I'm intrigued to have started such a long thread with a small query on the
fringe of my own project. It was interesting to me principally on account of
two of my subjects, Black refugees of the War of 1812, leading the British
there across the marshes in 1813, when it was burnt presumably on account of
it being occupied by the militia. And one of the sources refers to it having
been a good lookout point for that part of the Chesapeake, so it must have
been very close to the water-line.

Nevertheless, some aspects of the thread have turned out much as I
suspected, with doubts expressed that the original building could have been
a brothel. I can't help wondering, however, whether sensibilities towards
such things might have been very different two hundred years ago, and
perhaps there have been studies on changes in attitudes to matters of
"public morals" of this kind.

As for access, the question of roads might be irrelevant, as I'm sure most
access around the Chesapeake was by water - I was once told that around that
time there were 528 ports (possibly including landing places?) in the
Chesapeake.

John Weiss

----- Original Message -----
From: <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, July 03, 2003 3:29 AM
Subject: Re: Pleasure House on Lynhaven Bay, 1814


: Thank you, Neil McDonald, for your research. I had tried to reel the
: discussion away from what I believed to be "innuendo" from our present-day
reading
: into "Pleasure House". I knew that the original had been a plantation,
long
: before it was attacked by the British in 1812. Its history during the 19th
century
: eludes me here in Georgia, but I was never led to believe that a brothel
would
: have existed there. [ . . . . ]

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