Duke Homestead State Historic Site

08/15/2026

Some of our staff recently went out to To***co Farm Life Museum to help with their August Curiosity Cured: Science in the Summer event! Here are some pictures from that event! Lucas showcased how simple machines like wheels, axels, screws, and pulleys could form a more complex machine like a sewing machine.

For more educational events and living history come visit us at Duke Homestead, and visit our friends over at To***co Farm Life Museum and tell them we sent you!

08/13/2026

Come out and join us! For more information, check out the event page through our Facebook account, or follow the link here: https://www.facebook.com/share/14mK1odzf7R/

“Ladder Up!”

The DFD’s vintage baseball team, the Plug Uglies, will be taking the field at this year’s Vintage Baseball Day at the DAP ⚾️

The event will be held on October 3rd beginning at 10AM

Any tickets purchased for the canceled 2025 event will be valid for the 2026 event.

Come on out and watch a unique spin on baseball while raising money for Duke Homestead!

08/12/2026

Ever heard of the Deadly Nightshade family of plants? Scientifically known as family Solanaceae, this group of plants is known for containing poisonous nightshades. But, this family also includes widely consumed plants like potatoes, peppers, tomatoes, and to***co. This caterpillar here is called a tomato hornworm, and is a common pest to those who grow such crops. These little larvae have biological defenses that enable them to digest plants in the nightshade family that would otherwise be deadly. To***co farmers in the 19th century often had to battle these creatures, as they love to eat up large to***co leaves.
Learn facts like this, and more, at our Bright Leaf Harvest Day on August 22 from 10:00 A.M. to 2:00 P.M!

08/09/2026

On this day, August ninth in 1842, Washington Duke married his first wife Mary Caroline Clinton!
While often forgotten in the Duke’s story, Mary Clinton was vitally important to the Duke family’s early successes. It was in his marriage to her that Washington acquired the first piece of land he ever owned; 75 acres of farm land gifted to the couple by Mary’s father, Jesse. When Jesse died five years later, Mary and Washington inherited further land, property and money. Without these boosts, Washington may have never been able to start his incredibly profitable to***co business. Sadly, Mary died the same year as her father, aged only 22. There are no surviving images of her, and what information we have on her exists exclusively through legal documents. However, without her, the Duke’s story would look very different.

While we have no details on the couple’s wedding day, we can make some educated guesses of what the ceremony may have looked like. The wedding was likely conducted at the Duke family’s church, Mount Hebron Methodist, where Washington’s older brother William Duke preached. Fittingly, William was one of the witnesses to the wedding. Mount Hebron still exists today, now called Duke’s Chapel.

Mary Clinton would have not necessarily worn a white dress. The white wedding dress had only become popular when two years earlier in 1840, Queen Victoria of Britain was married in one. Victoria was a trendsetter throughout her life, and her white wedding dress was only the beginning of this. She would later popularize Christmas trees, sailor suits, and a whole host of fashion trends. However Mary, like many women before and after Victoria’s wedding, would have likely worn their nicest gown of any color to their wedding.

Surviving American wedding dresses in museum collections show a wide range of colors and materials, from printed cottons to solid and figured silks. The example pictured here is a simple silk gown in a fashionable cut for the late 1830s and early 1840s from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as well as an illustration from Godey’s Lady’s Book showing a white wedding dress for those who could afford such a luxury.

To learn more about 19th century American life, please come visit us at Duke Homestead! We are at 2828 Duke Homestead Road here in Durham, NC (just off I-85).

To read more about the wedding dress from the MET Museum follow this link https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/174648

08/08/2026

This month in history, August of 1869, Durham elected its first mayor... technically speaking.

The town of Durham, NC, which had only been incorporated as an official town by the NC General Assembly in April of 1869, held its first elections and elected J. W. Cheek as magistrate of police.
Cheek was a to***co merchant and owned a general store on the corner of Main Street and Mangum Street, which he sold or passed down to John L. Markham sometime prior to 1880. This building sat at what is now 101 West Main St before being torn down around 1895 to make space for a new three-story multipurpose building. This new building was torn down in 1932 to make room for a new S. H. Kress & co. department store which still stands today.
As magistrate, Cheek was responsible for setting ordinances and trying offenders. Durham had a reputation in the 1860s as a bit of a rough place, and Cheek got to work establishing order. He banned the sale of alcohol on Sundays, as well as the playing of baseball and marbles on Sunday. Both baseball and marbles had associations with rowdiness, alcohol, and gambling in this period.

These bans, often called blue laws, were common across the United States as many believed that these pastimes broke the Sabbath as a day of rest and quiet in the community, as well as distracting young men from attending church.

Cheek's time as magistrate ended in May of 1871, when W. J. H. Durham was elected as magistrate. During Durham's first term, the title of magistrate changed to mayor, making him the first officially titled mayor of Durham. Despite this, Cheek is widely considered the first mayor of Durham and is included on official lists as such.

