Griffin Dobson’s life is unusually well documented for two reasons: he sailed with his enslaver, Thomas ap Catesby Jones, on several naval voyages, and he bought his freedom and that of his family from Jones. Nevertheless, we do not know some basic facts about Dobson’s life, including who his parents were, exactly when or where he was born, or whether he had siblings.
Based on an 1867 San Francisco death record recording his age at death as 49, it appears that Dobson was born c. 1818. However, this birth date is uncertain, since he probably appears, as “Little Griffin,” age 6, on an 1829 agreement in which the adult children of Charles B. Carter, who including Thomas ap Catesby Jones’ wife Mary, divided ownership of the people enslaved by their parents. If “Little Griffin” is, as seems likely, the same person as the Griffin Dobson who died in San Francisco, then his birth date falls somewhere between 1818 (based on the death record) and 1823 (based on the division agreement). It’s possible that the adults around him were uncertain of his age in 1829, and guessed, and/or that he or Jones inflated his age at some point, possibly to comply with Navy requirements.
After some exchanges among the heirs, both “Little Griffin” and a 9 year-old girl named Cynthia ended up being claimed as property by Thomas ap Catesby and Mary Jones. By 1840, Griffin had begun a relationship with an enslaved woman, Cynthia, who may have been the same person listed on the division.* Their relationship resulted in five children born c. 1840-1847.
We know that Dobson accompanied Jones on voyages to the Pacific in 1842-1844 and 1847-1849. During the second voyage, Dobson, with the encouragement and financial support of some of his shipmates, approached Jones with a proposal to buy his freedom. Jones, by his own account, was “astonished” by the request, but agreed, only “stipulating” that Dobson wait until they both returned to Virginia to claim his freedom. In 1849, Jones “yielded to Griffin’s earnest solicitations” to leave the ship and take advantage of the California Gold Rush economy to earn money to buy his wife and children.
A deed recorded at the Fairfax County courthouse on Sept. 22nd, 1852 (and certified by William W Ball, serving as a Justice of the Peace), confirms Dobson’s success. In the deed, Jones, in exchange for $1200, transfers ownership of Cinthia (30), Polly (10), Watt (12), Beverly (9), Henry (7), and Edmund (5) to “Griffin Dobson (a free man of Color) of California.”
In California, Griffin Dobson worked in various capacities, including as a bank porter and a waterman. He also became a Mason, serving as an officer of Hannibal Lodge No. 1, Free and Accepted A. Y. Masons; and was a close associate of Rev. Barney Fletcher, founder of St. Cyprian’s A. M. E. Church (so he, like both his former enslaver and his Carter in-laws, may have played a role in supporting the founding of a church).
While the Dobsons were by many measures successful in building a life in California, they did not entirely escape the dangers of the slave system. In 1859, Henry Dobson, who had been apprenticed to a barber, was kidnapped by Missourians who hoped to sell him back into slavery. Henry was rescued with the help of a Black man on board the steamer on which his kidnappers took him, but Griffin Dobson remained concerned about the safety of his sons as they reached ages at which they would be considered especially valuable property. In 1862 he took out a newspaper advertisement “warn[ing]” “all persons” “against” “harboring, shipping or advising any one of the four boys of the subscriber, against his will or without his consent.”
Griffin Dobson died in 1867, just as the United States was entering the Reconstruction era. His son Beverly (who spelled his last name Dodson) remained in San Francisco, playing an active role in Democratic politics, and working as a coachman and eventually as a grading and sewer contractor. I haven’t fully investigated later generations of this branch of the family, but it appears that Beverly had a son, Beverly George Dodson, who, according to the 1920 census, was the proprietor of a garage and married to Pauline, a naturalized citizen of Mexican descent.
While Griffin Dobson’s life is better-documented than that of many enslaved people, a number of questions remain about him and his family. We do not know who Griffin’s parents were, or whether he had siblings. He is not part of any obvious family grouping in the 1829 division, suggesting that he was separated from family members by death or sale quite early in life. There is, however, an older man named Griffin, age 33, listed in the 1829 agreement. He could be Griffin’s father, but is not identified as such. Alternatively, he could be an uncle or someone else to whom Griffin’s mother felt close enough to choose as her son’s namesake.
It is possible that Griffin Dobson was related in some way to other people named Dobson or Dotson enslaved by members of the Jones family, including Rachel Dotson (mother of William, Robert, and David and nurse to Mark, Mary, and Martha Jones), and Judy Dobson (freed by Elizabeth Lee Jones’ will), but we don’t know exactly how. Given “little Griffin’s” presence in the division agreement, it seems unlikely that Griffin Dobson was, as Frank Gapp hypothesized, a brother of Judy Dobson, and so entitled to freedom under Elizabeth Lee Jones’ will. It’s also possible that Griffin was not related to the other Dobsons or Dotsons he knew but that, when the time came for him to claim or be assigned a last name (possibly in preparation for his being listed on the naval rolls), he chose or received one that was common among African Americans in his community.
*In an earlier version of this account, I wrote, based primarily on both men having the same unusual name, that Griffin Dobson had a second family with a free woman of color named Charity Carter, including a son, Charles, born c. 1834. Knowing that there were at least two people with the first name Griffin living in Fairfax County at the time, I now believe that the Griffin Dobson identified as Charles Dobson’s father on an 1871 marriage record is probably a different man from the Griffin Dobson who sailed with Commodore Jones, freed himself and his family, and died in California. The question of when the Griffin Dobson who married Cynthia was born is crucial here. It’s very unlikely that a boy born in 1823 fathered a son born in 1834, when he would have been 11. While it’s slightly more plausible that someone born in 1818 fathered a son in 1834, he would still be relatively young to be a father. In addition, even given the differing legal status of Cynthia’s and Charity’s children, it seems odd that a man who went to great lengths to preserve one family would abandon another. If the older Griffin, who was 33 in 1829, also used the last name Dobson, then he may have been Charity’s partner, and the father of Charles. It’s also possible that there was another Griffin Dobson living in the area. Investigating both men named Griffin and people using the last name Dobson, Dotson, or Dodson living in Virginia during this period seems likely to yield additional information about the relationships involved.
