SANKOFA'S SLAVERY DATA COLLECTION
Nomini Hall Plantation
Location: Westmoreland Co., VA
Constructed: 1729
History: Robert "Councillor" Carter lived at Nomini Hall, the elegant manor house his father built about 1729 in Westmoreland County, overlooking the Potomac and Nomini Rivers, a plantation of about 2,000 acres. The square Georgian style home with four chimneys was made of brick, two stories high, located on a hill with a spectacular view of the rivers. Robert "Councillor" Carter and his wife Francis A. Tasker Carter raised their family (17 children) at Nomini Hall.
"Councillor" Carter had set up and equipped so many plantations and farms that he resorted to naming twelve of them after the signs of the zodiac. Two of these farms, Leo, consisting of 809 acres with 309 acres cleared, and Cancer with 700 acres of which 400 were cleared, were dedicated to the growing of tobacco, shipping 79 hogshead of tobacco, between the two in 1785. In 1791, there were 509 slaves, with an estimated worth of well over a hundred thousand dollars, belonging to Robert III, a number that was large enough to generate efficient cultivation of his many plantations. He was also the largest single slave- holder in Virginia at that time.
During the year 1791, Robert "Councillor" Carter provided, in a Deed of Manumission,
for the freeing of almost all of his 509 slaves. This was to be accomplished on
a gradual basis over a period of twenty years since to have set all free at once
would have resulted in great distress for the slaves and chaos for the community.
He gave or rented lands to some of his former slaves as they were freed.
Associated surnames: Carter
Associated Plantations: Leo Plantation (Loundon Co., VA)
Associated Free White Names
Associated Black Slave Names
Agriculture
Description of Associated Architecture
Research Leads
Records of Ante-Bellum Southern Plantations From the Revolution Through the Civil War Series M: Selections from the Virginia Historical Society Part 2: Virginia's Northern Neck; also Maryland http://www.lexis-nexis.com/cispubs/guides/southern_hist/plantations/plantm2.htm
Section 22, Carter, Robert (1728-1804), Correspondence, 1754-1804: This section consists of 837 items, correspondence, 1754-1804, of ....Benjamin Dawson (of Nomini Hall, Westmoreland County, and at Alexandria, Bull Run and Leo, Loudoun County, Centreville, Fairfax County, Morgan's Ford, Frederick County, and Richmond, Virginia, concerning Spencer Ball, John Tasker Carter, Robert Bladen Carter, Hugh Quinlan, the division of Carter's lands in Virginia among his children, and the emancipation of Carter's slaves).... Solomon Nash, George Newman (of Leo, Loudoun County, and at Dumfries, Virginia, concerning Cancer, Prince William County, Leo, Loudoun County, and Scorpio and Virgo, Frederick County, Virginia; corn, flax seed, hemp, tobacco, wheat; and land in Loudoun County, Virginia).... John Sutton (of Leo, Loudoun County, Virginia, concerning the Leo Plantation and the collection of rents from tenants on Carter's lands in Frederick and Loudoun counties)....
RESOURCES