Mulberry Row

Mulberry Row. .

Every article is made on his farm; his negroes are cabinet makers, carpenters, masons, bricklayers, smith, etc. , Duc de La Rochefoucauld Liancourt, 1796

, You are standing on Mulberry Row, a road once lined with more than 20 dwellings, workshops, and sheds. It was the constantly-changing hub of the entire 5,000-acre plantation. Here, enslaved people, indentured servants, free blacks, and free white workmen lived and worked as weavers, spinners, blacksmiths, tinsmiths, nail-makers, carpenters, joiners, gardeners, stablemen, and domestic servants. Elsewhere on the plantation, enslaved workers cultivated crops and tended livestock, drove carts and felled timber, and built fences and farm buildings., While the remains of only four original structures survive, Mulberry Row suggests the complexity of slavery and labor at Monticello. As you walk along this road, imagine the sights and sounds of 200 years ago-the small log, frame, or stone dwellings and workshops; the smell of wood and charcoal smoke; the sounds of hammers and saws, carts carrying firewood, chickens and barking dogs, and the conversations of scores of people.