Cherry Hill Plantation
&
Myrtle Lawn Plantation

Contributed by Deloris Williams

Cherry Hill Plantation

Home originally built by the family of George Washington Alston (1801-1849)  and his wife, Marina Priscilla Williams (1810-1897).  A beautiful old plantation house of the Antebellum period was one of the homes of members of the huge Alston family of Warren County who had family connections to several of the other large landowners in the area including the Williams, Davis, Kearney, Hawkins, Hardy and Tunstall families of both Warren and Franklin Counties in North Carolina.  When George W. Alston, the son of Philip Guston Alston (1762-1819), died in 1849, he left the care of the land he called “Cherry Hill” to his wife, and it was she who commissioned the construction of the present building.  Marina P. Williams was the daughter of Maj. William Williams (1760-1838) who had also left large amounts of his estate to his children and grandchildren, among them his grandson, Dr. Robert Edgar Williams (1817-1904), who was the owner of Myrtle Lawn Plantation, also in Fork Township; Robert E. married Valeria Virginia Kearney (1822-1907), daughter of William Kinchen Kearney (1785 -1869) and Benjamin Hardy James Maria Alston (1793-1883).  These two Plantations were among the largest in the area and from them came many of the former slaves who took the surnames of Alston, Williams, Davis, and Kearney and are today still a major part of the County and surrounding communities.  Researchers wishing to trace their family heritage will find that by looking through the records and following the marriages of these families can be quite helpful since there is such detail in many of the family documents about their life and times.  A great source of information on these associated families can be found in the “Lucy Tunstall Alston Williams Papers” as part of the Southern Historical Collection of the Manuscripts Department of  the Library of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, an Inventory of which can be viewed here:

http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/inv/w/Williams,Lucy_Tunstall_Alston.html

Both R. E. Williams and his wife are buried at the Alston-Williams family cemetery off Gillis Alston Rd.  near Inez,  as well as many other members of the sprawling  Alston and Williams family.  Today, Cherry Hill Plantation is part of the National Register of Historic Places and is renowned for its operations as home to a series of chamber music concerts, open to thepublic at various times of the year by the owners, the Thorne family.

See a listing of the Slaves from Cherry Hill

Myrtle Lawn Plantation

Myrtle Lawn Sign