Notice that the fireplace and chimney of
this house is located near the middle of the home.
The main room is in the door you can see, a small back room for
storage, seen below.
This is Master Spray and his son in the
main room of the house.
The big fireplace is the left, the garden is out the door, to the
right.
The window looks out across a grassy area to the river, which we will
see in a bit.
Note the costumes of the time.
As I took the picture, the Master spoke
the "lightening" outside, never out of character.
He spoke of the food preparation and the bed ticks, seen in the
foreground.
The young man is working of some wood, in the back. They never
stopped talking and/or working.
When I asked him if I could take a
"picture" with Nancy, by the fireplace,
he stepped in the other room and brought out a "pitcher" and asked if
we would like to buy it.
To the left of the fireplace, a narrow
stairway lead to the upper floor.
The parents and younger children slept near the fireplace in the main
room downstairs.
The older sons and male servants sleep on
their ticks (see at left) in the far room.
The older daughters and female servants sleep in this
room.
Master Spray said that 14 persons
currently live in this house.
Tobacco farms (that defines a plantation)
require great quantities of labor, both to
raise the tobacco cash crop and the corn crop to feed the
labor!!
Here, Nancy was inspecting the back room,
downstairs.
Then she looked out toward the St. Mary's
branch of the Potomac river,
at the far end of the yard, the young man standing under the big
tree.
See the river, left center. It was a
cloudy, rainy day.
From the main room of the house, I took a
picture of the garden.
Click on the picture, to go to the garden and animal
discussion.
Note the tobacco barn on the far side of
the garden.