Former Large Cotton Plantation Estate in FL

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The house was constructed by planter Charles Bannerman in 1852. The plantation house and remaining acreage represent a mid-sized planter's home, and agricultural operations during the antebellum period. It is a fine example of vernacular southern architecture with Greek Revival elements. It is also one of few remaining antebellum residences in rural Leon County, a county once dominated economically, politically, and socially by its cotton planters.

The house and its surrounding land are the remnants of over 1549 acres amassed by Charles Bannerman from 1827 until his death in 1866. The property retains visible cultural remains of the antebellum period agricultural complex, including the house itself, the sites of former outbuildings, a slave cemetery, fields, and three plantation roads. The Bannerman journal and field book, provide information about the crops, activities, and slave workers, as well as the planter's involvement in the local community. The journal also documents territorial and early statehood agricultural practices and seasons.

Charles Bannerman moved to Leon County's Iamonia Lake in the 1820s from New Hanover County, North Carolina. Following the pattern of settlers from the upper South, he began purchasing land and acquiring slaves to develop a successful cotton plantation. Beginning in 1828 with two slaves and 160 acres, by 1850 he controlled forty slaves and twelve hundred acres. Charles was in many ways typical of the mid-sized planter, a member of the dominant class in the agricultural community. He served in the Second Seminole War, 1835-36, and was elected to the Florida House of Representatives in 1847 and 1848.

The current house was constructed on the plantation between August 1851 and August 1852. Contextually, the house is a product of the planter society and similar to those he had known in North Carolina.

Its construction was recorded in a field book and journal kept by Charles from 1837 to the Civil War. The journal recorded making brick, "burning brick" in a kiln, and gathering house timbers. The January 8^th, 1852 entry reads, "Mr. Ball commenced building the new House." The painting was finished on August 14^th, and three days later the Bannermans moved to the new home. The Bannermans had some interest in landscaping the house area; trees were planted in the yard, possibly the oaks which provide a shady setting for the house today.

Bannerman's journal describes the extent an agricultural complex that was present at a mid-sized plantation during the antebellum period. Named were buildings and features, many of which would have been located in the house area. They include at least three corn cribs, a smokehouse, a hog pen of split rails, a gin house with a steam engine, a cotton screw, a sugar mill, a wagon shed, a carriage house, a horse lot, stables, the blacksmith shop, a well, and the detached kitchen, a cow pen, "fowl house," a schoolhouse, "negro houses," and an overseer's house. An oak-lined plantation road leading from the front of the house south that is still visible today may have once connected the buildings associated with the house with the buildings used in crop production.

In 1860, the Bannermans purchased a second home in Tallahassee and moved there so that the children could attend school. The plantation operation, however, continued and grew. In 1863, the last existing tax record before emancipation, the Bannerman plantation reported seventy-five slaves. Charles Bannerman and his slaves cleared seven hundred acres of the land for cotton and corn fields. Bannerman's main production was in cotton, corn, cattle, and starting in 1858, tobacco. The 1860 agricultural record showed increased productivity with an increase of his cattle holdings from 40 to 150. He kept sheep, swine, and had horses, mules, and oxen. Cotton and corn production increased, as did peas, beans, sugar cane syrup, and sweet potatoes. In 1860 he owned 67 slaves.

Following Bannerman's death in 1866, the farm remained in the family's ownership, deeded in parcels to Bannerman's children in 1878. The eldest son and Civil War veteran, Charles Washington Bannerman inherited 200 acres, including the main house. He declared bankruptcy the next year, but the property was protected, and ownership was transferred to his wife Elizabeth. They continued to grow cotton and corn. The agricultural labor on all the Bannerman property was shared by tenant and sharecropper arrangements. After the death of his wife Elizabeth, Charles Washington and his daughter sold the property to his cousin Robert Charles Bannerman. Robert was primarily a cultivator of tobacco, and managed its growth on several area plantations as well as his own property, working the land with mules, and he keeping dairy cows as well. He and his wife Jeannette did not live in the house until the 1920s. When the south access road in line with the central hall was eroding, Jeannette planted scrubs to prevent it, and reconfigured the front circular drive. As Robert and Jeannette aged, they invited their daughter Terry Bannerman Zeigler and her husband Frank to move in and farm the property. After Jeannette died in 1947, the Zeiglers bought the remaining 160-acre farm. Terry was a teacher, and Frank farmed tobacco and corn using tractors. Frank built the barns and utility buildings. At least one tobacco barn burned and the succession of these remaining buildings is imprecise. In 1954, the east entrance road was relocated south to the current road. In 1991 Terry Zeigler sold the remaining 120-acre property. The house and current property had remained in the Bannerman's family ownership for 141 years.

