In the early 19th century, the plantation was owned by planter Isaac Ross of South Carolina, who enslaved African American people to farm cotton as a cash crop.

In 1830, Ross and other major planters co-founded the Mississippi chapter of the American Colonization Society, which sought to move enslaved people to Mississippi-in-Africa, a colony on the coast of what became Liberia.

It is expected to yield artifacts that will contribute to the story of slavery in the United States, as well as to African-American culture and the diaspora.

[3][4] He migrated with an older brother to Mississippi in 1808, taking a contingent of enslaved people, as well as some free Blacks who had served with him in the war.

[3][6] There were additional legal delays, but during this period, the enslaved people stayed on the plantation and worked for Wade.

A Wade descendant attributed it to a slave uprising;[3][7] and 12 suspects among the enslaved people were quickly captured and lynched.

[8][2][7] In the settlement of the court case, the enslaved people gained their freedom and the plantation was sold to fund their migration to the colony in West Africa, which the final group reached in 1848.

The last Ross and Wade family descendants left in 1956, by which time the outbuildings had collapsed: the kitchen, slave quarters, smokehouse and barns.

[1] Planned archeological excavation of the grounds is expected to yield important evidence about the African-American culture of the slaves and their relation to the diaspora.