Awakening Somerset: 

 The Story Beyond the Big House 



Josiah Collins III built his 14-room mansion at Somerset in 1830. 



By Carla B. Burgess 



A "false" door produced what de- 

 signers call symmetry of architecture 

 inside the antebellum home of planter 

 Josiah Collins III. But it took a descen- 

 dant of one of the Collins family's 353 

 slaves to restore balance to the story of 

 Somerset Place. 



It's easy enough for visitors to find 

 this coastal North Carolina plantation, 

 which once completely encircled the 



16,600-acre Lake Phelps. From U.S. 

 64, the brown historical signs lead tour- 

 ists through the sleepy town of 

 Creswell, past fields of corn and beans 

 sprinkled with shocks of wild mustard, 

 across the Scuppernong River, onto 

 Spruill and 30-Foot Canal roads and 

 almost to Pettigrew State Park. 



But Dorothy Redford — a seventh 

 generation descendant of the first slaves 

 to toil this plantation — had to find her 



homeplace the hard way, by a painstak- 

 ing 10-year pilgrimage through thick 

 volumes of federal censuses, courthouse 

 records and deeds, old newspapers and 

 hours of oral history gathering. 



Her search led this former Ports- 

 mouth, Va., social worker in 1985 to the 

 steps of the "Big House" on the Collins' 

 plantation, where a teenage guide gave 

 her a tour of the home that included 

 scant mention of African-Americans. 



10 JULY/AUGUST 1993 



