When Booker lived here as a child with his family, about ten enslaved people of African descent worked and lived on this plantation. They labored every day for long hours in heat and cold to keep the farm profitable, in hopes that the Burroughs would not sell any of them away for cash, yet no matter how hard they worked, they could not improve their situation. Treated as property, they could not earn money and therefore could not buy more food, better clothes, or their freedom. They lived under the constant threat of violence, punishment, and separation, while helping and supporting one another through these hardships. The Burroughs children had enough food and clothing and attended school daily, but laws forbade teaching enslaved children anything beyond their work in slavery. In 1860, James and Elizabeth Burroughs lived in the Big House with seven of their fourteen children, only a short distance from the kitchen cabin where Booker's family lived.