The Bulow Ville plantation house was built in the early 1820s and is believed to have resembled the mansion shown. The two and a half story building faced Bulow Creek and had a veranda on all sides. Its first floor walls were coquina covered with stucco, while the rest of the house was wooden, and its two kitchens stood in separate buildings. James Ormond III recalled meals with plenty of milk, eggs, butter, hogs, venison, turkeys, wild honey, and coontic bread provided by Seminole hunters. He wrote of John Bulow as "being graduated in all devilment to be learned in Paris," "well educated, but very wild," and said the house contained an extensive library of mostly fictional works. Bulow Ville was abandoned on January 23, 1836, because of growing tensions in the area between U.S. troops and the Seminole nation. On January 31, 1836, a great rosy glow was observed in St. Augustine, and the house was never rebuilt. Across the creek, slaves worked in a rice field, and to the west more than forty slave cabins encircled the house. Artifacts found there included feather edge dishes and glass bottles and fragments showing the use of ale, wine, olive oil, and bitters. Nearby plantation owners, including the Dummett, McRae, Ormond, and Anderson families, customarily socialized together. John Audubon stayed at Bulow Ville in January 1832 in search of birds for his work and explored the salt marshes of the Tomoka Basin and the Halifax River from the boat slips. Flatboats carried hogsheads of sugar and molasses from Bulow Creek to the Halifax River and south to Mosquito Inlet through shallow, sand-barred waterways; these keel-less boats were oared, had only small crew space that included slaves, and travel required waiting for high tides and enduring mosquitoes in summer. Records show that Bulow bought a barge for $75, a longboat for narrow waterways, outfitted with a tent, nets, and guns for overnight trips. Hogsheads held 64 gallons, and slaves used wagons to move them from the mill to the boat slips.