plantation house

The Peacock-Applewhite-Yelverton house, again.

A sign hanging at the driveway entrance reads Maywood Manor, Est. 1850, and the large, four-columned portico plays into stereotypes of plantation Big House. In fact, per Stantonsburg Historical Society’s A History of Stantonsburg Circa 1780 to 1980 (1981), though slaveholder James Peacock built this house on the northwestern outskirts of Stantonsburg about 1860, the fancy entrance was not added until 1914. Here’s the house with its original exterior. (Also — “Maywood Manor”???)

Photo by Lisa Y. Henderson, March 2024.

The William and Elizabeth Simms Woodard house.

Wilson Times, 10 January 1950.

We have studied the cluster of plantations owned by the Woodard family near White Oak Swamp here, as well as the disposition of enslaved people held by William and Elizabeth Simms Woodard. The photos above and below depict the Woodards’ house, built in 1832.

Though the house seems to have been in fine form in the early 1980s, when the second photograph was taken, it has since been demolished.

Lower photo courtesy of Woodard Family Rural Historic District nomination form.