Once the estate house for a 366-acre slave-powered farm that stretched from above present-day Cato Park to the Kanawha River, Glenwood is now a stately, tree-shaded mansion surrounded by thousands of homes in Charleston's West Side hills.

Owned and maintained by the Marshall University College of Graduate Studies Foundation, Glenwood has become a learning center for area college students, and a focal point for historic research of 19th century life in the Kanawha Valley.

Glenwood's role in the cultural, political and industrial development of the Charleston area is showcased in a new traveling exhibition that debuts Friday in the Marshall University Graduate College Library in South Charleston.

Students from Billy Joe Peyton's Historical Studies class at West Virginia State University researched and wrote the historical text for the exhibit. Students from Mark Tobin Moore's Exhibits for Local Communities class at Marshall University Graduate College designed and built the museum-style six-panel exhibit.

Making use of photographs, maps, sketches and photocopied documents, the exhibit traces Glenwood's roots back to 1852, when the brick, Greek revival-style mansion was built for James Madison Laidley, a Charleston newspaper publisher and an investor in area salt works.

During the 1850s, Glenwood, named after a deep, shaded, rock-strewn glen carved by a stream that flowed along present-day Matthews Avenue, was one of five adjacent plantations operating along the Kanawha River below the mouth of the Elk River.

Slavery was at its peak in Kanawha County during that period, with slaves accounting for 20 percent of the county's 15,000 residents in the 1850 census. While the majority of slaves worked in the Malden area salt works, many others worked on farms or as domestics, including 73 who toiled at Glenwood and its four neighboring estates during the 1850s.

In 1857, Laidley sold his mansion and farm to George W. Summers, a two-term congressman and former Virginia legislator, who ran unsuccessfully for governor of Virginia in 1851 and was defeated mainly for being labeled an abolitionist, despite his ownership of slaves.

Owned and maintained by the Marshall University College of Graduate Studies Foundation, Glenwood has become a learning center for area college students, and a focal point for historic research of 19th century life in the Kanawha Valley.

Glenwood's role in the cultural, political and industrial development of the Charleston area is showcased in a new traveling exhibition that debuts Friday in the Marshall University Graduate College Library in South Charleston.

Students from Billy Joe Peyton's Historical Studies class at West Virginia State University researched and wrote the historical text for the exhibit. Students from Mark Tobin Moore's Exhibits for Local Communities class at Marshall University Graduate College designed and built the museum-style six-panel exhibit.

Making use of photographs, maps, sketches and photocopied documents, the exhibit traces Glenwood's roots back to 1852, when the brick, Greek revival-style mansion was built for James Madison Laidley, a Charleston newspaper publisher and an investor in area salt works.

During the 1850s, Glenwood, named after a deep, shaded, rock-strewn glen carved by a stream that flowed along present-day Matthews Avenue, was one of five adjacent plantations operating along the Kanawha River below the mouth of the Elk River.

Slavery was at its peak in Kanawha County during that period, with slaves accounting for 20 percent of the county's 15,000 residents in the 1850 census. While the majority of slaves worked in the Malden area salt works, many others worked on farms or as domestics, including 73 who toiled at Glenwood and its four neighboring estates during the 1850s.

In 1857, Laidley sold his mansion and farm to George W. Summers, a two-term congressman and former Virginia legislator, who ran unsuccessfully for governor of Virginia in 1851 and was defeated mainly for being labeled an abolitionist, despite his ownership of slaves.

An outspoken opponent of secession, Summers voted against withdrawing from the union during the 1861 Virginia Secession Convention. While he and his wife, Amacetta, favored the Union cause during the Civil War, one of their sons ran away to join the Confederate army, and died of measles in 1863 at age 15.

During the Battle of Charleston in September 1862, Confederate artillery fire from atop Fort Hill fell on retreating Union troops passing across the Glenwood estate via the Point Pleasant Turnpike, now Washington Street West.

The Summers' sole surviving son, Lewis, inherited Glenwood upon his father's death in 1868, but sold all of the estate except for the mansion and two surrounding acres to post-war real estate developers.

The house was occupied by Summers' descendants until 1983, when Summers' great-granddaughter, Lucy Quarrier, donated Glenwood to the Marshall University College of Graduate Studies Foundation.

"The house was touched by a lot of things that affected Charleston's history, like slavery, the Civil War, and home development on the West Side," said Mark Tobin Moore, whose Marshall grad students built the Glenwood exhibit. "There's such a rich history here. The more I worked on this project the more intrigued I became."

An opening reception for "Glenwood: window to the West Side - A Traveling Exhibition" will be held from 5:30 to 7 p.m. Friday in the Marshall University Graduate College Library at 100 Angus Peyton Drive in South Charleston. The event is free and open to the public. The exhibit is funded by a grant from the West Virginia Humanities Council.

Organizations may book the traveling exhibit for four to six weeks. For details, contact Luke Eric Lassiter at 746-1923 or lassi...@marshall.edu.

Reach Rick Steelhammer at rsteelham...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-5169.