Story of slaves told in 'Fields'

Middleton Place is a storied locale in Palmetto State history, established early in the life of the Carolina Colony and home to a seminal planter family.

It was also home to a community of slaves whose story long remained incomplete. Increasingly, that narrative gap is being filled.

Middleton's widely praised permanent exhibit on slavery was introduced in 2005 in Eliza's House, a freedman's cottage on the plantation grounds. The exhibit now is being amplified by the release of a detailed, handsomely illustrated new book, "Beyond the Fields: Slavery at Middleton Place," a companion piece that benefits from a trove of new research.

"The entire project goes back 10 years," says Tracey Todd, who co-authored the book with colleagues Barbara Doyle and Mary Edna Sullivan. "We've been making an effort to focus our interest more on the complete story of plantation life at Middleton Place and tell as accurately as we can the story of everyone who lived here. And, of course, most who lived here were slaves."

The staff started by creating the plantation chapel exhibit, which Todd says was, and remains, very well-received.

"We learned it was a chapel used for all colors, so we reinterpreted that exhibit the way it should have been, then did these additional reinterpretations elsewhere. With all this momentum building, we realized we had half of Eliza's House sitting there simply as storage. We had opened it in the early '90s as a sort of house museum, but half of it was not open to (the) public. So we had this space in what had been built as a dual-family dwelling, and the idea was to use it to create more of a center for African-American interpretation. Now it's the focal point."

The exhibit took two years to mount, with research going back even longer.

"It's really a study exhibit, and takes a visitor a while to read everything. The book came about when we realized how fascinated people were. So we, the interpretive staff, decided to put it into book form. Instead of making it a straight exhibit catalog, we felt it'd be more meaningful to make it a narrative."

Three years in the making, "Beyond the Fields" also is the product of new research. From various archives, the team assembled the names of 2,612 slaves who had lived at Middleton Place. Later, another 150 names were found. The book serves, in part, as an update of their research.

Though each contributed text, Doyle, the plantation historian, served as lead writer. Sullivan, Middleton Place curator, coordinated research for the exhibit and the book. Todd, vice president for museums, coordinated the overall project and edited the book.

"We were a team that developed the exhibit and produced the book together, along with our graphic designer, Lee Helmer," says Todd. "We've also started considering other books, and currently are involved in a new oral history project. The Middleton Place story is one we try to tell with site-specific information about what life was like here.

"We understand there are other museums that discuss slavery, and we don't want to take away from those efforts. But we do want to build on them by telling our own story."

"Beyond the Fields: Slavery at Middleton Place" is available at the Middleton Place gift shop.

Reach Bill Thompson at bthompson@postandcourier.com or 937-5707.