Memorializing the Enslaved in Arlington, Virginia, 1669-1865

Dataset CreatorsMolly Kerr, History RevealedDavid Fox, Arlington Historical SocietyContributorsJessica KaplanAnnette ScherberJenelle AnthonyThis dataset covers the first phase of research into enslavement in Arlington, VA. The impetus for the project came from a proposal from Arlington community member Tim Aiken in 2022. Aiken suggested using a version of Stolpersteine, or “stumbling stones,” which honor Holocaust victims throughout Europe, to memorialize the enslaved in Arlington.1 Aiken proposed that the Arlington Historical Society (AHS) undertake such a project for the county, and the AHS readily agreed.Under the leadership of AHS board member Jessica Kaplan and in partnership with Scott Taylor of the Black Heritage Museum of Arlington, Memorializing the Enslaved in Arlington (MEA) began. Its goal is to tell the story of enslavement in Arlington, revealing the names of the enslaved people for descendants and historians. These names would then be commemorated by placing engraved plaques at locations of enslavement around the county. The research has been conducted by local volunteers, starting from a core of five people and expanding to eleven, including students. A planning grant from Virginia Humanities helped move the project forward. MEA began sharing its initial data on the 1,500 enslaved people researchers had located on a website in 2023. That website includes the dataset, a timeline of slavery in Arlington, stories of enslaved individuals, and an ArcGIS map of sites of enslavement drawn from the dataset (see the PTs_coords worksheet linked below). In October 2023, the project unveiled its first physical memorials to the enslaved at AHS’s Ball-Sellers House, where three individuals were known to have been enslaved. The memorials were fabricated by students in Arlington Public Schools. Since MEA did not yet have county approval to place stones in sidewalks, the raised stone markers were placed near the front of the house. In June 2024, the county government signed a Memorandum of Agreement with the AHS to allow for the placement of stones in public right of way, allowing the project to begin its next phase.Arlington County is twenty-six square miles on the northern border of Virginia with the District of Columbia. Researching enslavement in Arlington since European and African settlement is complicated because of the many jurisdictions it was part of and its shifting boundaries. When the original patent for the area was granted in 1669, Arlington was part of Stafford County. Its boundaries and government then shifted several times: to Prince William County in 1731, to Fairfax County in 1742, and to the District of Columbia in 1801. The District retroceded Arlington (called Alexandria County) to Virginia in 1846. In 1920, Arlington became its own county and by 1932 the boundaries of Arlington County today were in place.The first enslaved people may have been brought to Arlington in 1669, when Robert Howson received a grant for land that includes Arlington. Howson brought 120 individuals, including ten enslaved people, to the land, but given the extensive size of the land grant, it is unclear if any of these enslaved people were in Arlington specifically.2 The first documented white settlers and enslaved people came to Arlington when Robert Alexander inherited the northern section of the Howson Patent in 1693.3Arlington was mostly home to small farms, with a few larger plantations, and the primary crop was tobacco until the late eighteenth century. The first mansion house in Arlington was Abingdon Plantation, whose ruins can still be seen on the grounds of Reagan National Airport. Its owner, Gerald Alexander, settled there in the mid-eighteenth century with twenty enslaved people.John Parke Custis (ER_0031), son of Daniel Parke Custis and Martha Washington (ER_0341), purchased Abingdon in 1778 and held around seventy enslaved people there.4 Custis had mortgaged Abingdon on unfavorable terms and the family had to give up the land; it was subsequently inhabited by owners who continued to enslave people there.John and Eleanor’s (ER_0339) son George Washington Parke (GWP) Custis (ER_0030), who was raised by George and Martha Washington, inherited a northern parcel of land north of Abingdon, which became Arlington House Plantation. He moved there in 1802 and ultimately enslaved sixty people there, in addition to the 150 or so he owned on Custis estates in the tidewater region.5 He was the largest enslaver in the county throughout his