Hayes Plantation, also known as Hayes Farm, is a historic plantation near Edenton, North Carolina that belonged to Samuel Johnston (1733–1816), who served as Governor of North Carolina from 1787 to 1789. Johnston became one of the state's first two United States Senators, serving from 1789 until 1793, and served later as a judge until retiring in 1803. Samuel Johnston died in 1816 at "the Hermitage," his home near Williamston in Martin County, N.C. The residence known as Hayes was completed by his son, James Cathcart Johnston, a year after Samuel's death. There are numerous other structures on the property, some predating the Hayes house itself, including the Hayes Gatehouse, which James Johnston lived in prior to the construction of the Hayes house. History James Cathcart Johnston was known as a bachelor. Recent research published in 2013 reveals that although Johnston never married, he was the father of four daughters by his manumitted mistress, Edith "Edy" Wood, of nearby Hertford, N.C. Two of his girls died at the age of eight and nine in 1836, and his eldest daughter, Mary Virginia Wood Forten (daughter-in-law of wealthy African American abolitionist, James Forten), died in Philadelphia of tuberculosis in 1840, leaving behind her three-year-old daughter, the future diarist, poet, and equal rights activist Charlotte Forten Grimke. Johnston's youngest daughter, Annie Wood (1831–1879), was just six years older than her niece Charlotte, and the two girls were raised by Edy Wood until Edy's death in 1846. The girls continued to be raised with the Forten-Purvis clan while Annie Wood was adopted by Amy Matilda Cassey, daughter of African American Episcopal priest, Peter Williams, Jr. and wife of wealthy African American financier and benefactor, Joseph Cassey. In 1850, after Joseph Cassey's death, Amy Matilda Cassey married antislavery orator, Charles Lenox Remond, and moved from Philadelphia to his home in Salem, Massachusetts, taking Annie Wood with her. While in Salem, Annie Wood married her childhood sweetheart, John G. Webb, grandson of Vice President Aaron Burr and brother of Frank J. Webb, author of the second African American novel, The Garies and Their Friends. James Cathcart Johnston paid for Annie Wood's education, made generous payments to her as she grew up, and promised her an "independence." James C. Johnston died at the end of the Civil War and left Hayes to his "friend and advisor" Edward Wood of Greenfield Plantation. Edward Wood had several children with