Evening Solitude |
When I began this project I spent time walking the grounds of the Exchange Place. While I was surrounded by history and historical structures there were also animals grazing and vegetables growing in the garden. It was then that I decided to shoot the summer and winter images in black and white, and fall and spring in color.
The Exchange Place is a living history farm. The site was once a community that served as a self-supporting plantation, a relay station along the Old Stage Road and the Post Office for Eden's Ridge. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and nine of the ten buildings built between 1816 and 1851 are restored on their original foundations.
John S. Gaines and his family lived at the Exchange Place from 1816 until 1846. He started a store and established the post office of Eden's Ridge in 1831.
The Exchange Place was also a stagecoach stop. The stagecoach came through from Abingdon Virginia to Knoxville TN three times a week and fresh horses were exchanged here before continuing on.
The Gaines decided to sell their property and in 1846 John Preston was walking the property while considering purchasing it. The family tradition is that he came upon a tree near Reedy Creek with a carving that said "D. Boon killd a bar o this tree 1775".
The year 1775 is significant. On March 10, 1775 Daniel Boone and his men began blazing the Wilderness Road starting at the Long Island of the Holston (what is now Kingsport TN), continuing up Reedy Creek near the Exchange Place to Leslie Branch, northward through Virginia, and then west into Kentucky.
The Garden Spot |
For the next 50 years the Wilderness Road was the principal route settlers used to travel from the east into Kentucky. The road was abandoned about 1840 but today's modern highways follow much of its route.
John Preston purchased the Exchange Place and gave the farm and the carving from the tree to his son, James M. Preston, upon his marriage to Catherine Ann Greenway. John hung the carving on the wall in the gathering room of the Main House at Exchange Place. A copy hangs there today with the original in the Preston home in Abingdon VA.
Of Time and Place |
As part of Exchange Place's commitment to preserve 19th century agricultural life, period livestock now reside on the farm. Domestic skills, including washing, spinning, weaving, ironing, quilting, candle dipping and basketry, are frequently demonstrated
during festivals and by special arrangements.
I'm looking forward to photographing the changing seasons at the Exchange Place. The colors of fall, the snow-covered grounds of winter, and the first blossoms of spring.
