Chowan County NcArchives Photo Place.....Blenheim Manor House ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/nc/ncfiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: James Williams jrwill56@gmail.com October 26, 2009, 9:38 am Source: Unavailable Photo can be seen at: http://www.usgwarchives.net/nc/chowan/photos/blenheim983ph.jpg Image file size: 54.6 Kb Blenheim Manor House Pagett Plantation 614 Macedonia Rd. Edenton, NC In the years 1714-1722, Dr. Samuel Pagett received about 2,000 acres in Proprietary Land Grants, including or what was already Blenheim Plantation. This area is listed on Edward Mosley's map of 1733. It is possible that the land was granted about the same time Gov. Charles Eden (Town of Edeton namesake) appointed Pagett Justice of the Peace. Dr. Pagett was married to Elizabeth Blount, whose father was Thomas Blount, Justice of Chowan Precinct Court. They had two daughters. When Pagett died in 1745, the property went to his daughters, Penelope and Sarah. Penelope married three times, first to John Hodgson who died in 1747, then to James Craven who died in 1755, and then to Thomas Barker a prominent Edenton political figure. For biographies of Penelope and Thomas Barker, see entries under their names in Powell's Dictionary of North Carolina Biography. Penelope is the same person of the Edenton Tea Party fame. The Barker's home is on South Broad Street overlooking Edenton Harbor. When James Craven died, he left to his widow Penelope "Pagett's Plantation in the great marsh," to which Craven would have acquired some claim when he married Penelope. In the meantime, her sister Sarah Pagett married Joseph Eelbeck Sept. 2, 1750, and had four children: Elizabeth Penelope, Joseph H., William, and Henry John Daniel. The latter took up ownership and residence at Blenheim, where William Eelbeck died about 1799 and John Daniel Eelbeck died in 1802. About 1777, their sister Elizabeth Penelope Eelbeck married Dr. Samuel Dickinson, a prominent Edenton citizen now best known as the owner of Edenton's Cupola House. They had two children, John and Penelope. Their son John Dickinson, who married Elizabeth Hare on the 12th day of September 1809, acquired Blenheim as part of the settlement of the estate of his Eelbeck uncles Wiliam and Henry John David in Sept. 1810. The settlement describes his share of Blenheim as to contain a brick house near Bolton's Bridge, a description that seems to support the identification of the house site as Blenheim manor house. From correspondence, we know that John Dickinson moved out to Blenheim, where he died in 1815. It is unknown how John died at such a young age. Ownership of the plantation then went to Dickinson's sister Penelope and her husband, Nathaniel Bond, in 1830. In 1831 the Bonds sold Blenheim to William Welch for a total of $930, a considerable reduction from the $7,129 valuation made twenty years earlier at the division of the Eelbeck estate. It is not known what happened to the house after John died. The house was destroyed and the land was farmed. Based on the number of artifacts found, there was a great amount of activity in this area. Bobby Williams [There is very little visible remains of the home site, a few scattered bricks, but I took a photo of the site and superimposed a house of the style that was there. James Williams.] Source/Comments: The property is owned by the Town of Edenton and I am the Operator in Responsible Charge. This information came from an Archaeological and Biological Survey of the site of the Edenton Wastewater Treatment Plant by Thomas H. Hargrove, Archaeologist and Steven Leonard, Biologist, in May 1984. Archaeological Research Consultants, Inc. PO Box 3296 Chapel Hill, N.C. 27514 Report submitted by L.E. Wooten and Company 120 N. Boylan Ave. Raleigh N.C. 27603 File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/nc/chowan/photos/blenheim983ph.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.poppet.org/ncfiles/ File size: 4.2 Kb