Updated 3/19/26
Sources not linked above:
Gapp, Frank W. “Griffin Dobson: Servant to a Commodore.” Yearbook: Historical Society of Fairfax County 25 (1995-1996): 45-51.
Most of what we know about Peter Gibson comes from a brief but eventful period in his life that begins in 1861 when federal troops seized the Jones family‘s cows and horses, which he had been tending, for military use, and ends when he voted in the referendum on the Virginia Constitutional Convention in October 1867 – the first time Black men voted in substantial numbers in Virginia, and the first chance for many of the men the Jones family had enslaved to exercise their newly-recognized citizenship rights.
In 1878, Peter Gibson testified before the Southern Claims Commission in support of Mary Walker Carter Jones’ claim, relaying his memories of a night in 1861 when Union troops seized the cows he “had been milking all of [his] life” from Sharon. Gibson responds to a question about his age in 1878 with “forty, I think” (reminding us that enslaved people were often deprived of very basic information about themselves). This suggests that he was born c. 1838 and would have been in his early twenties in 1861. It also suggests that he had spent all or most of his life at Sharon, working with the cows from an early age. The enumeration of enslaved people claimed by Thomas ap Cateby Jones’ estate in the slave schedules of the 1860 census includes one man aged 22; that may be Gibson.
An 1867 document in which Gibson appears reflects just how much, and how quickly, the Civil War changed the power structure in Virginia, and provides a glimpse of a Black community that is becoming more visible in public records. On October 22nd, 1867, Black men as a group voted for the first time in Virginia, in an election that authorized a Virginia Constitutional Convention and selected delegates for that convention. The voter rolls for Fairfax County’s 5th District show that Gibson was among the “Colored” voters who overwhelming supported the convention and chose as delegate Orrin E. Hine.
Hine, born in New York, was a former Union soldier who worked for a time as a Freedmen’s Bureau agent. He supported the creation of independent African American institutions, including the First Baptist Church of Vienna, whose founders he assisted in obtaining (or, more accurately, given some founding members’ indigenous roots, reclaiming) land for a church. The defeated candidate was Mottrom “Mott” Dulany Ball, recently returned Confederate soldier, and son and grandson of Lewinsville land donors belonging to the Ball family.
Other available information suggests that this was a vote for both self-determination and self-defense. In a Freedman’s Bureau report, Hine described Mott Ball as one of the “ruffians” who attacked a “religious gathering” at the home of Robert Gunnell, an established Black farmer in the Langley area. At this point in his life, Mott Ball was clearly not ready to recognize his African American neighbors as fellow citizens (and fellow Christians) with equal rights, including the right to gather, as the early Lewinsville congregation had, in a private home for worship.
The “Colored” voter list includes 226 men in all, nearly equal in numbers to, and much more united in their views than, the 252 men listed on the corresponding “White” voter roll. It provides a glimpse into the Black community in the Lewinsville and Langley area in 1867 (of course, we only see the names of adult male members of the community, since neither Black nor White women could vote). Robert Gunnell participated in the vote, as did Cyrus Carter, founder of four Baptist churches in the area: Chesterbook, Shiloh in McLean/Odrick’s Corner, First Baptist in Vienna, and Mount Zion Baptist in Arlington.
Ten other men with the surname Carter, many of them probably members of the extended Powhatan/Hatton/Carter family into which another man enslaved by the Jones family, Griffin Dobson, married, appear on the list, as does a Richard Odrick, likely a member of the family that gave Odrick’s Corner its name. In addition to Peter, there is a second man with the family name Gibson, Alfred. And there are two members of the Dobson family: Charles (son of Griffin Dobson and Charity Carter) and Reed (exact family connections to be determined). As we learn more about people enslaved by Lewinsville’s founding members, we will undoubtedly be able to identify more who exercised their newly-recognized citizenship rights in 1867.
Peter Gibson is harder to trace beyond 1867. His name is a common one, and the erosion of civil rights in the post-Reconstruction era made it difficult for many freedmen to participate in activities and build the sort of wealth that results in regular appearances in public records. There are several Black Peter Gibsons listed on the 1870 Virginia census, but none live in Fairfax County (suggesting that he may have traveled from elsewhere to make his deposition, or that census takers may have missed him and any family he had).
Peter Gibson may (or may not) be the “Uncle Peter” the Evening Star’s Rambler columnist, John Harry Shannon, found living at Sharon in Nov. 1914. Shannon describes Peter as the brother of “Aunt Rachel,” also living at Sharon in her old age, who may be Rachel Dotson, who raised Mary, Mark, and Martha Jones. He also describes “Uncle Peter” as discoursing at length on the quality of the horses, cows, chickens, and crops once raised at Sharon. This may suggest that “Uncle Peter” is, indeed, Peter Gibson, who was able to give the Southern Claims Commission interviewers a detailed account of livestock and crops present at Sharon c. 1861, including their numbers, quality, and market value.
There is also a 1920 death certificate for a Peter Gibson, boarded in the Old Folks Home in Henrico County by Fairfax County. His age (also approximate) suggests that he could be the Peter Gibson enslaved by the Jones family, but whoever provided the information for the certificate knew very little about him; the spaces for spouse, parents, birth place, and birth date are all blank. Whether or not he is the same Peter Gibson, the story suggested by those blanks reminds us of the struggles African Americans faced in the decades after Emancipation and Reconstruction.
Rachel Dotson raised the three younger children of Thomas and Mary Walker Carter Jones and was remembered by Meriwether Jones as a “faithful servant.” In 1867 one of Rachel’s own sons, William, sent an inquiry to the Freedman’s Bureau inquiring into her whereabouts and wellbeing, and that of his brothers Robert and David, after a long separation.
Rachel is mentioned in three places that I have found so far: in an 1867 inquiry from her son, William Dotson, to the Freedmen’s Bureau office in Fairfax Courthouse, in Meriwether Jones’ 1864 will, and (probably) in a 1914 column written by the Evening Star’s Rambler columnist, John Harry Shannon.
