When the word, "plantation", is used there springs to mind visions of vast southern acreages planted with cotton and tended by slaves for a master. However, when the word, "plantation", is used in reference to lands in Breckinridge County, Kentucky, a rather different meaning is implied. Where, one might ask, does the term, "plantation", occur in reference to lands in Breckinridge County?
There is an erroneous reference to a Breckinridge County plantation in the published memoirs of Harvey Robbins. In his essay, Harvey wrote: "Our father, Jacob Robbins, was born in Breckinridge County, Kentucky, on the plantation of Colonel J. C. Breckenridge, in the year 1809, ..."2 This reference is to the plantation of John Breckinridge (1760-1806), the founder of the Breckinridge Plantation, who moved with his wife, Mary Hopkins Cabell, from Albemarle County, Virginia, to Kentucky in March of 1793.3 John Breckinridge purchased 30,000 acres for his new home near Lexington in the locale known as Cabell's Dale. This John Breckinridge became the Attorney General of Kentucky and also the Attorney General of the United States under President Jefferson. However, his plantation, which at the time of his death had 57 slaves and a large stable of thoroughbred horses,4 was in Fayette County, Kentucky, and not Breckinridge County as claimed by Harvey Robbins.
There is a more common usage of the term, "plantation", which often occurs in land deeds in Breckinridge County, Kentucky. I cite as an example of this usage of the term plantation, a land deed. In 1828, Patrick Keenan purchased one hundred acres, more or less, from James Landrum on the waters of Whetstone Run and Rough Creek in the region known as "the cut-off." These lands, then in Ohio County but soon to be cut off and become part of Breckinridge County in 1831, were described in the land deed as "the plantation whereon the said Keenan now lives ..."5 This use of the term, "plantation" here, has a radically different meaning than is usually associated with it. And this usage is rather typical of the language recorded in many deeds in Breckinridge County.
A plantation in Breckinridge County was an area of land which had been cleared of forest and the numerous deciduous hardwood trees and brush so that planting could occur. Settlers to this region were faced with huge forest lands. To survive, their basic existence required that they initially clear enough land so that the sun could reach the ground where gardens and the staple crop of tobacco were planted. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the word, plantation, as follows: "The action of planting seeds or plants in the ground."6
While the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary suggest that this definition of the term, "plantation", is now rare, it is clearly the applicable definition of the word, plantation, for lands in Breckinridge County, Kentucky, in the 19th century.7
1 I extend my gratitude to Mr. Wayne Meador of Clermont, Florida, for bringing the rare definition of the term, plantation, to my attention.
2 http://forneyclarkgenealogy.com. See in the window, What's New, the essay titled Robbins, Harvey: History of Jacob Robbins and Sarah Spillman, by Harvey Robbins, paragraph 2, line no. 1.
3 Barry Waugh. "Robert Jefferson Breckinridge." The Southern Presbyterian Review Digitization Project: Author Biography. http://www.pcanet.org/history /periodicals/spr/bios/breckinridge.html
4 Waugh, Ibid.
5 See: Ohio County Clerk's Office, Hartford, Kentucky, Deed Book F, p. 80.
6 Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. Fifth Edition, Vol. 2, Letters N-Z. Published in the United States by the Oxford University Press, 2002, p. 2232.
7 The rare definition of the term, "plantation", i.e., where planting occurs, probably explains why the word "plantation" is commonly misinterpreted as a vast slave plantation when it is applied to farm lands encompassing smaller acreages. While it is true that slaves were common on many farms in Breckinridge County during the slave era, those farms did not resemble the vast slave plantations of the Deep South as they are generally understood. Most early farms or plantations in Breckinridge County, Kentucky, did not use slave labor.
Contact Information:
Francis Keenan, Ph.D.
111 Sherwood Dr.
Brockport, New York 14420