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The West Virginia Encyclopedia
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The West Virginia Encyclopedia
Green Bottom Plantation, located on the Ohio River in Cabell County, was the home of Albert G. Jenkins, a U.S. and Confederate congressman and Confederate general.
Joshua Fry received the Green Bottom lands for his participation in the French and Indian War. Wilson Cary Nicholas, governor of Virginia (1814–16), later purchased the land and established an overseer slave plantation on the site about 1812. In 1820, 53 slaves lived and worked at Green Bottom. Next, William H. Cabell, governor of Virginia (1805–08) and for whom Cabell County was named, purchased Green Bottom. In 1825, his agents sold Green Bottom and its slaves to Capt. William Jenkins, who moved there with his family in 1826. William Jenkins, the father of Gen. Albert G. Jenkins, built Green Bottom mansion in 1835. Albert Jenkins and two brothers inherited Green Bottom at the death of Captain Jenkins.
The General Albert Gallatin Jenkins house, a two-story brick home in the federal style, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. Owned by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, it was leased for some years to the West Virginia Division of Culture and History (now Department of Arts, Culture & History), which operated it as the Jenkins Plantation Museum. In 2008, the Army Corps suspended the lease to begin stabilizing and restoring the building. The work, which included re-pointing all brick and stone work with mortar identical to that used in the mid-1850s, and replacing doors using period-appropriate hardware and windows with panes of English blown glass, was completed in 2012. However, the task of reconstructing plantation outbuildings awaits additional funding, and the house remains unused and is no longer open to the public.
Nearby lands make up the Green Bottom Wildlife Management Area. The Clover archeological site, located at Green Bottom, is a National Historic Landmark.
Read the National Register of Historic Places nomination for Green Bottom Plantation.
Written by Karen N. Cartwright Nance
"." National Register of Historic Places Nomination, West Virginia Division of Culture & History, 1978.