William’s inquiry was relayed via a letter written by Robert P. Fleming, who describes himself as “editor of the ‘Jefferson Journal’.” The Jefferson in question may be Jefferson City, Missouri, but the state isn’t specified. William relates that his mother was enslaved by the Jones family and “raised all of [Commodore Jones’] children,” but lists only the three younger children, suggesting that his memories of events at Sharon may begin after the early 1840s, when Meriwether Jones left home to begin his naval career. William asks for word of Rachel and his brothers, Robert and David; I have not found any record of an answer.
It is not clear from the inquiry when or under what circumstances William left Virginia, but it seems that it has been some time since he saw or had news of his family. Given his location further south, one strong possibility is that the Jones family sold him, perhaps during the settlement of Thomas ap Catesby Jones’ estate.
There are also some Freedman’s Bureau and pension records suggesting that William Dotson may have served in the war, either as a laborer or as a member of the US Colored Troops infantry, but, since his name is fairly common, it’s hard to definitively connect those records to the William Dotson who sought word of his mother and brothers.
In an 1863 memorandum regarding an insurance policy that apparently served as his will, Meriwether Jones left $100 to “our faithful servant Rachel as a reward for her great fidelity in the trying scenes she has passed through.” It is not clear whether Rachel was legally free at the time Meriwether wrote; that would probably depend on her geographical location during the war.
It does appear that she — assuming she is the same Rachel William Dotson is searching for; Meriwether doesn’t provide a last name for the Rachel he mentions – was, indeed, alive in 1863, and probably traveled with Mary Walker Carter Jones and/or remained at Sharon during the war.
In 1914, William Harry Shannon spoke with a woman he called “Aunt Rachel” and a man he called “Uncle Peter” living in a partly-ruined building behind Sharon. He allowed that “perhaps they have other names, but Aunt Rachel and Uncle Peter are known by those names to everybody throughout a wide section of Fairfax County.” The building may have been the former slave quarters that, according to Mary Walker Carter Jones’ claim for damages after the war, she had remodeled for the Storm family’s use c. 1860 (which may, in turn, have been the house where Elizabeth Lee Jones’ will describes Amy and Nancy living in 1822). In any case, by 1914, it was in very poor repair, “a section of the front wall fallen out.”
Rachel, who is 79, lives upstairs; as Shannon relates, “her chamber is up a set of stairs which few persons of eighty years would care to climb.” Shannon and his party of “ramblers” apparently climb those stairs, since he reports on the pictures on the walls – including portraits cut from newspapers of both Robert E. Lee and General Grant and of various religious leaders and “a good many sacred pictures in gorgeous colors” – and on Rachel’s most prized possession, a feather bed.
At least in talking with a party of White visitors accompanied by Mrs. F.G. Carper, one of the current owners of the land, Rachel’s conversation centers on “the days of long ago.” She tells Shannon and his party the story of Thomas and Mary Jones’ wedding at Salona, and relates the damage done to Sharon by what she refers to as “Yankee soldiers.” Similarly, Peter talks about the high quality of the Jones’ horses, cows, and chickens, and about the crops they raised.
Shannon relates that Rachel and Peter are brother and sister, and that they were enslaved by the Jones family, but beyond that we learn little from the column about them and their lives. It is not clear whether this Rachel is William Dotson’s mother Rachel, but it seems possible.
If Rachel is 79 in 1914 then she was born in 1835, perhaps a bit late to have raised the Jones’ older children, although enslaved girls began work at a young age. It’s also possible that Rachel is older than she tells Shannon; while she doesn’t relay the story of the Jones’ 1823 marriage in a way that suggests she actually witnessed it, it does sound like she may have heard it from someone who did.
The column provides no information about any other family members that Rachel and Peter may have, where those family members are, or whether they are in touch. Nor does it explain how Rachel and Peter came to be living at Sharon long after the Jones family sold the property. Have they been here all along, or have they returned in their old age? If so, what sort of relationship do they have with the Carpers, who now own the property? And what help, if any, do they have as they live out their older years in a building that seems to be in the process of falling down?
Other unanswered questions include whether Rachel Dotson, Griffin Dobson, and Judy Dobson (freed by Elizabeth Jones’ will) were related in some way. Dotson, Dobson, and Dodson can be variant spellings of the same last name, so it’s possible that there is a family relationship. If so, we don’t know what it is, or whether Rachel and Peter were in touch with kin in California.
Although she did not live to see the formal founding of Lewinsville Presbyterian Church in 1846 (and is not buried in the Lewinsville cemetery), Lewinsville members recognize Elizabeth Lee Jones as one of our founding mothers – one whose choices form a complicated and often puzzling picture.
Elizabeth was apparently the first participant in the Salona house church to take practical steps toward forming a formal congregation by leaving land for a “church and church yard” in her 1822 will. While that will was disputed and Lewinsville currently sits on a different portion of the Turberville land grant, Elizabeth’s bequest probably helped inspire the later land donation that made the formal founding of Lewinsville Presbyterian Church possible.
She was also, like other White members of the early congregation, dependent on the labor of enslaved people for her livelihood. In her will, she sought to leave those she enslaved to the recently-formed American Colonization Society (ACS).
The ACS was a sometimes-uneasy coalition of White Americans with varying beliefs about slavery who agreed on the project of transporting free Black people from the United States to a colony in Africa that ultimately became Liberia. It is unclear what Elizabeth’s own views on slavery were, though she does seem to have supported the portion of the ACS mission that involved including Christian missionaries among the colonizers.
Elizabeth was born to Lettice Corbin Turberville Jones and Catesby Jones on the Northern Neck of Virginia. The exact birth dates of some of the couple’s seven children are hard to determine, but sources seem to agree that Elizabeth was born sometime between 1778, when her parents married, and 1786, before their first son, Roger, was born.
If, as some evidence suggests, Elizabeth was her parents’ oldest child, she was probably very close in age to her aunt (Lettice’s considerably younger sister), Martha Corbin Turberville Ball. In any case, they were closer to being contemporaries than their niece/aunt relationship might suggest. All sources seem to agree that Elizabeth was Roger’s (and Thomas ap Catesby’s) older sister. Both of their parents died relatively young: Catesby in 1801 and Lettice in 1804. By that time, Elizabeth would have been an adult, but still quite young herself.
