A Journey Across Four Centuries
A Journey Across Four Centuries
The 1600s — From African shores
In 1619 Governor Yeardley traded with English privateers on the ship, The White Lion for “20 and odd” Negroes, a cargo of captive Angolans that were bound for Venezuela before being stolen by the privateers. The muster rolls of 1623 counted eleven of these first Africans living within the borough of Charles City at Flowerdew Hundred. Another Negro was counted among the dead at West and Shirley Hundred in 1625. With this meager record—and on these banks of the James River—begins the history of America’s Africans. Beach at Historic Jamestown National Park by Sarah Stierch.
A Journey Across Four Centuries
The 1600s — From African shores
During the 1600s most of the laborers imported to Virginia were poor and landless European men, women and children. Some Africans were imported, however, including a dozen brought to Buckland by Capt. William Perry in 1639. Richard Holmes Laurie, Publisher (London, April 12, 1821) in Slavery Images: A Visual Record of the African Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Early African Diaspora, www.slaveryimages.org
A Journey Across Four Centuries
The 1600s — From African shores
Many more Africans were imported during the late1600s by wealthy tobacco planters. William Byrd I of Westover imported more Africans than all but one other Virginia planter. Most of the first Africans were transshipped from the West Indies, coming to Charles City in the private sloops of James River planters along with cargoes of sugar and rum. Thomas Jeffreys, The West Indian Atlas, or a General Description of the West Indies (London, 1780) in Slavery Images: A Visual Record of the African Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Early African Diaspora, www.slaveryimages.org.
A Journey Across Four Centuries
The 1600s — From African shores
The first Charles City Courthouse at Westover was designated a marketplace where arriving servants and slaves were offloaded and sold. Court records from the 1600s also document a small number of free Negroes living within the jurisdiction. Plat from the William Byrd Title Book showing the original Charles City Courthouse, Brew House and Westover Parish Church, courtesy Virginia Museum of History and Culture, Richmond, Va. virginiahistory.org
A Journey Across Four Centuries
The 1600s — From African shores
Seventeenth century Africans left few footprints in the surviving records. Their history may lie beneath the ground awaiting discovery in archeology yet to be conducted. This cowrie shell was discovered at Shirley Plantation in 2004 during the excavation of a “fill pit” dated to 1670-1720. Cowrie shells had a number of uses in African cultures and were brought to Virginia by imported slaves. Photo courtesy Shirley Plantation.
A Journey Across Four Centuries
The 1700s — Importation and revolution
The 1700s witnessed construction of the great plantation houses built upon tobacco and the labor of slaves. Berkeley, Shirley and Westover survive as examples of the grandeur of this era. Westover photo courtesy John Bragg; Tobacco paper Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Williamsburg, VA; image C1980-866 in Slavery Images: A Visual Record of the African Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Early African Diaspora, www.slaveryimages.org.
A Journey Across Four Centuries
The 1700s — Importation and revolution
Over the course of this century the county achieved its modern boundaries; and the population rose near to present day levels, shifting from a labor force of Europeans to one of enslaved Africans. Image courtesy Library of Congress.
A Journey Across Four Centuries
The 1700s — Importation and revolution
The end of the century witnessed a revolution in which persons of color played a part. Free persons served the patriot cause — like Raverly Going who gave his life in the War for Independence, and William Thomas, who was a personal servant to Gen. Peter Muhlenberg. Others, especially slaves, fought for the British. A few who served the British, like Francis Jones, Joe Mason, Bob Harrison, William Scott and Thomas York, were settled in Nova Scotia at the war’s end. Land Bounty Warrant application by heirs of Raverly Going, Courtesy Library of Virginia.
A Journey Across Four Centuries
The 1700s — Importation and revolution
When the first census was taken in 1790, Virginia accounted for 42% (305,493) of slaves and free persons of color living in the thirteen states. Charles City counted 3,141 slaves and 363 free persons of color. While this number was a small percentage of the total in Virginia, more persons of color lived in this county than in the states of New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine combined. Moreover, persons of color accounted for 80% of the county’s total population of 5,588.
A Journey Across Four Centuries
The 1700s — Importation and revolution
Free blacks and mulattoes represented only two percent of the county’s population in 1790, but this was twice the percentage in other Virginia counties. The comparatively large number was due in part to the county’s significant Quaker community whose members emancipated their slaves after it became lawful to do so in 1782. A sizeable “free town,” later known as Ruthville, developed around land owned by a free mulatto named Abraham Brown. His son helped to establish Elam Baptist Church, which remains one of the oldest regularly organized churches established by African Americans in Virginia. Photo courtesy Nancy Phaup.
A Journey Across Four Centuries
The 1800s — Diaspora and emancipation
Virginia of the 1800s had more slaves than she could employ. Two events created a market for these slaves and a migration of white planters seeking their fortunes in the South. Cultivation of cotton was made productive by the invention of the cotton gin, and lands taken from Indians were opened for settlement. A number of Charles City planters took their slaves with them when they moved south. The largest number settled in Marengo County, Alabama. Harper’s Weekly (Dec. 18, 1869), p. 813 in Slavery Images: A Visual Record of the African Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Early African Diaspora, www.slaveryimages.org
A Journey Across Four Centuries
The 1800s — Diaspora and emancipation
Slaves became the major “crop” produced by Virginia for export. Sale for the domestic market created the first great diaspora of Virginia slaves. Slave families were torn apart when family members were sold south. lave Trader, Sold to Tennessee from Lewis Miller, Sketchbook of Landscapes in the State of Virginia, 1853-1867, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Williamsburg, Virginia; slide 84-896c in Slavery Images: A Visual Record of the African Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Early African Diaspora, www.slaveryimages.org.
