Ben Affleck tried to sell his sprawling Greek Revival “imitation” plantation — the site of his elaborate marriage to Jennifer Lopez Saturday — three years after revelations came to light that one of his ancestors was a slave-owning Georgia sheriff.
In 2015, the Hollywood actor tried to suppress details about Benjamin Cole, a relative on his mother’s side who owned several slaves in Chatham County, near his 87-acre estate on Hampton Island. Affleck bought the property in 2003, according to reports.
The Cole revelations were made on PBS’s “Finding Your Roots” hosted by Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Affleck put the lavish property, including a deep-water harbor and a 6,000-square-foot home known as “the Big House,” on the market for $8.9 million in 2018. He lowered the price to $7.6 the following year. million before he took over. of the market, real estate records show.
Built in 2000, the property was designed by Atlanta-based architect James Strickland to resemble a Southern plantation. It also includes a 10,000 square foot guest house and equestrian facilities.
Actors Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds caused controversy when they married in a plantation-style home. An expert on slavery said she was shocked that Affleck and Lopez decided to have such a smashing wedding in a plantation-style home.
“Once he found out who his ancestors were, he tried to stifle it,” said Leslie Harris, co-editor of “Slavery and Freedom in Savannah” and professor of history at Northwestern University. “Obviously he hasn’t learned his lesson. We are back in the same place with him. People still build plantation style houses. It is a sign of wealth. It’s surprising that Affleck would choose this place for his wedding, when many (historical) plantations don’t even have weddings anymore.”
There were more than 46,000 operating plantations in the American South in 1860 and nearly 4 million slaves in the US, with 2.5 million in the “Cotton Belt” alone. Today, there are about 375 plantation museums in the US, most of which do not hold weddings, according to a report.
Many large wedding companies have taken steps to distance themselves from the plantations. In 2019, several wedding planning sites, such as Pinterest, The Knot, and Zola, pledged to stop promoting plantation weddings and using language that romanticizes them.
Affleck said he fell in love with the area while filming “Forces of Nature” with actress Sandra Bullock in the late 1990s. He bought the property for $7.11 million, according to public records.