life. Because of the extensive surviving writings of the Custis family and the subsequent leadership of people he enslaved in Arlington’s Black community, we know a good deal about enslaved people at Arlington House. These include Selina Gray (ED_01504), the enslaved head housekeeper whose family purchased a small farm in Green Valley along Four Mile Run after emancipation.Many of the richest stories of enslaved people come from records of emancipation. Winny Steele (ED_00332), for instance, was freed by enslaver Bazil Williams (ER_0109) after his death in 1854, and she appears in the 1860 census living in the District of Columbia with the family of another former bondsperson of Williams. Those enslavers who had a residence in or moved to the District of Columbia were compelled to free their bondspeople by the District’s 1862 Compensated Emancipation Act. These included Wesley Snowdon (ED_00739), a farmer also known as “an excellent ostler” (groom or stableman), and Horace Branson (ED_00596), described as “a pretty good wagoner and fair farm hand.”6Enslaved people in Arlington were concentrated in the households of a minority of white residents. As of 1749, in the parish of which Arlington was a part, 33% of households owned enslaved people.7 By 1800, numbers of the enslaved had likely increased and around 30% of the population were enslaved people.8 In 1840, that percentage had dropped to about 20% and the number of enslaved people continued to decline.9 This was due to both the switch from tobacco to wheat, corn, and other food crops, requiring less enslaved labor, as well as the lucrative domestic slave trade in which many Virginians sold bondspeople to the Deep South. Arlington farmers also regularly hired out enslaved people to local families and businesses.The end of slavery in Arlington appears to have been an uneven process. From the beginning of the Civil War, Union soldiers occupied and built forts in the county to protect the nation’s capital, and enslaved people fled and found freedom for themselves behind Union lines. As mentioned above, enslavers of enslaved people who moved to the District of Columbia early in the war were subject to the District’s Compensated Emancipation Act. The 1863 Emancipation Proclamation should have applied to Arlington, but some people seem to have treated the new Virginia constitution on April 7, 1864, which abolished slavery, as the end of the institution in Arlington.102021-2024EnglishVirginiaMarylandDistrict of Columbia1669-1865Account, Appraisal, Auction Notice, Bill of Sale, Census, Civil Document, Contract, Criminal, Death Document, Deed, Diary, Emancipation Certificate, Freedom Certificate, Freedom Suit, Inventory, Journal, Life History, Narrative, Probate Record, Receipt, Runaway Advertisement, Sale Notice, Secondary Source, Tax Record, Will and TestamentArlington County Land Records, Arlington Circuit Court, Arlington, VA.Deed Books (Fairfax County, Virginia), 1742-1866, Familysearch.org.Mitchell, Beth and Donald M. Sweig, An Interpretive Historical Map of Fairfax County, Virginia, in 1760 … Fairfax County, VA: Office of Comprehensive Planning, 1987.Personal Property Tax Lists of Fairfax County, 1782-1805, Familysearch.org.Diary of Bushrod Hunter, No. 13, 1861. https://lccn.loc.gov/mm79004969.Alexandria GazetteDaily National IntelligencerEvening StarNational Intelligencer and Washington AdvertiserClark, Allen C. “General John Peter Van Ness, A Mayor of the city of Washington, His Wife Marcia, and her father, David Burnes.” Records of the Columbia Historical Society 22 (1918): 125-204.Dodge, George. “The Abingdon of Alexander Hunter, Et Al.” Arlington Historical Magazine 11, no. 3 (Oct. 1999): 6-53.Alexander Hunter, Huntsman in the South. Neale Publishing Company, 1908.Geraghty, Mary. “Domestic Management of Woodlawn Plantation: Eleanor Parke Custis Lewis and Her Slaves.” MA Thesis, College of William and Mary, 1993.Liebertz, John. A Guide to the African American Heritage of Arlington County. Arlington Department of Community Planning, Housing and Development, Historic Preservation Program, 2016.Montague, Ludwell Lee. “The Glebe of Fairfax Parish.” Arlington Historical Magazine 4, no. 3 (October 1971): 3-10.Provine, Dorothy S. Alexandria County, Virginia: Free Negro Registers, 1797-1861. Heritage Books, 1990.__________. District of Columbia Free Negro Registers, 1821-1861. Heritage Books, 1996.Rogers, Helen Hoban. Freedom and Slavery Documents in the District of Columbia, Recorder of Deed Office, Vols. 1-2, 1796-1816.Sayle, Edward. “The Smith Minor Petition.” Arlington Historical Magazine 3, no. 1 (Oct. 1965): 48-54.Templeman, Eleanor. Vignettes of a Virginia County (1959).Wise, Donald. “Some Eighteenth-Century Profiles, Part 1.” Arlington Historical Magazine 6, no. 1 (Oct. 1977): 3-26.