The Bannerman house is representative of the architectural styles and ideals that settlers from the upper South brought with them to the new country. It is an I-house with sheds, a common variation of the I-house of the eastern United States found in North Carolina. It has the normal I-house pattern of a two-story one-room deep house with the addition of rear shed rooms on the ground floor, for a total of six rooms. The six rooms are arranged symmetrically in a typical Georgian central hall plan. Six furnished rooms were inventoried in 1867 Charles Bannerman estate records; furniture values were listed as: Room No. 1, $250; No. 2, $153; No. 3, $69; No. 4, $50; No. 5, $146; and No. 6, $105 (Charles Bannerman Collection: Invoices, 1868-1885).

Estate records also showed there was a pantry and kitchen in addition to the six rooms. The detached kitchen site, northwest of the house, is one of the cultural landscape's elements. The original pantry was located on the site of the current kitchen. The pantry was smaller by three feet to the west and two feet to the north than the current kitchen.

Bannerman's preserved field book and journal, 1837-1861, document the house construction. A "Mr. Ball" was the builder, with "Dr. Englishes" (sic) workmen doing the chimneys and "Howel and Swain" and "Mr. Harris" painting it. An itinerant painter was hired by Charles Bannerman to paint the grained wainscoting in the hall, and it remains as it was when he finished his work. It is believed to have been painted between the construction of the house in 1852 and the Bannermans' move to Tallahassee in 1860.

The architectural ornamentation of the house is influenced by the Greek Revival style, popular at the time of the house's construction and the dominant style until about 1860 in the South. It is seen in the large, squarish six-over-six windows, front doors framed by sidelights and a transom, and classically-derived square columns. On the interior, the central hall plan is also typical of a mid-century Greek Revival house. Applied symmetrical Greek Revival moldings and plain corner blocks trim the five-paneled doors and surround the windows in the six original rooms and the halls. The parlor door and window moldings feature a Greek Revival pedimented crown in addition to the moldings, and recessed panels beneath the parlor windows.

Charles was one of a group of territorial settlers from the plantations of North Carolina who sought good cotton land in the newly opened Florida territory. Neighboring plantations established near Lake Iamonia included that of his half-brother Joseph Bannerman and his brother-in-law Alexander Cromartie. The planters and planters' sons from the exhausted lands of the upper South were a socially and economically dominant group among the settlers of the antebellum period in northern Leon County.

Site Description

The Bannerman Plantation is an L-shaped 120.27-acre parcel of fields and woods northwest of Tallahassee near Lake Iamonia. The two-story frame vernacular plantation dwelling, built in 1852, is an I-house variation of the type "I-house with sheds" featuring a two-tiered front veranda. The dwelling has a gable roof and exterior end chimneys. Typical fenestration is a six-over-six double-hung sash. Although the north and west wings were added in the twentieth century, the central hall Georgian plan retains its integrity. The dwelling's dominant decorative elements are Greek Revival. The rural cultural landscape surrounding the house includes an African-American cemetery site, and contains three plantation roads, historic fields, five twentieth-century farm buildings, and a farm pond reconfigured in the 1960s.

The land is fairly level, 150-200 feet above sea level, with the house and fields in the highest area. The dwelling faces south in a grove of oaks that date from the nineteenth century. A border of bamboo and accents of flowering shrubs and bulbs are twentieth-century additions to the yard surrounding the dwelling. An unpaved circular drive surrounded by mature oak trees is immediately south of the house. This drive connects to a southeast access road. Thirty-five acres of former fields remain, primarily west and east of the dwelling, and were planted in pines in 1986. Zeigler Pond, southwest of the dwelling, was modified from a dammed creek during the 1960s; a small swamp also lies southeast of the dwelling along the entrance from Meridian Road.

