Hart House

This white house with a red roof is the Hart House. When it was built in 1851 as part of the Cameron plantation’s slave quarters, this house looked identical to all the other houses here at Horton Grove. This building looks so different today because of its long history after 1865.

It was totally renovated by the Hart family, a Black family who lived on this plantation for three generations after the end of slavery.

The renovation of this building is a visual reminder of how the Hart family’s life was transformed after emancipation. The Harts carved out a free life for themselves in this place. They were founding members of the free Black church and school established here.

At the same time, the Harts were renting this house from the Cameron family who had enslaved them, and they labored in work contracts that tied them to those same enslavers.

In that way, this former slave dwelling is also a stark reminder of how formerly enslaved families often remained bound to the families who enslaved them. Ultimately this house was inhabited for over one hundred years after emancipation by African American families who neither owned the building nor the land underneath it.

The Hart family’s history at Stagville traces back to Ephraim Hart, their earliest ancestor to come to Stagville. He was purchased by the Cameron family, and brought to this plantation. He and his wife Nellie lived in quarters south of here during slavery. At the end of the Civil War, Nellie and her young son Cy met Federal soldiers passing through the plantations. After the soldiers broke open the smokehouse and helped themselves to food, the Captain told Cy and Nellie that they were free.

Like many other freed people, Ephraim and Nellie signed contracts with the Cameron family and stayed in the same quarters to work as sharecroppers. They were not paid wages for their work— after each harvest, they kept a share of their crops and had to hope that it was enough to pay off all their debts and supplies for the year. The majority of their crops were sold for the Camerons’ profit.

By the 1890s, Ephraim’s son, Cy Hart, and his family moved into this house, still working as sharecroppers. This house was already larger and sturdier than the small cabin they left behind. In the 1920s, they made a massive renovation to the house, redoing almost every part of the building— roof, siding, walls, and all. They painted the rooms of the house in bright colors: blue and green and pink and red. The Harts built on a new front porch, and a back room, where Cy Hart started his own business— a small store.

In the Great Depression, when the Federal government started a WPA program to interview formerly enslaved people, one of their interviewers found her way right up the drive to this white house. Here she found Cy Hart. He was nearly eighty years old, and and she recorded a few of his memories about slavery, perhaps sitting right here on this front porch. As they talked, Cy Hart remembered how he was forced to work in the wheat fields when he was only a very young child.

The Cameron descendants owned this land into the 1950s, and Black families sharecropped here into the 1970s. The Hart family still lives in Durham, where they are a vital part of the Durham community.

The Hart House reminds us that the history of Stagville certainly does not end in 1865. The families who profited from slavery continued to profit from this land and from the Black families who stayed here. And the formerly enslaved people and their descendants continued to struggle for freedom here.

The renovation of this house is a tangible reminder of the very real ways African American lives changed after emancipation, and the very real ways they remained the same.