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Logsdale was built by Revolutionary War General Samuel Hopkins, Jr. about 1783. The plantation was eventually sold to the heirs of William Hendrick and subsequently also known as the Buck Hendrick Plantation.

In 1811 a boarding school was operated on the Logsdale property by Dr. Amasa Palmer who had married Hendrick's widow, Judith. The school was incorporated in 1814 as Pleasant Grove Academy. Thirty-five to forty students boarded at Logsdale during 1815. In 1822 the home was deeded to William Hendrick, Jr. William, Jr. or "Buck" was very wealthy and owned many slaves--83 according to the 1840 Census; 70 in the 1850 Census. When his daughter, Anne, married Armistead Boyd, her father gave the couple Horseford Mill, located to the east on the Roanoke River near present day Bracey.

Prominent Episcopal priest and educator James Solomon Russell, founder of St. Paul's College in Lawrenceville, was born a slave here December 20, 1857. "His parents were slaves, his maternal grandmother having been sold in Palmer Springs shortly after her arrival from Africa. She and her daughter Seleah worked in the "Big House." Seleah had four daughters and two sons. One of these daughters, Araminta, was the mother of James Solomon Russell. Solomon Russell, his father, was a slave on the Russell plantation, Warren County, North Carolina, and as his parents were separated, paternal companionship was denied until after the Civil War when his parents joined each other and began the struggle of making a home."

Contributors: Leigh Lambert, Director of Southside Regional Library & Carol Corker, Mecklenburg County Civil War Sesquicentennial Committee

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