Joseph Wheeler Plantation

The Joseph Wheeler Plantation, commonly known as Pond Spring or the General Joe Wheeler Home, is a historic plantation complex and historic district in the Tennessee River Valley in Wheeler, Alabama. The property contains twelve historically significant structures dating from 1818 to the 1880s. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on April 13, 1977, due to its association with Joseph Wheeler.HistoryThe plantation at Pond Spring was first established by the John P. Hickman family in 1818. They were among the earliest settlers of Lawrence County. By 1820 Hickman's family had grown to 11 members and he owned 56 slaves. Benjamin Sherrod, a planter from Halifax County, North Carolina with more than 300 slaves, bought Pond Spring and its from Hickman in 1827. In the 1830s his son, Felix Sherrod, greatly expanded the larger of the two log dogtrot cabins on the property into what today is known as the Sherrod House. It is a vernacular interpretation of the Federal style. The smaller dogtrot came to be used as housing for slaves.Upon Felix's death the plantation was inherited by his son, also named Benjamin. Benjamin Sherrod married Daniella Jones from the nearby Caledonia plantation in 1859, but he died prematurely in 1861. Daniella Sherrod met Joseph Wheeler, a general in the Confederate States Army from Augusta, Georgia, during his visit to the area in 1863. They married following the American Civil War and lived in New Orleans for the next four years. They returned to Lawrence County in the early 1870s and built a new home, adjacent to the older Sherrod House.