View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE

provided by University of New Mexico

Faculty Book Display Case School of Law

7-2019 Complicated Lives: Free Blacks in Virginia, 1619-1865 Sherri L. Burr University of New Mexico - School of Law, [email protected]

Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/law_facbookdisplay Part of the Law and Race Commons, Legal Commons, Legal History Commons, Political History Commons, Social History Commons, and the United States History Commons

Recommended Citation Burr, Sherri L.. "Complicated Lives: Free Blacks in Virginia, 1619-1865." (2019): 212 pages. https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/ law_facbookdisplay/197

This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the School of Law at UNM Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Book Display Case by an authorized administrator of UNM Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Complicated Lives

Burr_5pp_lateAugust.indb 1 6/20/19 5:44 PM Burr_5pp_lateAugust.indb 2 6/20/19 5:44 PM COMPLICATED LIVES Free Blacks in Virginia, 1619–1865

Sherri L. Burr

Carolina Academic Press Durham, North Carolina

Burr_5pp_lateAugust.indb 3 6/20/19 5:44 PM Copyright © 2019 Sherri L. Burr All Rights Reserved

See catalog.loc.gov for Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data.

ISBN 978-1-5310-1617-3 e-ISBN 978-1-5310-1618-0

Carolina Academic Press 700 Kent Street Durham, North Carolina 27701 Telephone (919) 489-7486­ Fax (919) 493-5668­ www.cap-press.com­

Printed in the United States of America

Burr_5pp_lateAugust.indb 4 6/20/19 5:44 PM For the Hills and the Burrs Rest in Peace, Dear Relatives Your Stories Continue

Burr_5pp_lateAugust.indb 5 6/20/19 5:44 PM Burr_5pp_lateAugust.indb 6 6/20/19 5:44 PM Contents

Author’s Note ix Family Trees Hill xiii Crawley xiv Burr xv Jefferson xvi

introduction ✴ A Battle Over Freedom 3

Chapter One ✴ African Origins 7

Chapter two ✴ The Voyage 13

Chapter three ✴ Virginia 17

Chapter four ✴ Property 27

Chapter five ✴ Transforming Servitude 33

Chapter six ✴ Restrictions on Population Growth and Civil Liberties 41

Chapter seven ✴ The Revolutionary War’s Impact on Free Blacks 55

Chapter eight ✴ Manumissions and Status Changes 65

vii

Burr_5pp_lateAugust.indb 7 6/20/19 5:44 PM viii ✴ Contents

Chapter nine ✴ The Anti-Slavery Slaveholding Paradox 77

Chapter ten ✴ Reversals, Registration, Kidnappings and Social Interactions 97

Chapter eleven ✴ The Civil War and Jim Crow 119

Epilogue ✴ Story Replication 133

Acknowledgments 143 Bibliography 147 Notes 151 Index 185

Burr_5pp_lateAugust.indb 8 6/20/19 5:44 PM Author’s Note

he road to creating this book has been paved with serendipity.1 TSorting through a bag of letters in 2013, I found one from my great-­­aunt Callie informing me she was on her way to Wyoming be- cause my great-great-­ ­aunt Lillian had taken ill. I remembered meet- ing Lillian once, at the funeral of my grandmother Juanita when I was six. I recalled Lillian as someone with straight black hair who looked more Native American than black. Two weeks later, another letter from Aunt Callie informed me that Lillian had passed away. From the security of my New Mexico home in 2013, I wondered why an African-American­ woman had lived in Wyoming in the middle of the last century. Contemplating this question started a journey that led to Virginia and across the Atlantic. To uncover material for another book, I traveled to North Da- kota, South Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana. On a stop in Worland, Wyoming, I explained to a sales associate that a relative had once lived there, and questioned how I could find her home and grave. She pulled out a map, and circled the county clerk’s office and cem- etery. Twenty-­minutes later with the address to Aunt Lillian’s home in my purse, I knocked on the door of her last residence. Through a screen door, I saw a portly Hispanic woman with a kind face sitting on a chair. I introduced myself as Lillian Fay Todd’s niece, and she said, “Come on in.” Mrs. Lucy Vigil explained that she knew Lillian well and had pur- chased the house and its contents from Callie who had inherited