While the town of Durham in the 1870s did not encompass Duke Homestead as it does now, it was only about 4 miles into town. Brodie Duke was the first of the Dukes to move into Durham proper in 1869, setting up a shop on Main St. The rest of the Dukes moved into town in 1874 and over the next decade accumulated property across town, including Clay St. and Church St. which are within a block of the Cheek general store. It is likely the Dukes frequented the store that used to be run by Cheek, possibly even during his time running the store or his time serving as magistrate!

Pictured here are J. W. Cheek, an advertisement for Markham's store which mentioned Cheek, and an illustration of the store around 1880.

Further Reading: https://www.opendurham.org/buildings/john-markham-store

08/05/2026

Durham is the town that to***co built, growing the small railroad stop into an industrial city fueled by the popularity of flue-cured, or bright leaf, to***co after the Civil War.

Get a feel for historic to***co farming when Duke Homestead State Historic Site brings back Brightleaf Harvest Day on August 22! See how to***co was grown, harvested, and prepared for curing. This free event runs from 10 am-2 pm and includes tours of the historic buildings.

While you’re there, treat yourself to a BBQ lunch for $12. All proceeds benefit the Duke Homestead Education and History Corporation, the site’s volunteer non-profit support group. These funds help support Duke Homestead’s special events, site maintenance, and staff development. Tickets can be purchased in advance at the gift shop or the day of the event.

Check out the link in the comments below for more details!

📷: Linda Fox, NC Historic Sites

08/05/2026

For to***co leaves to ripen, the plant must essentially starve. This makes places with “poor” soil, like the North Carolina Piedmont, ideal places for growing to***co. While the soil here might not have enough nitrogen or other nutrients to support different crops, many to***co strains, like Bright Leaf To***co, thrive.
Learn more about how Bright Leaf To***co was historically grown and processed in North Carolina at our Bright Leaf Harvest Day on August 22nd!

08/04/2026

Tickets are on sale NOW for Vintage Baseball!!!

Check out the event on our Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/19A6aeSbS2/
or follow the link here:
https://tinyurl.com/ycypmmku

A day of vintage base ball played at the Historic Durham Athletic Park!

The iconic Durham Athletic Park has hosted baseball games since 1926 and was even featured in an iconic baseball film, but Durham’s baseball roots are even deeper. The first century of baseball was marked by racial segregation and separate leagues for black and white athletes at the DAP until the 1950s; however, Duke Homestead welcomes all people to participate and honors the struggles and achievements of the many players over the past century who brought us the Durham baseball culture we know today. Players will wear historic uniforms, follow historic gameplay, and use historic equipment. The games will follow 1860 and 1869 Beadles Rules.

We invite you to connect with the history of this sport, this place, and this community by enjoying an afternoon out at the ball park.

**Any tickets purchased for our 2025 Vintage Base Ball event are valid for 2026!**

08/01/2026

It's that time of year when all sorts of creepy-crawlies get a little too close to your front steps for comfort. Snakes, ticks, lizards and mice love to hide in the grass that butts up against a home and sneak their way inside. The solution? A swept yard!

Our swept yard could use a refresher, but it is clearly visible that no grass grows around the front of the Duke Homestead, and that's on purpose.

Swept yards can be traced back to traditions across West and Central Africa, serving both practical as well as spiritual purposes. A swept yard symbolizes cleanliness and safety. Not only did it keep vermin away from the house, but a yard free of plant matter was a safe space for cooking and laundry fires. A lack of grass kept farm animals from grazing too close to the house, and the compacted dirt formed over time made for the equivalent of a modern concrete patio. Yards were maintained with brooms made of twigs designed to sweep away loose debris and whack down any sprigs of grass that were trying to take root.

The practice of swept yards traveled with enslaved Africans across the Atlantic ocean and became very common across the Southern Region of the American Colonies in the 18th century. The practice continued through the 19th century, and there are several photos that survive across North Carolina between 1900 and 1940 showing homes with swept yards even larger than the one pictured here, at Duke Homestead.

Swept yards fell out of fashion after World War II. More people moved into suburbs, and the standard for American lawncare became green and freshly mowed. That said, some people in the Southern United States continued to sweep their yards even into the 1980s.

For further reading on this subject, consider:
https://theforgottensouth.com/yard-sweeping-south/
and
https://pithandvigor.com/2024/12/sweeping-the-yard-african-american-swept-gardens-of-southern-usa/

07/29/2026

Historically, to***co was a labor intensive crop to farm, and required a variety of hand tools. Can you guess what this small wooden hand tool was used for? If you don’t know, come find out at our Bright Leaf Harvest Day on August 22nd! From 10:00 A.M. to 2:00 P.M, there will be live demonstrations of the to***co farming process, as it would have happened in the mid-to-late 19th century.

P.S. The tool is a planting peg used for creating holes in the dirt for ease of planting to***co!