James Monroe’s Highland: A Center for Historical Education and Research Campus for William & Mary Students
On October 30, 2024, the Office of Sustainability hosted the second Sustaina-bite of the semester, featuring archeologist Sara Bon-Harper, executive director of James Monroe’s Highland. These events invite students to hear from an expert in an area of sustainability while eating a catered vegan buffet.
Bon-Harper began by introducing students to the James Monroe Highland, which was acquired by William & Mary 50 years ago. It is located in rural Albemarle County, south of Charlottesville, Virginia. Highland was the home of James Monroe from the 1790s to the sale of the property in 1828, but their research spans much more than just the fifth president. “We know that dozens of enslaved men and women and children lived here and we’ve done extensive work into their stories and what they brought about in American history at the time,” said Bon-Harper.
The largest building in the estate is a yellow house from the 1870s built by Reverend John E. Massey, a lieutenant governor of Virginia. Behind it is a smaller white structure long believed to be a remaining wing of Monroe’s home after a fire destroyed another wing. When Bon-Harper joined Highland in 2012, she wanted to investigate the house’s history further. “If there was a missing wing, we should have been able to find it,” Bon-Harper said.
Through their digs, in 2016, the research team found a foundation wall and a brick chimney base, which they determined were from Monroe’s home. “The little white house is not a remnant wing, it is Monroe’s guest house that enslaved men Peter Mallory and George Williams built and is from 1818,” Bon-Harper reported. “The archeological site is the entirety of the 1799 main house.” This was a significant conclusion for the study of presidential history and was published in national publications, such as the New York Times and Washington Post.
Since 2016, Highland has developed a Council of Descendant Advisors, which is made up of descendants of men, women, and children who were enslaved at Highland. “[The Council] advises and directs Highland’s initiatives, helps us tell more complete and truthful histories and share perspectives, … and contribute to Highland’s direction in governance,” explained Bon-Harper. The Council helps ensure that the discussion of slavery is a prominent part of how they present the estate’s history. “It is interwoven in all the parts and all the conversations,” Bon-Harper said. “So that’s a real central component of what we do.”
The Council of Descendants and Highland run a few different community initiatives in research and cultural connection. One of these is the Highland Descendants Foodways project, where three William & Mary students worked with researchers at Highland through the Institute for Integrative Conservation (IIC) to explore food traditions and production with descendants. The results of their research were compiled into a community archive exclusive to descendant families and publicly available oral history interviews that share agricultural practices and perspectives on the landscape.
Another community initiative was a trip to Jefferson County in the area of Tallahassee, Florida in October of 2022. In 1828, James Monroe sold 17 individuals to Colonel White, owner of Casa Bianca plantation in that region of Florida. “What we were doing here is a meeting or a joining of communities that were separated by enslavement and sale in 1828,” Bon-Harper said. “So, it was an incredibly powerful and meaningful several days of relationship building and relationships that continue to this day.”
These connections are celebrated at Highland on Descendant’s Day, the third annual of which was this past June 2024. Descendants, historic organizations, and the public are welcome to Highland for a day of music, food, and fellowship. “[Descendants Days] are incredibly vibrant days and just important for our community. Hundreds of people have come,” shared Bon-Harper.
Highland’s physical landscape is also a product of legacies of the past, with its topography and vegetation particular to European farming practices. In an effort to be more sustainable, Highland has been working on conservation projects. One example is a riparian buffer project to repair 80 acres of watershed land by removing invasive species, planting in their place 1,999 native trees and shrubs. This effort improves water quality downstream and increases biodiversity and habitat.
Bon-Harper shared that their mission does not end with their projects, for they are also means to learn about sustainability. “In our world of education, it’s not enough to do the conservation projects. We need to teach about it,” said Bon-Harper. With education in mind, Highland offers workshops about their conservation projects. “My mantra is ‘educate and inspire’. So if we teach people what we’re doing, we teach them about how to do it, and inspire them to do it on their own properties, that’s our success story.”
Highland is continuing to inspire and educate through an outgrowth of their Foodways project that focuses on environmental justice and plantation landscapes. “Plantation landscapes are ones of historical trauma and harm, and our work with the Descendant’s Council has led us to share with the [next] generation an idea to repair those relationships with the landscape and provide forward looking skills, that is farming [with a] sustainability focus,” said Bon-Harper.
The project focuses on education for middle school students about sustainable agricultural practices and food traditions. The curriculum delivered will be developed in collaboration with undergraduate students in the IIC project Cultivating Repair on Historic Landscapes: Co-creating an Environmental Justice Model.
The research opportunities at Highland are not limited to the IIC offerings. Bon-Harper emphasized that Highland is a campus open for William & Mary students to ask questions and conduct their research. “We really want to be this multidisciplinary research station where you can bring your ideas. And it’s easy to deploy them at Highland because … we are already here for you,” said Bon-Harper. “We are really glad to support you in your research.”
Aayla Kastning ‘26, who attended the talk, was impressed to find that research at Highland spans so many subjects. “It was really cool to hear about the multidisciplinary research things that are happening at Highland,” Kastning said. “I’m a geology major and I wouldn’t hear about a historic plantation and automatically think ‘geology research’.”
Another attendee, Kaleea Korunka ‘25, also reflected on how Highland allows researchers to collaborate across disciplines, especially history and conservation. “It made me think … that conservation itself is a form of history-record keeping, and I thought that was so beautiful, especially … how it was critical to do these conservation projects to actually keep the historical significance of the Highland,” Korunka said. “It made me value conservation so much more deeply.”