The two-story frame vernacular plantation house retains a high degree of its nineteenth-century appearance. It has characteristics typical of houses in Charles Bannerman's home state of North Carolina. The I-house is the most common type of vernacular dwelling in the upper South; the Bannerman house is an identified variation of the I-house with integral rear shed rooms. The house was constructed on a brick pier foundation. The original section is supported by sills measuring from 9" x 10.25" to 11" x 12". The foundation screening of pierced brick is painted white. The irregular footprint is composed of a rectangular main block, with a northern central "T" extension, and a rectangular kitchen extension at the northwest corner. The exterior is surfaced with horizontal clapboard. Windows are filled with 6/6 double-hung wooden sashes.

The main (south) facade has five bays and a double-tiered veranda. Six square, slender columns on each level of the veranda, connected by a delicate balustrade, are graceful Federal-style details that emphasize the repetition and symmetry of the facade. The broken-pitched gable roof has an exterior chimney at each end. The facade is faced with flush siding of boards 9" - 11" wide; the remainder of the house has weatherboards, 4" - 6" wide. The house is painted white. The gable-end brick chimneys and exterior brick piers are covered with lime mortar also painted white. Both the first and second story have central doors, opening onto the verandas. The doors are accented with Greek Revival Style transoms and three-pane side lights. The first-story double door has a seven-light transom; the second-story single door has a six-light transom. All doors in the house, exterior and interior, are four-paneled. There are two windows on each side of the front doors. Windows on the front and rear elevations, where there are porch overhangs, have their original louvered shutters (blinds), painted green.

The south elevation of the one-room west wing has a balustraded veranda, with steps on its west end. Three windows are evenly spaced across the elevation. A door from the shed room of the main house opens onto the east end of the veranda.

The east and west (side) elevations of the house can be divided into three sections: the original I-house, a connecting sunroom projecting to the north, and the north addition. The southerly section is the original I-house with integral shed rooms. Its second story features a triangular louvered vent, a window to either side of a central chimney, and a projecting room on the north. This north room has a gable roof intersecting with the main gable roof. The first story also has a window to either side of the chimney. The east and west elevations mirror each other, except that on the east elevation, there is an additional window under the rear shed roof. On the west elevation, there is a one-room west wing attached under the rear shed roof.

The sunroom and the single-story north wing have a gable roof. The east and west elevations of the wing are nearly identical. The narrower section that connects the addition to the main house has French doors opening onto a small inset porch. The doors have five-pane sidelights and a window on each side. The rear section of the house has two windows on the east elevation and one window on the west elevation.

On the west elevation of the west wing there is one central window composed of three grouped sashes, and a larger window near the south corner with a double sash grouping.

On the north elevation of the I-house section, the second story has three evenly-spaced windows; the central window is on the projecting room. On the first story, each of the shed rooms has two windows. On the north addition, there is an open, inset balustraded porch with four steps, a door on the east end, and bi-fold doors. On the west addition, there are two windows placed to the extreme east and west, and a single French Style door recessed at the east corner.

The Georgian-plan house has a central hall on the first story flanked by two rooms on each side; the two rear rooms are shed rooms. The southeast room was the parlor, the southwest room was the master bedroom. The northeast shed room was a bedroom; the northwest shed room was the dining room. Each of the south rooms has a fireplace. The house features wainscoting and a chair rail in the first-story hall (32" high) and dining room (28.5" high). The hall wainscoting is grained; the dining room wainscoting was once painted dark. The straight run of stairs is on the east wall of the hall. There is a large turned newel, square balusters, and a rounded hand rail. At the north end of the hall is a door matching the front door, with side lights and transom. It has its original ornate iron hinges. Each of the six original rooms and the hall feature applied symmetrical decorative Greek Revival molding around the doors and windows, as does the north addition (House Interior Moldings Diagram). The parlor has the most formal treatment, with Greek Revival pedimented window and door surrounds and a recessed panel beneath each window. The master bedroom has a "graduated" molding with plain corner blocks. The second-story bedroom and hall have fluted molding with plain corner blocks; "Type B" molding was also used around the east window in the north bedroom, the only example of fluted molding on the first story. The shed rooms and hall have fillet molding with plain corner blocks.

The north addition begins with a sunroom the width of the first-story hall with two windows and a pair of French doors on each side. The windows each have a decorative panel beneath them. North of the sunroom, the wing consists of a bathroom on the west, a laundry on the east, and an open porch on the north. The west addition is a one-room kitchen. A folding door divides the kitchen and dining room.

