Bernard's Cabins

On this knoll stood Bernard's Cabins, a small community that in 1860 was home to about three dozen slaves. The complex consisted of three two-room cabins, a stone-lined well, and perhaps two additional buildings. This was only one of several such clusters of slave housing scattered across the 1,800-acre "Mannsfield" estate.<br><br>The men and women who lived here helped power the most prosperous plantation in the Fredericksburg area. Arthur Bernard's plantation house, "Mannsfield" (1766), stood about a mile east of here (it burned in 1863). During the 1862 Battle of Fredericksburg it served as headquarters for three top Union generals - W.B. Franklin, J.F. Reynolds, and W.F. Smith.