In full color. The Buckland Manor House was once the seat of the prosperous plantation known as "Buckland" in Gates County, North Carolina. The structure still stands today as an aging and sadly deteriorating reminder of the rise and decline of an agricultural economy dependent upon slave labor.

Buckland Plantation was only one of several plantations once owned by William Baker and his wife, Judith Norfleet, but it was the most endearing, for it was the Baker family land which had been handed down through the family since 1670.

Thomas F. Baker, a descendant of the Bakers of...