When a plantation near Raleigh was relocated in 2004 for preservation, its roots were rediscovered all over again.

Midway Plantation, named for its location between the Beaver Dam and the Oaks Plantations, connects whites and blacks to a place that was built in 1848 before the Civil War.

Charles Hinton Silver, owner of the plantation, sold the land it sat on and moved it 3 miles from the original site.
“We looked at it and wanted to make sure the next six generations could live here and enjoy the house,” Silver said in the documentary.
Silver inherited the home from his father who received it from his great-great aunt Mary “Mimi” Hinton. Charles Lewis Hinton, as a wedding gift for Mary Hinton’s parents, built the home.

Godfrey Chesire, a New York film critic, returns to North Carolina to find his first cousin, Silver, has sold the land and Chesire decided to chronicle Midway’s move, which was completed in 2006.

Back in New York, Chesire meets Robert Hinton, an African American teacher of Africana studies at New York University.
Robert Hinton shared with Chesire that his grandfather was born a slave at Midway in 1860 and the two begin a journey through the family’s history together.

It’s all documented in “Moving Midway,” directed and narrated by Chesire, which debuted in Raleigh and New York. The film screens in Charlotte on Friday at Regal Park Terrace followed by a Q&A with Chesire and Robert Hinton.

“It’s the story of Godfrey Chesire who has taken the story of moving this family’s ancestral home to a quieter location,” Robert Hinton says. “It was sitting on Highway 64 just east of Raleigh and I think there were about (55,000) cars a day moving by day and night. I spent the night there and all night you could hear this hum from the traffic. It was nosier than living in Manhattan.”

It is important to note that Chesire and Robert Hinton are not blood relatives. Robert Hinton’s ancestors were slaves owned by the Hintons and they took their last name as was common at the time.

Chesire grew up in west Raleigh and Robert Hinton grew up in Chavis Heights, a public housing project in east Raleigh. But the two come together in the film to ensure that Midway is moved cautiously.

Robert Hinton also assumes some of his slave ancestors are buried in the slave grounds in the cemetery of the original location of the plantation. The land is preserved.

In the film, Robert Hinton says, “This experience for me is strange. It appears that my grandfather was born in Midway about 1860. He left when he was older to go out on his own and go to Raleigh. I never had a sense of connection specifically to Midway until I started doing research.”

The documentary also takes a look at the myths of slavery and plantations. Some of the family are quoted in the film as saying their family treated slaves kindly.

“You had to have the mythology of the happy slave in order to keep the system running......they would not have been able to live if they had been under the assumption that the person cooking their food wanted to kill them,” Robert Hinton said in the documentary.

Today the original land Midway sat on is a housing complex surrounded by a shopping center. The homes are named after Mingo, an African slave who is believed to have accompanied the Hintons to central North Carolina.

On the Net:
Moving Midway
www.movingmidway.com

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