Like Martha and Mottrom Ball, Elizabeth moved to Fairfax County, settling on part of the Turberville land grant there, sometime in the eighteen-teens. She, too, may have been fleeing British attacks on the Northern Neck during the War of 1812. In any case, she had arrived by 1815, when Thomas stayed with her while recovering from wounds received in that war.
Elizabeth apparently maintained a household separate from those of her relatives, and is often credited with arranging for the building of Sharon, the house she, and later Thomas and Mary Jones and their children, occupied (the notice of Elizabeth’s death that appears in several ACS publications, which describes her as having “died at the seat of her brother, Thomas ap Catesby Jones,” obscures which sibling first called Sharon home).
An 1819 letter written by Harriotte Maffitt, daughter of Rev. Maffitt, mentions seeing “Miss Betty Jones” at Salona on the preceding Sunday, suggesting that she attended services there. It certainly seems that Elizabeth valued the chance to participate in worship, and wanted to offer that opportunity to others. When she wrote her will in April 1822, she included a bequest of “four acres of . . .land . . .as a site for a church and church yard,” “to be improved and dedicated to the uses and purposes of divine worship in such manner. . .as. . .may . . .be prescribed by the Rev[eren]d William Maffitt” or another Presbyterian pastor from a list she supplied.
Elizabeth’s financial support came from inherited wealth, including the labor of over a dozen enslaved people, some of whom did the work of her household, and some of whom may have been hired out, with the money they earned adding to Elizabeth’s income. We have some information about these people (though not as much as many of us would like) from Elizabeth’s 1822 will because her bequest to the ACS, and the arrangements she made for them until the ACS was ready to carry out its plans, required her naming them and in some cases describing their family relationships, ages, and occupations.
“In the meantime,” she specified, “said slaves. . .shall serve my relations” and “shall receive such moral and religious instruction and be as habituated to the useful arts of domestic life as to prepare them as well as circumstances will allow for their ultimate destination of emancipated colonists.” She also recommended to the ACS trustees that “my boy Davy, son of Nancy,” “be immediately put to school. . .to be educated as a missionary to Africa, or as minister of the Gospel to be settled in the proposed colony in Africa.” If the ACS was unable to carry out its colonization plans within ten years of her death, she wrote, the enslaved people divided among her relatives “shall be absolutely and unconditionally emancipated and free.”
Finally, she specified that “the three old women Letty (commonly called Spinning Lett), Amy, and Nancy, considering them too old either for the purpose of colonization or of intermediate service. . .be permitted to go free,” and charged her brother, Thomas ap Catesby Jones, to whom she had left her home and the bulk of her land, with “continu[ing] to Amy and Nancy the asylum they now enjoy of the house and garden” on that land.
This suggests that at the time of her death the Sharon farm included both a main house and outbuildings that housed enslaved (or, in this case, freed) people, and that at least some of the people enslaved in her household had the opportunity to cultivate food for their own use (a fairly common arrangement which had benefits for both enslaved and enslaver).
Other enslaved people listed in Elizabeth’s will include Edmond, a blacksmith; unnamed children of Nancy; Arianna and her unnamed children; the “remaining women and girls” Maria, Belinda, Mima, and Kitty; and Harriet and “her child of future issue” (perhaps in utero or yet to be conceived at the time of writing).
Because of legal disputes over the estates of several generations of the Turberville family, Elizabeth’s will was not carried out as written. The land on which Lewinsville Presbyterian Church currently sits is several miles away from the plot she had surveyed for the purpose. Nevertheless, the provisions of her will probably helped inspire the land donation by Elizabeth’s aunt, niece, and nephews that made the formal founding of Lewinsville Presbyterian Church possible.
It is also unclear whether all of the enslaved people named in Elizabeth’s will were, in fact, freed, and whether any of them traveled to Africa. In part because Elizabeth divided the people she enslaved among so many of her relatives (in some cases leaving who went where up to the relatives, or even the drawing of lots), tracing what happened to each individual requires considerable research (currently a work in progress).
There is, however, some available information. The Fairfax County Registrations of Free Negroes describe two women, Judy Dobson and Harriet Conway, as being freed by Elizabeth Lee Jones’ will, and record that their children, all of whom appear to have been born after Elizabeth’s death, shared their free status.
Based on her age and other information in the registration, Judy Dobson, who was 29 when she registered in 1848, is probably one of the unnamed children of Nancy included the will. The somewhat unusual wording in her registration – she is described as “Daughter of Nancy a free woman of colour, and Emancipated by the Last Will and Testament of Elizabeth L. Jones deceased” – may indicate that both she and her mother were freed by that will.
By 1848, Judy had five children: David (10), Emanuel (9), Thomas (6), Silas (3), and Nancy (1). The repetition of family names provides further confirmation of her connection to family members named in the will (and, although Judy’s son David is too young to be the Davy named in the will, he may be the older Davy’s nephew).
Harriet Conway, who was 46 in 1848, may be the Harriet assigned in the will to serve Martha Corbin Turberville Ball until the time comes for her emancipation. Registrations show that at least one woman named Harriet who was freed by Elizabeth Jones’ will (sometimes given the last name Conway, sometimes not) appeared with her children and grandchildren at the 1848 court session to document their free status.
Harriet’s descendants included Armistead Reed (25), Joe Reed (23), Susan Parker (20) and her children Richard Henry (2) and Ann (3 mo.), Fanny (13), and Thomas (6). In 1849, two more sons of Harriet Conway, James (18) and Ellick (16), registered.
Armstead Reed, Richard Henry Parker, and two other Parker siblings, Mary (12) and Ada (10), show up in a shared household on the 1860 census as “free inhabitants of Washington, D.C.” The same household includes Armstead’s wife, Sarah, Frances Reed (26), a washerwoman (who could be the Fanny registered in 1848), Thomas Reed (18) and William Harris (13). While Armstead, Sarah, and Frances are described as being unable to read and write, Richard, Mary, and Ada have all attended school in the last year, and the younger adults appear to be literate.
