A few miles northeast of Charlotte’s Uptown sits a paradoxical reminder of the past. An old cast-iron fence blends in with modern gas stations and secondhand car lots. Only a moderate-size sign announces Historic Rosedale, one of the city’s last remaining plantation properties. Despite its urban surroundings, a December drive through the gates transports you back in time to a candlelit Southern Victorian Christmas.

Set back from the road and atop a slight incline, the finely crafted house boasts three stories of fluted pilasters, ornate porches, and leaded windows with yellow trim. Completed in 1815 by Archibald Frew and later occupied by the family of Dr. D.T. Caldwell, Rosedale was one of the most luxurious homes in this once-small farming community. Every year, family and friends gathered here for holiday celebrations. More than 200 years later, Historic Rosedale’s annual Candlelight Christmas House Tour, held only one evening in December, continues that legacy.

During the 2023 season, members of the vocal group Queen City Groove, outfitted in period costumes and singing Christmas carols a cappella from the porch, greet some two dozen visitors. Inside the house, LED-powered candlesticks flicker light and shadow around an elaborately set dining room table and hearth. In days past, merrymakers would pause here in their holiday finery to greet each other and exchange gifts before sitting down to a lavish dinner.

These are the traditions that history records, and they’re the main ones that Historic Rosedale’s guided tour focuses on. But more recently, the site has also begun to highlight the traditions of its other residents, those whose lives have hitherto been less well-documented. The inheritances of Rosedale’s enslaved people, passed down through generations, were the recipes, the skilled handicrafts, the oral histories, and the tales of mother wit — traditions that provide a keyhole into a worldview that kept afloat both the enslaved and the free.

One of the more enduring African American customs, which survives to this day, is that of “play family” — fictive kinship, as it’s now called. Enslaved people developed this system of quasi-familial relationships with unrelated friends to help cope with the antebellum reality of children, spouses, and siblings being sold away. Those traumatic breaks wreaked emotional and economic havoc on already vulnerable communities. Surrogate family constructs were forged to provide more stability and support, a mutual promise to look out for each other like blood.

The inheritances of Rosedale’s enslaved residents were the recipes, the handicrafts, the oral histories, the tales of mother wit.

Telling the stories of such nontraditional traditions, says Kyle Smith of Historic Rosedale’s African American Legacy (AAL) committee, “reemphasizes the humanity of these individuals whom we call slaves.” Smith is a descendant of Nat Caldwell, a captive blacksmith at Rosedale who became one of Charlotte’s most prominent residents. “Enslavement was not their totality,” Smith says. “They left something of a legacy that survived.”

As a member of AAL, Smith leans into the site’s enslaved-focused programming. He hopes one day to see construction of a replica cabin dwelling, in addition to a memorial garden containing High John, burdock, and other plants that enslaved residents used for their traditional healing and spiritual properties. And he’d like to see Rosedale continue uncovering more stories about the lives of these Black families so that more descendants, like him, can trace their roots and bring their own holiday traditions into the light.

Imagine that it’s Christmas Day 1835, and you’re at the social event of the year for Rosedale’s Black community. The descent down a narrow stairwell into the estate’s cellar leaves you feeling slightly claustrophobic. You lean against the stone walls and look down at the steps — hand-molded bricks of Carolina clay, the fingerprints of their enslaved makers still visible.

Downstairs, the long, wide room is exceedingly warm thanks to the sheer number of people packed inside and the two blazing brick hearths. One is reserved for laundry, but your attention is locked on the other hearth. There, head cook Miss Nancy’s iron cauldron of field peas, dotted with silken gems of okra and fatback, have simmered all day over the fire. Skillets of golden cornbread bake on the coals below. The scent is heavenly, promising more cake than crust. You’d like to thank Miss Nancy, but she won’t be seen among family and friends until dark — she’s busy supervising the party for the folks upstairs.

Biscuits and collard greens are spread out on the rough wooden table, surrounding what this gathering has looked forward to all year: a whole pig, most likely provided by Nat Caldwell. Slow-roasted in a pit for 24 hours, it makes a tantalizing centerpiece, its skin splitting open with caramelized juices. This act of generosity is something that only the master blacksmith could afford.

“Their stories that are written, the memories that are shared continue to walk on in spirit.”

There are many familiar faces amid the dimness of the room: Big Mama plaits hair by the fire while “play cousins” from a nearby plantation — ones you haven’t seen all year — hug tight. You surrender to the charge in the air that has this cellar feeling like the center of the universe. Such is the rhythm of the day: laboring amid the candlelight festivities upstairs, gathering by the hearth below, replenishing spirits and forging connections stronger than the current circumstances. It’s a scene that plays out every year for decades.

“Not only did the bonds that these people create outlive the institution of slavery,” Smith says, “but they themselves outlived the institution.” He pauses to reflect. “A Yoruba proverb says that a person never dies until no one is left to say their name. Their stories that are written, the memories that are shared — they continue to walk on in spirit.”

At Historic Rosedale each Christmas, those stories have begun to emerge from the shadows and into the candlelight.

Historic Rosedale
3427 North Tryon Street
Charlotte, NC 28206
(704) 335-0325
historicrosedale.org