ix

Burr_5pp_lateAugust.indb 9 6/20/19 5:44 PM x ✴ Author’s Note

them. “The antique furniture had been shipped from Chicago,” she said proudly. As we talked, it occurred to me that I had inadvertently stumbled upon a family history museum. I departed Worland with gifts of Aunt Lillian’s silver and handcrafted kitchen linens, along with even more questions. A few months later, as I flew from Albuquerque to Salt Lake City to give a speech at the 2013 National Federation of Press Women Conference, I listened to a seatmate extolling the virtues of the Mor- mon Family History Library. Planning to check out the library for fifteen minutes, I disembarked from public transportation a stop short of the one nearest the conference hotel. Three hours later as the library was closing and a light drizzle fell upon Salt Lake City, I had missed dinner but had not noticed as I walked to the hotel with copies of digitized census records. The paperwork contained a 1920 census record linking Aunt Lil- lian and her husband Andrew Todd to Chicago, and an 1850 census record identifying her father, George W. Hill, as having been born free in Virginia in 1847.2 He resided in the household of his grand- father, Gideon Hill. The census record was titled “Free Inhabitants of Virginia.” All the blacks and mulattos were designated with a B or M. The whites were not marked. George had an M next to his name, while a B was marked next to Gideon’s. Prior to this discovery, I lacked knowledge that there were blacks born free in the South before the conclusion of the Civil War. Like many Americans, I assumed all Africans were brought to the South as slaves and their descendants remained so until 1865. Unearthing this information led me to question just how many Free Blacks, like my ancestors, resided in Virginia and the rest of the South during the colonial and antebellum periods. What were their lives like? What legal rules governed their activities? Seeking answers to questions like these led to this book. In re- searching the lives of my ancestors at the Library of Virginia, I discovered the document releasing Gideon Hill from bondage as a two-­year old on January 25, 1787. More research at the Jefferson

Burr_5pp_lateAugust.indb 10 6/20/19 5:44 PM Author’s Note ✴ xi

Library in Charlottesville and other archives led to un-­related in- dividuals who had paid for liberty, earned their freedom through meritorious deeds, or were released from bondage due to the largess of planters motivated by honor or love. If freedom is the God-­given right of all people, this book con- tains stories of people of African origin who were never enslaved, born free, or who obtained liberty through court proceedings, sheer will, industriousness and entrepreneurship. They lived in an unpre- dictable society that sought to systematically deprive them of liberty and other human rights. This history of Free Blacks3 in Virginia reveals the human ability to persevere against adverse odds arising from the color of their skin, or their gender, or both. Complicated Lives is written using narrative nonfiction tech- niques to make sometimes stale history accessible to the general public. For example, with court records and other documents of known events, I modernized ancient dialogue from actual facts to tell the story. So that the reading of this book is not disrupted by footnotes, the source material can be found in the notes at the end of the book. Revisiting a time when blacks were early citizens and participants in the United States economy proves black lives mattered then, and now. To heal the psychic injuries that continue today, we must un- veil the past and address its wounds. This book interweaves legal history with my journey of discovering what happened to those Af- rican Americans who were free before the Civil War and lived their lives in the shadows of a complicated world.

Sherri Burr Albuquerque, New Mexico

Burr_5pp_lateAugust.indb 11 6/20/19 5:44 PM Burr_5pp_lateAugust.indb 12 6/20/19 5:44 PM Hill Family Tree ✴

Hannah Hill b. 1762

Gideon Hill Celia Hill 1785–1855 ?–1873

Mary William Julia A. Nancy A. Gideon Samuel Melville Hill Edward Hill Hill Hill Hill Hill Hill 1828–1865 b. 1835 b. 1836 b. 1837 b. 1840 1842–1865 1845–1918

George W. Hill 1847–bef. 1910

Ozellar Reece Hill Watson 1889–1971 b. 1883

Juanita Pearl George Watson Burr 1920–1966

John Lincoln Burr 1938–2011

Sherri Burr

xiii

Burr_5pp_lateAugust.indb 13 6/20/19 5:44 PM Benjamin & Suckey (Susannah) Crawley Family Tree ✴

William Elizabeth Crawley Anderson

Benjamin Crawley Suckey Crawley 1760–1793 1764–1834

Elizabeth Morgan Jonathan Crawley ?–1827 1792–1832

William Benjamin John Morgan Elizabeth Jane Virginia Crawley Crawley Crawley Crawley Crawley Crawley Crawley 1818–1876 1822–1904 1826–1915 1827–1827

xiv

Burr_5pp_lateAugust.indb 14 6/20/19 5:44 PM Burr Family Tree ✴

Aaron Mary Eugénie Burr Emmons 1756–1836 1760–1835

John Pierre Hester Louisa Charlotte Francis Burr Emery Burr Webb 1792–1864 1795–1864 b. 1788 b. 1788

John E. Elizabeth Burr Webb 1819–1895 b. 1817 Mary Ann Burr Webb b. 1820 b. 1819 Sarah John Burr Webb 1822–1890 b. 1822 Walter Mary Burr Webb 1825–1913 1824–1826 Elizabeth Frank J. Burr Webb b. 1829 1828–1894 Louisa Burr b. 1832 Mathilda Burr b. 1835 Ellen Burr 1836–1914 Edward Burr b. 1838 Martin Burr b. 1840

xv

Burr_5pp_lateAugust.indb 15 6/20/19 5:44 PM Thomas Jefferson & Sally Hemings Family Tree ✴

Thomas Jefferson Sally Hemings 1743–1826 1773–1835

William Beverly Harriet James Madison Eston Hemings Julia Ann Hemings Hemings Hemings Jefferson Isaacs b. 1798 b. 1801 1805–1877 1808–1856 b. 1808

John Wales Jefferson b. 1835 Anna W. Jefferson b. 1837 Beverly Frederick Jefferson b. 1839

xvi

Burr_5pp_lateAugust.indb 16 6/20/19 5:44 PM