What was life like for one of Chatham's wealthiest plantation families in the 1800s? The Alston name is often associated with wealth and success, but we have few details about the family or their lives. Papers discovered in the Alston-DeGraffenreidt House, which still stands between Pittsboro and Siler City, shed some light on this topic.
For forty-four years, what is now called the Alston-DeGraffenreidt House was the home of Adeline Williams Alston, widow of John Alston. John was one of the sons of Chatham Jack Alston. Adeline was widowed early and at the time of her husband's death had eight children and was pregnant with a ninth. She never remarried and managed the plantation with the help of her wealthy and well-connected family and the labor of hundreds of enslaved persons.
Adeline's story is clearly not that of the average Chatham farm widow, but it is the story of an important aspect of Chatham's history. CCHA volunteers Steven Brooks, Jim and Beverly Wiggins have researched and documented this history and provided a paper that is now available on the Chatham County Historical Association website.
In Adeline’s time, slave ownership was, to most, a measure of wealth and success. And even now, the wealth and success of families or individuals in the planter class is often remembered without acknowledgment of the inhuman practice that created and supported their privileged way of life. While narratives that focus only on the positive attributes of those who were much admired in their day are less disturbing, they are also incomplete and thus untrue. The authors have chosen to include the uncomfortable truths in this narrative.
One available document lists the family's enslaved workers by name, and is included in hopes that it might provide difficult-to-find information for descendants of those persons.
You can read the paper on our website:
https://chathamhistory.org/resources/Documents/PDFs/ResearchArticles/AAlston/AdelineAlstonChathamPlantationOwner.pdf
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