The Material World of Eyre Hall: Four Centuries of Chesapeake History ed. by Carl R. Lounsbury

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Material World of Eyre Hall: Four Centuries of Chesapeake History ed. by Carl R. Lounsbury Shelby M. Balik The Material World of Eyre Hall: Four Centuries of Chesapeake History. Edited by Carl R. Lounsbury. (Baltimore: Maryland Center for History and Culture, 2021. Pp. 447. $89.95, ISBN 978-1-911282-91-4.) When we picture an eighteenth-century plantation, we might imagine stately architecture and elegant grounds. Or we might consider the terrors of slavery poorly concealed by a veneer of grandeur. But do we consider what preceded or followed that historical moment? How do we assess the broader currents—war, economic swings, new technologies, and social change—that transformed the place and its residents? In The Material World of Eyre Hall: Four Centuries of Chesapeake History, editor Carl R. Lounsbury and a host of authors ask these questions of a private estate on Virginia’s Eastern Shore where one family has lived since the seventeenth century (the house itself was built in 1759). The book documents the family, their property, and their possessions over nearly four centuries, telling the intertwined stories of all who have lived there—not just the descendants of Thomas and Susanna Eyre, who settled on the Eastern [End Page 339] Shore around 1650, but also the enslaved Africans whose labor made the Eyres wealthy, and their free Black descendants, many of whom continued to live and work on or near the property. Eyre Hall is among the few southern estates that have never transferred ownership; that continuity allows us to examine change over time in a controlled setting. Readers can trace the house, its occupants, its landscapes, and the objects that have filled its rooms across generations. This book interweaves several scholarly projects: a family chronicle, an oral history, a study of a built environment, and a catalog of books, artwork, ceramics, silver, furniture, and other objects. In the lengthy historical narrative, the authors use a wealth of sources, most significantly wills and probate records, as a “Rosetta Stone” to understand the family’s changing material life, and they provide contextual discussions of the family’s social, cultural, and economic milieu as well as vignettes to highlight archaeological finds (p. 25). Oral histories shed light on more recent generations, particularly the Black families who lived around the estate in the twentieth century. Studies of architecture and landscapes—both aesthetic and functional—show how work and leisure intersected. The book’s “catalogue raisonné” details objects the family used over time and offers historical context to explain how these items reflected a wider material culture (p. 17). Throughout, high-quality photographs, diagrams, architectural drawings, and maps offer essential visual aids. It is difficult to ask more of a book that packs so much into 450 large-format pages, but if any part of this history might have been better developed, it is that of Eyre Hall’s Black occupants. To be sure, the authors pay careful attention to these families; lists of enslaved people, an account of an 1852 escape, and descriptions of outbuildings where they worked illuminate their experiences. But in a work of material culture, the imbalance between the stories of Black and white families is visible. This disparity is expected, to a degree; the objects that enslaved and impoverished people (including free Blacks) used were often ephemeral and rarely kept as heirlooms. Eyre Hall might bear scant record of this history. But historians and archaeologists studying the Chesapeake have uncovered evidence of farming and domestic implements, building styles, burial customs, clothing, and spiritual objects used by generations of Black families. The Material World of Eyre Hall’s authors might have used this research to cast a wider (albeit more speculative) lens on the daily lives of Black residents, thereby making them more central to the estate’s story. This critique, however, should not diminish the book’s contributions. Using many lenses though which to examine Eyre Hall’s material history, the authors have presented a rich and complex picture of the estate. Connecting objects, people, and landscapes across time, this volume offers a new model of how scholars might understand the culture of place. Shelby M. Balik Metropolitan State University of...