page_title: Goodwood Plantation
section_title: The owners
hierarchical_section_title: Goodwood Plantation / The owners
context_page_description: In 1824, in appreciation of the enormous service rendered to this country by the Marquis de Lafayette during the Revolutionary War, Congress voted to grant him a full township in the Florida Territory. This tract was called the Lafayette Land Grant and encompassed over 23,000 acres. While the Marquis never came to visit his property, he designated an agent to sell parcels of it on his behalf. The 2,400 acres upon which Goodwood Plantation was sited was purchased by Hardy Croom from the Lafayette Grant in 1834.
  Goodwood Plantation was a medium-sized cotton plantation of about 1,675 acres in central Leon County, Florida, established by Hardy Bryan Croom. It is located at 1600 Miccosukee Road. The plantation was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places on June 30, 1972.
context_section_description: The Croom family of Lenoir County, North Carolina, wealthy tobacco planters, began purchasing land in North Florida in the 1820s, including plantations in Mariana, Quincy and Tallahassee. Hardy Bryan Croom, a planter and amateur naturalist, brought attention to the now rare stinking cedar. He began amassing the land for the estate which come to be known as Goodwood, purchasing about 640 acres (2.6 km²) of the Lafayette Land Grant in 1833. His younger brother, Bryan Croom, made similar purchases. The men brought a number of enslaved people with them from North Carolina, and throughout the Croom years, purchased many more slaves to operate their cotton and corn plantations.
  On Saturday, October 7, 1837, Hardy B. Croom and his wife, three children—two daughters and a son—accompanied by a maternal aunt, boarded the steam packet liner S.S. Home in New York City bound for Charleston. The Home sank off the coast of North Carolina during the 1837 Racer's Storm, a Hurricane. The entire family perished in the wreck. No will was found, so his brother, Bryan Croom, assumed he had inherited his brother's Florida plantation property.
  A small home was framed in on the site at Hardy's death, and Bryan's enslaved workers completed it. But Bryan Croom ordered construction of a long planned main house thereafter. Construction of the approximately 8000 square foot mansion  was finalized 1850 or earlier. The house, which design may have been that chosen by the doomed Hardy, was built mainly by enslaved laborers also. Richard Shine, a prominent Tallahassee builder at the time, oversaw the construction. When completed, the house was Italianate in style, a dark rose color with ornate burgundy colored railings. While the reason the house was named Goodwood is unclear, it became known by that name in the 1840s. By 1845, Bryan claimed ownership of some 2,500 acres (10 km²) of land in Leon County alone, making him one of the wealthiest men in the area.
  After the Home tragedy, relatives of Hardy's wife Frances, primarily her mother, Henrietta Smith, fought what became a landmark court case. The court case dragged on for some 20 years. Who would inherit when an entire family perished in a common disaster without a will ? Mrs.Smith did not initially sue, but first asked her son -in -law's brother, Bryan Croom, for a part of the estate, in light of the loss of her daughter, grandchildren and her sister.  Bryan, however, declined to cede Mrs. Smith anything. Bryan Croom won in lower court proceedings. But the Florida Supreme Court  ultimately awarded the Smith Family much of the estate in 1857.  The issues were two: was Hardy domiciled in North Carolina at the time of his death, or was he domiciled in Florida, where his large plantation interests were?  The laws of the two states were different. The second issue was: who died last in the wreck of the steamship Home—someone in the maternal line or Hardy himself? The Florida Supreme Court decided Hardy was still domiciled In North Carolina at the time of his death. The Court also decided he had not intended to establish domicile in Florida when he boarded the Home, but had instead, based on his last letters, determined to relocate his family to Charleston, South Carolina, where he had rented a house. But Hardy and his family drowned before reaching another state. Testimony from witnesses who survived the Home tragedy testified that Hardy's son ( hence representative of the maternal line ) was the last surviving member of the family. Witnesses saw his son clinging to a spar in the ocean, after all the other Crooms had perished.
  Mrs. Smith did not come to Goodwood to live, but in 1858, sold the estate to Arvah Hopkins. Hopkins, a New Yorker, was a prominent local merchant who had married the educated and well-to-do Susan Branch, the youngest daughter of former North Carolina Governor John Branch. The couple had nine children, of whom eight survived to adulthood. The Hopkins were also large scale slave holders who continued formal plantation operations until 1865. The Hopkins farming operations continued aft
caption: Arvah Hopkins (1866)
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