Qualla: Poplar Forest https://qualla.com/poplar-forest en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:06 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/x/s/poplar-forest-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Poplar Forest https://qualla.com/poplar-forest Poplar Forest: Introduction https://qualla.com/poplar-forest/ Photo credit CC BY-SA 3.0. Thomas Jefferson wanted somewhere to disappear. By 1806 he had been President of the United States for five years, Monticello swarmed constantly with visitors, and he wanted a house where he could read and think alone. He chose a tract of 4,819 acres he had inherited from his father-in-law John Wayles in 1773, in the Piedmont about ninety miles southwest of Monticello. He called it Poplar Forest, and he designed it as he designed everything else — with a pencil and a passion for octagons. The retreat villa is an octagon. The four side rooms are elongated octagons. The dining room at the center is a perfect 20-foot cube, lit only by a skylight from above. The house may be the first octagonal residence built in the United States. It is also a plantation that ran on the forced labor of generations of enslaved people, and the truth of Poplar Forest is inseparable from both facts.

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]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/x/s/poplar-forest-wp/dnxs-poplar-forest-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Poplar Forest: An Inheritance and a Burden https://qualla.com/poplar-forest/ Photo credit CC BY-SA 3.0. Jefferson did not buy this land. His wife Martha Wayles Skelton inherited a half-interest in her father John Wayles's estate when Wayles died in 1773. The estate included 135 enslaved men, women, and children spread across tracts in Amherst, Cumberland, Charles City, Goochland, a...

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]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/x/s/poplar-forest-wp/dnxs-poplar-forest-an-inheritance-and-a-burden.mp3 0:06 2 full Poplar Forest: An Architect's House https://qualla.com/poplar-forest/ Photo credit Thomas Sully, Public domain. Jefferson supervised construction from Washington beginning in 1806, while he was still President. Brick by brick, the octagonal house rose under the supervision of his enslaved master craftsmen and hired white tradesmen. The plan is precise: a central square dining room twenty f...

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Image: Thomas Sully | Public domain

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/x/s/poplar-forest-wp/dnxs-poplar-forest-an-architects-house.mp3 0:06 3 full Poplar Forest: The Enslaved Community https://qualla.com/poplar-forest/ Photo credit SchuminWeb, CC BY-SA 3.0. Enslaved people lived and worked at Poplar Forest from 1766 until the abolition of slavery in 1865. Archaeology and the surviving documentary record have allowed scholars to name some of them. James Hubbard — known as Jame — was purchased by Jefferson when he was thirty and put i...

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Image: SchuminWeb | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/x/s/poplar-forest-wp/dnxs-poplar-forest-the-enslaved-community.mp3 0:06 4 full Poplar Forest: Restoration and Reckoning https://qualla.com/poplar-forest/ Photo credit Laura A. Macaluso, Ph.D., CC BY-SA 4.0. Poplar Forest changed hands several times in the nineteenth century. The Eppes family sold it to William Cobbs in 1828, and through Cobbs's son-in-law Edward Hutter it remained in the family for several generations. In 1984 the Corporation for Thomas Jefferson's Poplar Forest, a ...

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Image: Laura A. Macaluso, Ph.D. | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/x/s/poplar-forest-wp/dnxs-poplar-forest-restoration-and-reckoning.mp3 0:06 5 full