The flight of stairs leads to the second story that has a central hall with a bedroom on either side. Each of the bedrooms has a fireplace. All fireplaces have simple wooden mantles. The south end of the hall has a door to the veranda. There is a bathroom addition on the north end of the hall.

In August of 1961, Terry and Dick Zeigler, then the property owners, hired the architectural firm of Barrett, Daffin, & Bishop of Tallahassee to renovate the house. The northeast shed room originally had a fireplace which was removed in the first half of the twentieth century and replaced with a window. The chimney for the dining room was removed. A one-story north addition with a kitchen, bath, and sunroom was added; a one-room west wing was removed. The west wing had been the plantation pantry, converted to serve as the kitchen during the 1910s. The plaster walls and ceilings were replaced with sheetrock throughout. Some of the trim molding around the interior doors and windows was damaged, and replacement molding was made to resemble the original "Type C" (see sketch of moldings, "Type D"). The second-story bathroom was added, incorporating a window formerly at the north end of the hall. The addition of the bathroom resulted in the elimination of a shed ceiling at the rear of the first-floor hall. A transom was added in the space created over the rear door, matching that at the front. Bedroom closets were added in three bedrooms. Other alterations to the house included repair and replacement of some of the porch balustrade and railings, primarily on the second-story porch, and repairs to the interior banister. Both shed room floors were replaced by adding floors over the old ones, raising them above the original level still visible in the other rooms.

In 1972, the north addition was converted to a laundry and the current west wing kitchen was constructed by John F. Harvell, of Thomasville. The kitchen's south veranda rail joins the house using the same holes left by the rail of a veranda on the pantry of the original house. The former fireplace location in the dining room is now filled with a folding door between the dining room and the 1972 kitchen.

To the north of the house are two buildings with flat roofs dating from the 1950s or 1960s; a storage building has horizontal siding with a door and window on the south side, and the pump house is a small corrugated tin and wood building. Its north side swings open for access. Along the south side of the lane west of the house are three small farm buildings added during the 1950s by the Zeiglers. From east to west there are a shed, a pig shelter, and a small barn. The shed of wood and tin has four stalls. The pig shelter is a tin-roofed pen with cement floor. The barn is a two-room wooden and tin storage building with a concrete block foundation and flat tin roof. These agricultural buildings reflect the continued use of the property as a farm.

The "negro graveyard" mentioned in the Bannerman journal is in an overgrown, wire-fenced wooded area that covers approximately an acre. It contains one headstone and one foot-stone, and multiple depressions marking burial sites. It was used by the Bannerman slaves during the antebellum period, and continued in use by the African American community until the 1930s.

Three roads that date to the historic/antebellum plantation are visible on the property: 1) An oak-lined plantation road leading from the front of the house south, on an axis with the central hall, is still visible today, and may be the lane referred to in the journal as near the gin house. 2) A second road mentioned in the journal "east of the house" was the former driveway to Meridian Road, in use until the 1950s. Parallel ditches east of the front yard mark this lane. The current entrance is a quarter-mile-long driveway beginning about one-tenth mile south of the earlier drive. 3) West of the house, a third road which may date to the antebellum period, passes the three agricultural buildings and leads to the cemetery and around the fields. The antebellum slave quarters were once located adjacent to this road in the vicinity of the current agricultural buildings, but their exact location is unknown.

Large historic fields to the northwest and southwest of the main house are still under cultivation having been planted in pine trees in 1969. An additional large field area to the east of the house parallels the early access road and is defined by young succession-growth pine trees.

Southwest of the main house the ground elevation slopes down. Two ponds separated by a broad retention berm are present. Water has historically seeped from the hillside and formed a stream and pond. In 1969 this formation was reconfigured to create the current larger ponds. The Zeiglers dug a well to ensure a year-round water flow, and dammed the stream that formed the two ponds.

Four antebellum archaeological sites have been identified behind the main house. Immediately to the northwest, was the antebellum kitchen, and a detached building connected to the house by a veranda. The veranda ran directly north from a porch on the west side of the pantry wing. A second building in the backyard was the log smokehouse; a packed clay surface marks its former location. A filled-in well is north the smokehouse site. An additional site north of the well site, has brick foundations of an unspecified building.

First Floor plan

Second Floor plan