__________. “Some Eighteenth-Century Profiles, Part 2.” Arlington Historical Magazine 6, no. 2 (Oct. 1978): 3-27.D.C. Slave Emancipation Records, 1851-1863, Ancestry.com.Freedmen’s Bureau Records, 1865-1878, Ancestry.com.US Federal Census Collection, Ancestry.com.Southern Claims Commission Claims, 1871-1880.Washington, D.C. US, Slave Owner Petitions, 1862-1863, Ancestry.com.Washington, DC US, Wills and Probate Records, 1737-1952, Ancestry.com.Union Provost Marshal’s Files of Individual Civilians, 1861-1866, Ancestry.com.Virginia Chancery Records, https://www.lva.virginia.gov/chancery/, Library of Virginia, Richmond, VA.Virginia Slave Birth Index, 1853-1899, Familysearch.org.Virginia, US, Wills and Probate Records, 1652-1990, http://Ancestry.com.Slave Manumissions in Alexandria Land Records, 1790-1863, http://www.freedmenscemetery.org/resources/documents/manumissions.shtml.The Many Voices of Arlington Plantation, National Park Service, https://www.nps.gov/arho/learn/historyculture/the-many-voices-of-arlington-plantation.htm.Legacy of Slavery in Maryland, http://slavery.msa.maryland.gov.O Say Can You See: Early Washington DC Law & Family, https://earlywashingtondc.org/doc/oscys.case.0415.004.This dataset looks at enslavement in Arlington County, VA, once a quiet farming community north of the Town of Alexandria whose formation predated the establishment of Washington, D.C. Research was needed to figure out the extent and details of enslavement before finding precise locations where it occurred. Locations were necessary for the placement of memorial stumbling stones.To find data on enslavement, we now knew our research team needed to scour records kept by multiple jurisdictions. We had to decide whether to use the boundaries of Arlington at the end of the Civil War, 1920, or today as our parameters; we chose today.Before research could take place in earnest, we had a further hurdle: how would we separate Arlington’s enslaved people from Alexandria City’s? The two entities were part of the same county from 1801 through the Civil War. We knew that enslaved people were mostly listed under their enslavers’ names, so figuring out the names of white residents and where they lived in Arlington during its two hundred years of enslavement was going to be necessary (see Enslaver and PTs_coords worksheets). Census and tax records and landowner maps helped to tease out where different residents lived over time. So did books and articles on Arlington’s prominent families.Once we had our list of enslavers, researchers looked at all available sources to try and find information on their enslaved people. For the eighteenth century, the most useful documents were wills, inventories, and tax records. Wills and inventories provide names and sometimes family relationships and occupations. Nineteenth-century materials offered more details on enslaved individuals such as birth dates, names, physical appearance, family relationships, and more. The most helpful sources included emancipation, probate, and land records. Legal documentation and “runaway” advertisements were surprisingly rich in personal information.In compiling this data, we took inspiration from Enslaved: Peoples of the Historical Slave Trade and, when possible, we used the data model developed for their project. In general, this means that our data describes events—such as a birth or death, a sale, or an emancipation—and these events are associated with people, both enslavers and the enslaved, and with sources. There are three tranches of data or worksheets that make up our dataset: Events, Enslavers, and Sources.The Event worksheet holds over 5,500 records, representing 2,770 enslaved individuals. Records for enslavers have been added to help clarify their role in the cataloged event. 