No Southern Belles on Old N.C. Plantations

K E N A N S V I L L E, N.C., Oct. 27 -- North Carolina's plantation homes are agood illustration of what provoked an old joke that the state is avalley of humility between two mountains of conceit.

In Colonial and antebellum days, when North Carolina wassuspended between the wealth of Virginia and South Carolina, therewas plenty for the state to be humble about. To the north andsouth, good land, nimble marketing and deep-water ports helpedcreate a wealthy landed aristocracy — and showcase mansions tomatch.

North Carolina's step-behind status was reflected in itsplantations — a far cry from the stately mansions on Virginia'sJames River or the Ashley River outside Charleston, S.C.

Liberty Hall, an 1833 two-story white clapboard house a stone'sthrow from the Duplin County courthouse on Highway 24, is a typicalexample. The ancestral home of the Kenan family, who helped foundthe University of North Carolina in the 1790s, is shaded under acanopy of live oak trees and squeezed between newer homes on oneside and city tennis courts on the other.

Nice Place, For Its Day

Liberty Hall's owners were well-to-do, but far fromaristocratic.

"It was nice for its day but it was not tremendous," saidThomas S. Kenan of Chapel Hill, an eighth-generation descendant ofthe original settler.

Kenans — of Scottish and Irish ancestry — first came to thestate in 1760. A son of those first arrivals served as a general inthe American Revolution. At the family's peak, Kenans controlledalmost 7,500 acres about 12 miles south of Kenansville on thenortheast Cape Fear River.

Income came not from vast cotton fields but from sales oftimber, pitch tar and turpentine. According to Thomas Kenan, thefamily had 20 to 50 slaves, and often worked alongside them.

The family home opened as a museum in 1968, three years afterthe Kenans gave ownership to the county and set up a fund formaintenance costs.

The home gives a glimpse of the family's lifestyle in the 1850s,two decades before the timber and turpentine business would reachits peak.