Since they could claim the proceeds of their labor, this family was able to build some wealth. Armstead, who was a huckster in 1860 with real estate worth $1400 and personal property worth $100, is listed on the 1870 census as keeping an “Eating House” and owning real estate worth $5000 and personal property worth $300.
Even as we are able to track some of the positive effects of Elizabeth’s bequests, the will’s provisions raise other questions:
Did Elizabeth Lee Jones seek to free the people she enslaved and send them to Africa because she genuinely believed in the mission of the American Colonization Society, or because it was the best she could do for them given her and their circumstances, including Virginia laws limiting manumission? In other words, was her decision to include the ACS in her estate plan driven primarily by her relationships with other members of the White elite, by her relationships with the people she enslaved, or perhaps by some combination of the two?
Was she aware that many of the American Colonization Society’s members were at least as interested in removing free Blacks from the United States as in emancipating those who were enslaved?
What role did Elizabeth’s faith play in her decisions regarding the people she enslaved, both during her lifetime and as she prepared for death?
Was she conscious of the irony of describing women and girls who were currently doing the labor that kept her household running (or, for that matter, a man with the highly-valued skills of a blacksmith) as in need of training in “the useful arts of domestic life”?
What did she envision happening to Nancy, whom she judged too old to join the colonization project, once Nancy’s children left for Africa? Did Elizabeth think that Nancy, being free, could make her own decision when the time came? What did Nancy and Davy think of the plan to train Davy as a missionary or minister? Had he shown a desire or aptitude for such work? Was he interested in going to Africa?
And how would they have felt about Elizabeth calling Davy “my Davy”? Is that a term of affection, a claim of ownership (including a claim of greater right to determine the direction of Davy’s life than his mother or Davy himself), or, quite possibly, a bit of both?
The epitaph reads: “In loving memory of Belinda Brown (Colored), the faithful friend and nurse in the Ball and Judkins families prior to and during the Civil War and the dark days of Reconstruction. ‘Faithful unto death.’ “
Much of what we know about Belinda Johnson Pierson Brown, starting with the epitaph on her gravestone in the Lewinsville cemetery (pictured above), is filtered through the memories of members of the Ball family. The Balls remembered Belinda, like most of the people they enslaved, as extremely loyal, devoted to “the family” (by which they meant their own family). The information about Belinda’s life the Balls relay in the epitaph and in a 1930 memoir by William Selwyn Ball, Reminiscences of an Old Rebel, seems to be mostly accurate. However, because the focus in these accounts is so much on Belinda’s relationship with the Balls, there are notable gaps; for instance, they do not include Belinda’s birth and death dates, or the names of her parents and children.
Some of those gaps can be filled in using official documents, especially the 1870 census, taken on July 16, which was the first one to recognize formerly-enslaved people as citizens rather than property, and the record of Belinda’s July 23, 1870 marriage to John Brown (another form of legal documentation available only after emancipation). Based on those records, it appears that Belinda was born between July 24, 1831 and July 15, 1832 in Fairfax County, Virginia to William and Nancy Johnson (the census and marriage records both give her age as 38, and the marriage record includes her parents’ names and her place of birth). It also appears that she had an earlier husband with the last name Pierson (her surname in the marriage record; in the census, she is Belinda Johnson). At the same time, important facts about Belinda’s life remain a mystery, at least to those of us at Lewinsville. Most notably, we don’t know how many children she had, what their names were, or whether she has living descendants.
We know that Belinda had children, and that they played a central part in her later life, because she mentions them in two surviving documents that provide more direct, though still mediated, access to her own voice: two dictated letters from Belinda to William Selwyn’s older sister Rebecca Ball Addison, preserved by Rebecca and reproduced in an appendix to William Selwyn’s memoir. The letters, dated 1892 and 1894, must be read with their context in mind: Belinda was communicating with someone with considerably more power in the racial and economic hierarchy, a member of the family that owned the land on which she lived. In addition, lacking the ability to write, she had to rely on others to put her words on paper. Despite these limitations, the letters give us a sense of Belinda’s personality, including her willingness to assert her independent judgement and her strong attachment to those she considered her “own” kin.
The 1892 letter finds Belinda staying at 1302 30th St. in Richmond, apparently the residence of one of her children, during a 3-week January visit. While Belinda expresses interest in seeing “Miss Rebecca” (who lived in Richmond for most of her adult life) while she is in town (either again, or at all; it’s not clear; both women have been sick, and there’s some indication that Rebecca’s husband isn’t entirely comfortable with Belinda visiting), the main focus of Belinda’s visit seems to be her own family: her “dear children” and “kin folks here from the country.” Belinda does not name the children she has been visiting in the letter (but mentions at least two, or maybe a child and his or her spouse), but she does say that she has “had a happy time” with them, even though she has been sick.
Belinda also answers what was apparently an inquiry by Rebecca into her spiritual welfare, which probably included encouragement to formally join a church: “I am striving to be as good as I can, but you know the African race is not as bright as yours & of course there cannot be as much expected of them, but I am trying the best I know how, to live differently and feel that this is a change.” “But Confirmation is a very serious thing,” she continues, “I do not think it is the form but the feeling that makes us good, so I want to make sure that before I act – that – I am safe in doing so.”
This second sentence, which contains some fairly sophisticated theological reasoning (couched in language which, like the rest of the letter, suggests that Belinda and/or her amanuensis, whom she identifies as one of her children, were comfortable communicating in a linguistic register similar to that used by the Balls), belies Belinda’s earlier statements about the intellectual capabilities of “the African race” – a reminder of just how complex the communication between these two women was. Belinda seems willing to answer the inquiry, perhaps for the sake of maintaining a relationship with someone she believes means well, and who may also hold some continuing power over her. She is also willing to at least bow rhetorically to White supremacist understandings of their relative places in a racially-determined intellectual hierarchy (which apparently, in Rebecca’s mind, supersedes the convention that age brings greater wisdom, and the prerogative to advise; Rebecca, born c. 1840, was 8 or 9 years younger than Belinda). At the same time, Belinda seems to use that allusion for her own purposes (fending off further attempted interference in her life choices), has her own well-considered ideas about her faith, and is comfortable asserting them and following her own judgment about whether she should formally join a church.
