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eighteenth century not unlike the castle of a Seymour 
or Craven in southern or western England. There
were porters, carriage drivers, gardners, valets,
cooks and maids who occupied privileged positions
as compared with their fellow slaves; there were
scores of men and women who worked from sun to sun
in the fields and the forests under Negro foremen
and white overseers; and there were white folk who 
came on occasion to the "great house" with hat in
hand to get contracts covering their operations, or
to take directions about the management of their
poor sandy farms.
There was a school house near the "great house"
where a poor Oxford or Cambridge graduate
or the local preacher taught the planter's children,
as well as those of his poor neighbors,the three
R's; there was a great dining-room where kinspeople
or friends often came three-score miles to birthday 
or marriage feasts and dances; as the eighteenth
century advanced there were stables for riding and
driving horses; and there was in many, if not most,
 
 
1. Harrison, Fairfax published in 1923 the 
Memoirs of a Hugenot Refugee in Virginia, 1686
,
which gives many interesting touches upon the social and class distinctions of the plantation system.