Chapter 6: The Magnolia Community: More Than 19 Acres The park
is an incomplete segment of what once was a community of
interacting, socially differentiated families. From the
residents’ view, the landscape called the “Hertzogs’” extends to
Magnolia’s boundaries. In addition to the quarters, overseer’s
home, and farm complex in the park, the community included the
Big House and the area around the bend with the sharecropper
houses and the St. James AME Church. Until the 1960s, the
plantation showed lingering evidence of its complex organization
as a residential community as well as an agricultural
enterprise. A rural “company town” in these respects and a form
of “total institution” that met many lifelong needs (Gordon and
Williams 1977), the right to live in this essentially private
domain depended on the landholder’s continuing concurrence. Mr.
Matt gave the work orders, paid the workers, and sometimes
personally counted the coins and bills he slapped into their
hands. Mr. Matt told people where they could