The second, 1894 letter is written from Woodbury, the Ball’s property in Fairfax County, where Belinda and John were living. There is no indication of who took Belinda’s dictation (though it appears that that person may have added some comments of his or her own in parentheses). Belinda reports that she is in “middling” health, and that “my own children & my neighbors are so kind and do not let me suffer for anything. Miss Martha [William Selwyn’s wife] came over early Sunday and brought me fresh fish – hot green tea with real cream in it – & some of my own kind of corn bread made by her own dear hands, so you know I must have enjoyed it.”
Belinda’s references to “my dear children” and especially “my own children” in the letters contrast with William Selwyn’s portrait of her in the body of the memoir. His anecdotes there, like the letters, give a sense of Belinda’s personality, but always in the context of his memories of her as the faithful servant of the Ball family. For instance, William Selwyn remembers the woman he knew as “Beedy” as “full of fun and sentiment.” She “would do anything she could,” he writes, “to comfort or please ‘her children’. She had a sweet voice, and one night after supper, she marched into the dining room, her hair filled with lightning bugs and singing ‘Bright gems were in my hair, how I hated their brightness, etc.’.” In Ball’s memories, he, his siblings, and his cousins are Beedy’s children, the primary objects of her care. The quotation marks he places around “her children” suggest that he remembers her calling them that, and in fact she does seem to refer to Rebecca and her family as “my children” in the 1894 letter. At the same time, in her letters to Rebecca, Belinda repeatedly and perhaps somewhat pointedly refers to “my dear children” and “my own children,” apparently using the phrase “my neighbors” to refer to William Selwyn and his wife in the 1894 letter. While she clearly expresses warm feelings for the Balls, she also emphasizes in her letters to them the importance of her relationship with her own kinfolk — biological or possibly step or chosen, but in any case people she claimed as her “own” in a way that she did not claim the Balls, even in direct communication with them.
William Selwyn’s memories of Belinda’s prewar marriage are similarly mediated through the Ball family’s interests. By his account, Belinda was married “shortly before the war” in “a lovely ‘white people’s wedding’” to “a half mulatto named Silas.” The couple “went with the family when they refugeed” south during the war. However, “just before the close of the war,” Silas committed what William Selwyn saw as an act of “treacher[y]”: “he took the single wagon and horse and went around the neighborhood in Albemarle, begging for provisions for Miss Dolly [William Selwyn’s aunt, Dorothy McCabe Ball], and immediately set out for Washington, sold the horse and wagon in Culpeper Court House, and was never more seen.” William Selwyn writes that Belinda “was greatly grieved at her husband’s conduct and never wanted to see him again” (66-67). He does not, however, seem to consider that the possibility that Belinda might have been upset at Silas’ leaving her, and/or leaving her behind, rather than at his leaving the Balls (or appropriating the horse, wagon, and provisions for his own purposes).
William Selwyn recounts that after Belinda returned to Fairfax County with Dorothy McCabe Ball and her surviving family (Dorothy lost her husband William W., mother-in-law Martha, sister-in-law Lucy, and two sons during the war), Belinda, like members of the Ball family, lived in one of the cabins built during the war as quarters for soldiers within a fort that was erected on the Ball property (the dwellings present on the property before the war, William Selwyn explains, had been “pulled down for the material in them”) (pp. 61, 66-67). This must have been a difficult period for Belinda. In addition to whatever questions she may have had about why Silas left as he did and whether he would return, she was often the sole mature adult in a household through which William Selwyn, his cousins, and their friends, all former Confederate soldiers traumatized by war and defeat and trying to find their bearings in a changed world, apparently circulated at whim, doing enough work to keep themselves in drink and food, but little else. By William Selwyn’s own account, they regularly drank to excess and engaged in other risky behavior. “It is nothing short of a miracle,” he writes, “that some of our escapades did not end in tragedy” (p. 68).
He also recognizes the toll their behavior took on his aunt, writing “I wish I could portray the indomitable courage, energy and faith of Aunt Dolly in that year following the close of the War when we boys were not what we should have been” (p. 62). At the same time, he records that Dolly was often away from the household (staying with friends in D.C., working on reestablishing legal title to the Woodbury tract, gathering funds to build a new house, and perhaps also escaping from the unsettled situation in Virginia): “fortunately Aunt Dolly and Martha were away from home a great deal during that year following the close of the war, but it was unfortunate for us boys!.” He then goes on to remember that Belinda was steadily present, but does not recognize that the “boys’” behavior, and the scarcity of food and other necessities they all faced, would also have taken a toll on her. He records Belinda’s presence with a brief sentence that does not even acknowledge her legal status in 1866: “we had old Belinda with us, a devoted slave” (p. 64).
Adding to the difficulty of the situation for Belinda would have been the young men’s continuing embrace of their “Rebel” identity. While William Selwyn’s memories of the “worse than wasted year following the close of the war” focus mostly on drinking, dancing, and tournaments, he mentions several occasions on which he and his companions openly identify or act as Confederates, including one incident where they terrify a carpenter they have hired to build a roof by telling him that they are members of Mosby’s Rangers. On another occasion, they attack “a fort” “at the top of the Falls. . .manned by colored troops”: “up the hill and into the fort we charged, giving the rebel yell at every jump.” William Selwyn acknowledges that the troops could easily have fired on them but did not: “why we were not shot down has ever been a wonder to me” (pp. 63-64).
