Somerset Place State Historic Site
North Carolina
2572 Lake Shore Rd
Creswell, NC 27928
United States
This heritage site is a part of the American Battlefield Trust's Road to Freedom: North Tour Guide app, which showcases sites integral to the Black experience during the Civil War era. Download the FREE app now.

Somerset Place provides a window into how an enslaved community lived and survived in bondage.
Researchers have documented 861 enslaved workers during its 80 years as an active plantation. By the Civil War, it was one of the largest plantations in the upper South.
Somerset Place began in 1785 when Josiah Collins I, an English immigrant, formed a partnership to establish the Lake Company. This group aimed to develop agricultural land near Lake Phelps, a vast freshwater lake in the region. By 1790, Collins had bought out his partners, acquiring full ownership of the land and naming the plantation "Somerset Place," after his home county in England.
In 1786, 78 enslaved west Africans were purchased. This included Alfred, who died enslaved on the property in 1850, and a woman listed as “Dunky.” Her real name was likely Duko, meaning eleventh born in the Akan language — which is part of the Niger-Congo language family and is spoken in what is today Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire.
Generations of enslaved people reshaped the wooded and swampy land. Field hands grew a range of crops while others labored in sawmills, stables, or in their enslaver’s home. Some, like Luke Davis, held a higher social status. As a butler, he had access to better food, clothing, and information. Others, like shoemaker Ishmael Harvey, Jr., earned a small income from their trades. But most enslaved workers toiled in the fields.
The enslaved community at Somerset Place continued to grow and evolve. They also faced the continual threat of sale and family separation. An 1843 inventory lists the single room where multigenerational enslaved families lived. The rare document reveals the names, family units and heads of households of 284 enslaved people. According to the site, it is the only known inventory documenting the living arrangements of an enslaved community.
During the Civil War, both free and enslaved residents deserted Somerset Place. By 1865, nearly all free Black families had left the plantation, never to return. However, in 1986, descendant and later site manager Dorothy Spruill Redford organized the first Somerset Homecoming. Some 2,000 descendants of the enslaved community came to convene, discover and heal. The homecoming was exactly 200 years after the first African slaves arrived at Somerset Place.
Know before you go: Plan your visit by checking out the official website for Somerset Place State Historic Site.