Until the U.S. Civil War, planters held as many as 186 enslaved African Americans as laborers to raise cotton as a commodity crop.

A number of the workers' former cabins remain standing, and they are among the most significant examples of slave housing in Marengo County.

[4] Harrison is listed in the 1850 Federal Census of Marengo County as having $18,300 in property, based mostly on the value of the enslaved people he held.

[4] Unusually, her records also included the surnames used by many of the enslaved people: Barron, Brown, Francis, Harison, Iredell, Mutton, Nathan, Newbern, Paine, Parsons, Richmond, Washington, and Wills.

[5] At this time, Tayloe was also acting as the local land agent for his brothers; located in Washington, D.C., and Virginia, they invested deeply in the Canebrake region, buying numerous plantations through him.

He also bought land for a nephew, Col. George E Tayloe, owner of Elmwood in Arcola, and co-owner of Walnut Grove on the Demopolis-Uniontown Road.

Dubose wrote that the Tayloes were "considered the most important pioneer cotton planters of the Canebrake, as to the extent of their enterprise there.

[7] According to Dubose's 1947 account, after Harrison acquired his property, which he named Faunsdale Plantation, he no longer practiced as a doctor, but devoted himself to cotton.

[8] Mrs. Louisa Harrison was described as an educated woman, taught privately by a governess and tutor while growing up at her family's plantation of Edenton, Virginia, as was typical for girls of her class.

He noted that Louisa Harrison gave regular instruction to her slaves by reading the church services to them and teaching the catechism to their children.

By 1855 the log structure had been replaced by a Gothic Revival-style church building, with likely all the skilled labor provided by enslaved African Americans.