Book Description

"Manassas National Battlefield Park's General Management Plan (1983) named the Wheeler Tract as the site for the relocation of the picnic area and its attendant facilities. The area chosen for this relocation had been previously identified as the site of the late eighteenth- to early nineteenth-century complex known as "Portici." An archeological study of the proposed relocation area was required pursuant to planning and development. ... Nineteenth-century Portici evolved from a small tenant-occupied farmstead established during the eighteenth century. This tenant farm grew into a middling tobacco plantation called "Pohoke." Later the eighteenth-century dwelling was abandoned when Portici mansion house was constructed in circa 1820. Portici plantation became a flourishing, middling, multiple-grain-based plantation by the eve of the American Civil War. ... Archeological and archival work was conducted to document and assess the eligibility of Pohoke, Portici, and the Lewis house for nomination to the National Register of Historic Places. Collectively these three sites, with all their ancillary sites on the Wheeler tract, graphically depict the evolution of local lifeways and patterns of development in a frontier Piedmont plantation."--Abstract, page vii.