The Not-So-Secret History of North Carolina’s Largest Plantation
I grew up in the South, where evidence of our shameful past was all around me
Cooleemee, North Carolina, sits on a bend of the Yadkin River where fertile soil collects. Tobacco and cotton have always grown well here.
We slow the car down as U.S. Route 64 crosses over the river until we find a narrow road headed back into the pines. We turn in, but it’s blocked off with a rope and some large straw bales. A big orange sign, the type you see used by construction crews on the highway, declares: “ROAD CLOSED AHEAD.” Something about the setup, however, seems very unofficial — there is no real road work, you just aren’t supposed to continue down this road. Not in 2019.
Down this road — Peter Hairston Road — is Cooleemee Plantation. There are no signs for it, and it’s near-impossible to find an address for the Greek Revival-style house that resides there, or even for the property in general. The Hairstons were the largest slave-owning family in the South and they were slave traders as well. At their financial peak, the Hairstons owned 40 plantations and enslaved 10,000 people.
You could drive by this spot a thousand times and never know the history of the road headed down toward the river. The Davie County…
