Brownsville

Brownsville. . During the Civil War, the William M. Lewis plantation “Brownsville” consisted of 400 acres of land, a large family residence, and numerous outbuildings. Four of the buildings housed a total of twenty-two slaves. Here stood the main house, referred to affectionately by the postwar residents as “Folly Castle.”, Nannie Neville Leachman fondly remembered childhood evenings she spent at Folly Castle after the war., “After supper we'd drift out on the porch, Papa in his corner...[with] his papers, pipes and tobacco... The rest of us, singly, or in groups, on the other bench or on the steps, and we'd watch the moon come up over ‘Compton's Woods’, flooding the hills and dales with a soft, mellow light. There seemed an enchantment about it...”