A Journey Across Four Centuries
The 1800s — Diaspora and emancipation
Free blacks also moved out of Virginia as the state passed laws to restrict their freedoms. Some – like Charles City native Lott Cary and 18 residents who followed him – emigrated to Africa as colonists establishing the new nation of Liberia. Others moved north to Canada. Dr. Rex Ellis portraying Lott Cary courtesy Leonard Starr.
A Journey Across Four Centuries
The 1800s — Diaspora and emancipation
The largest number of free blacks, however, moved to Ohio, following Charles City Quakers who had migrated there because they wished to live in a free state. Ruebin Brown and his wife Sarah Harris Brown, pictured here, moved to Ohio when their two oldest children were young. Photo courtesy Charles City County Richard M. Bowman Center for Local History.
A Journey Across Four Centuries
The 1800s — Diaspora and emancipation
One of the largest emancipations in 19th century America took place in Charles City in 1825, adding to the diaspora of slaves and the division of slave families. David Minge, a 24-year-old heir, emancipated 89 slaves at the Rowe plantation. More than 50 newspapers from Maine to Florida and as far west as Indiana carried the story about how the young man gathered his slaves on the banks of the James River and told them he was freeing them and sending them to Haiti. The Rowe Plantation, courtesy Library of Congress.
A Journey Across Four Centuries
The 1800s — Diaspora and emancipation
The Civil War (1861-1865) brought universal emancipation and the second great diaspora as freedmen moved to northern markets eager to purchase their labor. Those who stayed in Charles City enjoyed decades of new freedom and opportunity. Charles City’s newly enfranchised voters elected a freedman to the House of Delegates and a free mulatto to serve as Clerk of Court. “Negroes leaving the plow,” drawing by Charles R. Waud, courtesy Library of Congress.
A Journey Across Four Centuries
The 1800s — Diaspora and emancipation
Public education became a birthright, and the neighborhood church became an institution. This was a time of prosperity for many freedmen; a few who had been born slaves died wealthy men and women. Parrish Hill School ca 1912, courtesy Papers of Jackson Davis, MSS 3072, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library.
A Journey Across Four Centuries
The 1900s — Rights lost and restored
The turn of the century saw the loss of freedoms as Virginia enacted a new Constitution, purged its voter rolls, enacted a literacy test, and imposed a poll tax to deter persons of color from registering to vote. At the same time persons of color were sent in large numbers to fight American wars overseas. When freedoms and rights were restored in this century, however, it was not by bloodshed but by the leadership of activists and the rule of law. Capitation (Poll) Tax Receipt Book, courtesy Charles City County Richard M. Bowman Center for Local History.
A Journey Across Four Centuries
The 1900s — Rights lost and restored
The voter suppression measures reduced “colored” registrations from a high of around 770 in 1900 to a low of about 25 in the 1930s. At that time a house painter by the name of Edward Banks began a one-person voter registration campaign which culminated in his election to the Board of Supervisors in 1952. Within seven years’ time persons of color were serving on every board and commission in the county, almost a decade before passage of the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965. Photos courtesy Charles City County Richard M. Bowman Center for Local History.
A Journey Across Four Centuries
The 1900s — Rights lost and restored
A 1961 Civil Rights Commission Report concerning 20 predominantly black U.S. counties found Charles City represented “the outstanding example of political freedom and participation by Negroes.” It ranked first in median family income of non-white residents, the median years of schooling attained, and the percentage who owned their own homes. Due to active voter registration efforts conducted by the Civic League and the NAACP the county ranked in the top seven percent of all Southern counties with black majorities in the percentage of nonwhites registered to vote. Courtesy Charles City County Richard M. Bowman Center for Local History.
A Journey Across Four Centuries
The 1900s — Rights lost and restored
Daryl Bowman and her five siblings enrolled in the formerly all white Charles City High School in 1963 under a freedom of choice plan. In the spring of 1964 Daryl became the first person of color to graduate from Charles City High School. Daryl’s siblings challenged freedom of choice as a means of dismantling a segregated system in a law suit entitled Bowman v. Charles City County. Their lawsuit was joined with Green v. Board of Education of New Kent County; and in 1968 the U. S. Supreme Court entered its landmark decision. Following that ruling Charles City schools were finally consolidated in 1972. Photo courtesy Charles City County Richard M. Bowman Center for Local History.
A Journey Across Four Centuries
The 1900s — Rights lost and restored
In 1989 the Washington Post described Charles City County as “lost in time” because it had “no town, no bank, no video store or movie theater, no pharmacy, no liquor store, no newspaper, no shopping center, no fast food restaurant, no 7-Eleven, no library, no jail, no motel, no red light and no chamber of commerce.” Thirty years later the list of things Charles City does not have remains much the same, but residents don’t measure their quality of life by these missing amenities. Instead, they value a peaceful community, welcoming churches, great hunting and fishing and a quick commute to neighboring cities. Charles City Photo By Dave Doody.
A Journey Across Four Centuries
The 1900s — Rights lost and restored
While many counties across Virginia have lost their rural character to endless suburban sprawl, Charles City County has preserved its open spaces and rich historical resources. Remarkably, a majority of county residents have ancestral roots in this community, and many can trace their lineage back seven generations or more to slaves and to free blacks who lived in this very place. Here the past is not a history book; it is a cherished ancestor. Photo courtesy Charles City County Richard M. Bowman Center for Local History.