm of landscape architects, and you will marvel at the tranquil beauty of the dappled shade and gently curving brick walkways. There's nothing to remind you of the brutality of slavery. To remind you that this too was one of the dark places of a distinctively American evil.
King House remains, along with a few panes of its original imported glass. But there is no signage, narrative, or campus tour to connect King House to the history of slavery in Alabama. The existence of the African American community that raised families in nearby rough cabins is ignored if not forgotten.
For more than four decades men, women, and children found the strength and hope to survive the brutality of slavery on soil now part of the University of Montevallo campus. It is past time for their stories to be told.
Members of the MLP observe a portrait of Edmund King.
Sources: Peter Datcher is quoted by Emily Sparacino, "Saying their names: Museum's new index serves as tool for slave ancestry research," Shelby County Reporter, June 27, 2022. The inventory of King's estate is in Will Book H, 16, pp. 857-883, in the Shelby County Museum and Archives, Columbiana. The image of the fingerprint is credited to Elizabeth Smith: see www.nps.gov/articles/000/words-have-power.htm. Submitted by Kathy King and Anitka Stewart Sims on behalf of the Montevallo Legacy Project, which seeks to increase awareness of one of the many historic plantations in Alabama built by enslaved laborers.