dr. james madison, who is the great nephew of the president, dr. james madison had been a surgeon in the confederate army and had a medical practice in orange. but he also owned a 300, 400-acre plantation on this side of the highway and he needed people to work that land. after the civil war, there were no slaves, and most landowners didn't want to pay laborers to do their farming. so what was the solution? the solution was tenant farming and sharecropping. we don't know the details but we believe george gilmore lived on this property in return for work that he did on the doctor's farm. by 1880, george is listed as a farmer, not a farm laborer. in other words he's no longer working for the doctor. he's working for himself. how is he still living on this land, if he's not working for the doctor anymore? george had five children, and the three oldest of them were sons, and those three sons were still living here and those three sons would be working for the doctor. there was a succession of three buildings on the property. the first was a small hut th

dr. james madison. over time, he kocobbled togethea few confederate huts to build a larger structure if you look at this photograph, what you can see, the hut site, the chimney base from the hut site with the hut extending this way. it's not outlined on the picture and then the first structure that george built for he and his family to live in, removing the chimney base and rebuilding a stouter chimney here, and if you look at the 1920s photograph we have here, you can see that second structure behind the cabin, which was built in the mid 1870s, 1874. a series of three structures. between the second and third structure, there is a period of ten years. all right. george comes here after the civil war and moves in. why such a long delay? why wouldn't he have built this bigger, nicer home for his family before 1874? the reason lies in the relationship between tenant farmers or share croppers and the land owners that they worked for. the freed slaves, emancipated slaves, and the white lan owners in the sout