Freedman’s bureau documents record additional incidents of violence against Black residents in the Langley/Lewinsville area during October and November 1866, some of them apparently involving residents at Woodbury. In a report, Superintendent O.E. Hine records an assault on freedmen Allen Gunnell and Dick Odrick near Chain Bridge, an “attempt[ ] to break up the religious meetings held at the house of Robert Gunnell (colored) in Langley,” the vandalism of a school for freedpeople in Lewinsville, and the burning of a similar school near Frying Pan Church. According to Hine, William Selwyn’s older brother Mottrom Dulany “Mott” Ball was among a “gang of ruffians who all live in the vicinity of Langley” who “annoyed” and “disturbed” the church gathering and “committed many other petty outrages.” William Selwyn remembers his brother Mott, who in fall 1866 was a thirty-one year old married lawyer with two children and another on the way, living at Fairfax Court House immediately after the war (p. 62). From Hine’s account, it appears likely that Mott also spent time in the household at Woodbury. So this was the context in which Belinda was attempting to survive, and perhaps, like Dolly, who conducted morning and evening “family prayers” when she was present (p. 62), to create some semblance of order and safety for other members of the household as well as herself. While the reference to the “dark days of Reconstruction” in the epitaph the Balls crafted for Belinda employs common Lost Cause phraseology, Belinda might well have agreed, for different reasons, with that description of the period.
It was also during this period, or soon after, that Belinda began her relationship John Brown, whom William Selwyn calls “a fine man, and suitable to [Belinda’s] age.” “They became mutually attached,” William Selwyn recalls, “and desired to marry, but [Belinda] would not consent unless she could be divorced from Silas” (p. 67) – an idea that may have been sparked in part by Belinda’s awareness that the Balls’ neighbor (and Lewinsville member) Mary Lee Jones Beall was during the same period seeking a divorce from her long-estranged husband William. Instead of assisting with a legal divorce, the Balls stepped in to facilitate what they considered an appropriate match by assuring Belinda that “a law had annulled all slave marriages” (p. 67). This was not the case; in fact, the Freedmen’s Bureau created official records of marriages contracted during slavery to give them legal status.
Belinda may have been convinced by the Balls’ argument, or she may have decided that, although she would have preferred to exercise her newly-gained rights and responsibilities as a citizen via a formal divorce, accepting the workaround the Balls offered was the best course open to her. As with her later musings over church membership, she may have decided that “feeling” (her recognition that her earlier marriage to Silas was over) could prevail over “form” (legal technicalities).
According to the marriage record, Belinda represented herself as a widow with the last name Pierson. That could indicate that Silas’ last name was Pierson, or that she had had an earlier partner, perhaps deceased, with that name.
William Selwyn Ball provides some additional information about Belinda’s family, including that she had siblings named Dennis, Mary, and Dolly, all of whom shared the last name Johnson (p. 65). It’s possible that they were, indeed, siblings, or at least blood relatives. If so, it appears that they and Belinda were separated from each other, and possibly also from their parents, at some point relatively early in Belinda’s life. Enslaved people with the names Dennis, Mary, and Dolly appear in the Dec. 1842 inventory of Mottrom Ball’s estate. All three are assigned valuations in the $200-$300 range, suggesting they are of similar age, possibly older teenagers or young adults who would be at or approaching prime working age, and valued accordingly. The same three names, paired with somewhat increased valuations, appear in a Dec. 1850 agreement dividing enslaved people from Mottrom Ball’s estate among the heirs. Belinda’s name, however, does not appear in these documents. In addition, while there are people named Nancy and William in the 1842 and 1850 lists, their apparent ages, based on valuations, suggest that they are probably not a couple, or the parents of Dennis, Mary, and Dolly (Nancy is assigned a value of $0 and described as “old” and “a charge,” indicating that she is no longer capable of substantial labor; William is assigned a relatively high value of $400, suggesting that he, like Dennis, Mary, and Dolly, is of prime working age, and may have additional skills, though he is not, like several others on the list, described as having a trade such as carpenter or blacksmith).
“One negro woman named Belinda” is, however, named in a Jan. 1850 document in which William W. Ball (son of Mottrom, husband of Dorothy/Dolly, and uncle of William Selwyn) transfers pretty much everything he owns into a trust apparently designed to consolidate William W.’s debts and prioritize the interests of certain creditors over others. The trust includes all of William W.’s interest in the estate of Mottrom Ball, as well as additional property that does not fall in that category. Belinda is listed in a way that indicates she falls in the second category (and in fact is the only enslaved person listed that way). Belinda may also appear under William W. Ball’s name on the slave schedules of the 1850 federal census; that document, recorded on Oct. 2, 1850, lists two 18-year-old Black women among the people William W. Ball claimed as property. In March 1858, Belinda was grouped with Dennis, Nancy, and others in another trust agreement which appears to transfer William W’s interest in the enslaved people named in the document to his wife, Dorothy H., and her children.
So it seems that, by the 1850s, William W. Ball claimed a woman named Belinda, probably the same person who married John Brown in 1870, and about whom William Selwyn Ball wrote in his memoir, as his property. It also seems that Belinda, unlike most of the people William W. claimed as property, was not considered to be part of the estate of William W.’s father, Mottrom Ball, but instead came into his household in some other way. The trusts created in the 1850s appear to be designed primarily to protect William W.’s wife and children from the consequences of his legal and financial troubles. They may also have provided some protection to the enslaved people they named against sudden seizure by a creditor, but that doesn’t appear to be their primary, or even a deliberate, purpose; they did not preclude sales, but gave the trustee the right to make the decision, and required some notice for a sale of the property, including human beings, included in the trust.
Belinda’s presence in these documents highlights a question raised by one of William Selwyn Ball’s most interesting memories of her. “On the return to ‘Woodbury’” after the war, he recounts, Belinda “was visited by some of our Yankee neighbors with the information that she was now free and could be educated and have her own home. She dismissed them with scorn,” he writes, replying “I thank you. . .but I have always been free and have my own home, and that I am not educated is entirely my own fault.” William Selwyn sees this exchange as additional evidence of Belinda’s loyalty, introducing the anecdote with the words “she stuck to us all to the very end” (p. 66). He doesn’t, however, comment on Belinda’s statement that she “ha[d] always been free.” Perhaps those words were an existential statement, a declaration that Belinda never felt her identity was subsumed in her legal status. They may also have been an assertion of her right to make her own judgements about her life and actions; as is evident from her later exchange with Rebecca Ball Addison, Belinda apparently didn’t take kindly to people telling her what to do or how to think about herself and her situation, and might say what she felt needed to be said to end a conversation with someone who may have been trying to convince her to leave Woodbury. She may also have found the conversation uncomfortable or even perilous, given that it was apparently witnessed by at least one member of the Ball family. If that was the case, then her declaration that she “ha[d] always been free” seems like a strange choice. It was certainly a memorable statement, since whichever member of the Ball family overheard it remembered it well enough for it to show up in William Selwyn’s memoir sixty years later.
