The Atlanta History Center

A new portrayal of this 18th-century icon among America’s historic sites, Drayton Hall Stories: A Place and Its People is the first book in the nation to focus on a site’s recent history using interviews with descendants (both White and Black), board members, staff, donors, architects, historians, preservationists, tourism leaders, and more.

Like different pieces of a mosaic, each interview combines with others to create an engaging picture of this one place, revealing never-before-shared family moments, major decisions in preservation and site stewardship, and pioneering efforts to transform a Southern plantation into a site for racial conciliation.

Readers will come to see Drayton Hall’s people not as stereotypes, but as the real people they were — and are.

Maps, photographs, lines of descent, interview questions, a how-to guide, and related website, all provide blueprints for readers who wish to undertake similar endeavors to build community in  today’s world.