Shirley Plantation

The story of Shirley Plantation begins on land that was already inhabited. The Weyanoke, an Algonquian-speaking people, lived and farmed along this stretch of the James River before English colonists arrived. In 1613, a royal grant established an English settlement here. The Hill family’s connection began later: Edward Hill I was farming in Charles City by 1638, and his descendants eventually joined the Carter family through marriage.

The Great House visitors see today belongs to the eighteenth century. Construction began around 1723, when Elizabeth Hill married John Carter, and the house was completed in 1738. Its brick wings and distinctive central stair express the wealth and authority of a plantation household. That wealth rested on labor by indentured servants in the early years and, over generations, by enslaved Africans and their descendants. The plantation’s own historical account says its earliest record of an African resident dates to a 1622 census; it also acknowledges how little documentation survives about enslaved people before 1816.