33 fields describe the records, all actively used, albeit some with fewer entries. Each enslaved individual was assigned a unique identifier with a leading alpha of ‘ED’ followed by an underscore and five leading zeroes (e.g. ED_00001). This unique ID has no specific meaning aside from the sequence in which the individual was identified in the creation of the dataset.To help with search functionality, names were standardized to account for unusual spellings. For example, Louisa Rhodes’s (ED_01026) first name was spelled Louisa and Luisa in the original sources. The “First_Name” field reflects the original and the “FN Standardized” field reflects her name spelled as “Louisa.” This standardization also applies to full names and diminutives, even when the diminutive was the only spelling found on the original sources (e.g. using Thomas instead of Tom, William instead of Billy/Will, or Elizabeth instead of Eliza/Bess). Enslaved people without names are identified as “Unnamed” in the first name related fields; the surname fields remain blank.In assigning unique identifiers for enslaved people, “PersonID,” an attempt was made to align known named individuals, as well as unnamed ones, across documents. By comparing names, dates, ages, and any other identified details, individuals were assigned the same ID when key elements aligned. For example, two children named Marcellina Branham were identified across three sources: one Marcellina (ED_01889) was sold by G. W. P. Custis (ER_0030) to Mordecai Miller (ER_0343) in 1814 and a second Marcellina (ED_01472), possibly the child of the first Marcellina or one of her relations, who appeared on the U.S. census as a free child living with G. W. P. Custis in 1850. Although they had the same name, they both could not be described as children in 1814 and 1850, respectively, so they were assigned different IDs.Aligning unnamed enslaved people in census and tax records was more challenging. Census records for Fairfax and Alexandria counties included gender and age (range) information that could be compared to known named enslaved individuals in other documents. For example, Wesley Snowden (ED_00739) and Wesley Brown (ED_00744) appeared on the Alexandria County Slave Schedule for 1860 without being named. Since their names and ages were provided in District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act of 1862 petitions, we were able to link the registration event with the Slave Schedule.Personal Property tax records only provide age ranges and do not include enslaved people under 12 years of age. This made aligning them with named individuals difficult. When this proved impossible, a unique ID was created. Additional attempts should be made in the future to match unnamed individuals to named individuals when possible or as additional documents are identified. When reviewing the personal property tax lists, enslavers appear to have maintained their counts over time or as ages changed as long as their population did not change, e.g. William Nutt (ER_0075) reported the exact same counts over a 6-year period (1855-1860) with 6 individuals over the age of 16 and 7 individuals between 12 and 16 years old.Locations of enslavement information on the Events worksheet reflect the place described on the original source, even when a more specific location has been ascertained. When describing place information, Virginia is the default state. For example, a Virginia county or plantation name will be listed, but Virginia will not. For locations outside of Virginia, a state or the District of Columbia (DC) have been added to the description. The “Place_Description” field includes any additional contextual information provided by the original source.An Enslavers worksheet was created to distinguish enslavers with the same name from one another. It includes 463 enslavers described in 16 fields that highlight biographical information not directly tied to primary sources. Most of it was gathered from secondary sources (e.g. Ancestry.com family trees) in an attempt to compile known biographical data points about an individual, including family relationships. Enslavers were assigned a unique identifier with a leading alpha of ‘ER’ followed by an underscore and four leading zeroes (e.g. ER_0001). In addition, any individual who came into contact with an enslaved person had an ID created.The Source worksheet was needed because of the large number of sources, 283, used in this project. Each source was given an abbreviated name in the “Source Citation” field and a full citation in the “Title” field. Locations where the source was found (e.g. online digital collections or physical archives) and date accessed were also provided.Project Website:https://www.enslavedarl.org/s/memorializing-the-enslaved-in-arlington/page/dataDataset Repository: Harvard Dataverse, https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/2GPFX2Enslaved.org Linked Data Representation: https://enslaved.org/visualizedata?type=Dashboard&field=po&proj=memorializing+the+enslaved+arlington+vaNational Endowment for the HumanitiesVirginia HumanitiesJBG SMITH Cares