But it’s also possible that Belinda’s words were a straightforward description of what she believed her legal status to be. There is a woman named Belinda among the people Elizabeth Lee Jones destined in her will for transportation to Liberia by the American Colonization Society, or, failing that, emancipation in the United States. Since Belinda Johnson Pierson Brown was born c. 1832, ten years after Elizabeth Lee Jones died, she was not that Belinda — nor, since Belinda Johnson was the daughter of a woman named Nancy, is she that Belinda’s daughter. She could, however, be related in some way; aside from some connections between mothers and children, Elizabeth Lee Jones does not describe the family relationships that may have existed among the people she enslaved. There is at least one woman named Nancy named in Elizabeth Lee Jones’ will, as well as a group of people designated as “the children of Nancy,” who are to be held by Elizabeth’s brother, Thomas ap Catesby Jones, during the interim period between her death and their eventual colonization or emancipation.
At least one member of this group was apparently emancipated; a certificate of free status for Judy Dobson, daughter of a woman named Nancy freed by Elizabeth Lee Jones’ will, appears in the Fairfax County Registration of Free Negroes. Judy was born c. 1819, and had five children when she registered in 1848. She could have had a sister born in 1832. A Nancy Johnson, born c. 1796, daughter of Levinia (or perhaps Levinah or Lavinah) Johnson, who was freed by Ann Smith of Westmoreland County, also appears several times in the registry, as do her mother, sisters, and a daughter, Fanny, born c. 1811. That Nancy Johnson could have had another daughter in 1832.
If Belinda Johnson was born to a free mother in Virginia in 1832, they would have had a particularly complex situation to navigate, since Virginia did not allow freedpeople to live within its borders without specific permission to remain, and began enforcing those restrictions more strictly after the 1831 Southampton uprising led by Nat Turner. Given that context, it is possible that Belinda and/or her mother could have made some arrangement with the Balls that resulted in her enslavement, at least in the eyes of the Balls, their creditors, and/or legal authorities, while Belinda continued to see herself as free. Since she could not read, she might not have realized that the Balls were claiming her as their property in agreements executed in the 1850s.
Whether or not Belinda knew about the trusts William W. executed in the 1850s, or her inclusion in them, it seems unlikely that the Balls could have kept conversations about debts, lawsuits, and other legal and financial troubles mentioned in the 1850s documents entirely out of the earshot of Belinda or other enslaved people living and working in their household. Enslaved people in the Ball household must have known that they, their family members, and other members of their community were in danger of being sold to satisfy debts. They would also have known that, that, in 1850s Virginia, sale was often followed by transportation to the far South, where land recently seized from indigenous people was being transformed into plantations worked by enslaved laborers.
During this anxious period, Belinda must have been going about her work and perhaps bearing her own children. We know from both the epitaph and William Selwyn’s memoir that Belinda worked in the Ball households as a “nurse,” which could have meant wet nursing (breastfeeding the Ball children from her own body, after she had borne at least one child), caring for children in other ways, or both. According to William Selwyn, “she nursed the younger children in my father’s family and in Uncle Waring’s, including the son of her beloved Miss Molly, Uncle Waring’s eldest daughter” (p. 66). Although William Selwyn, born in 1846, was among the younger children of his parents, Spencer Mottrom Ball and Mary Dulany, who were married in 1833 and had 7 children between then and 1852, it’s unclear whether he counts himself among the children whom Belinda nursed. Instead, he may be referring to his younger brother, James May, born in Feb. 1849, and his sister, Anne Corbin, born in Nov. 1852. There are some references in William Selwyn’s memoir that suggest that James May’s birth may have been difficult (p.2), and that he was considered delicate (p. 5); those are circumstances that might have precipitated a search for a new nurse, and perhaps a wet nurse in particular. If so, William Selwyn, who was a toddler in 1849, did not specifically recall Belinda’s arrival in the family at that time.
According to the Ball family genealogy in Mackenzie et al.’s Colonial Families of Virginia (pp. 36-49), William Selwyn’s uncle, William Waring, married Dorothy McCabe (aka Dolly) in 1834, and they had ten children between 1835 and 1855. Their oldest children, including Mary Gray (aka Molly or Mollie), born in 1835, beside whom Belinda is buried, would have been more or less contemporaries to Belinda. The younger ones, including William Selwyn’s wife and first cousin, Martha Corbin Turberville Ball (named after her grandmother), were presumably among Belinda’s charges.
Mary Gray Ball married a Methodist preacher, William E. Judkins, in 1856 and had one son, William Duncan Judkins, who was born at Woodbury in 1856. Mary died in 1858. William Duncan Judkins seems to have lived at least part of the time with his maternal relatives; in the 1860 census, he appears in a household that includes his great-grandmother, Martha Corbin Turberville Ball, and her daughter (and his great aunt) Lucy W. Ball. They are apparently living in a separate dwelling, perhaps a dower house of some sort, adjacent to that of his maternal grandparents, William W. And Dorothy Ball (Dorothy seems to be misidentified in the census entry as Martha, but her age is correct).
Given William Selwyn’s list of the children Belinda nursed, it seems likely that she was also present in this extended household. However, there’s no exact match for her in the 1860 slave schedule listings for W.W., Martha C., or Lucy W. Ball. Those listings, which, like all slave schedules, record sex, race, and age but not names, include one 35-year-old woman enslaved by William W., another 35-year-old woman enslaved by Lucy, and a 30-year-old woman enslaved by Lucy. Any of these three women could be Belinda. The 30-year-old woman, who is listed adjacent to a 30-year-old man and children 9,7,5, and 1, with whom she may or may not form a family grouping, is the closest to Belinda in age, but there is no indication that Lucy ever claimed Belinda as her property. Lucy did inherit enslaved people in the distribution of her father’s estate; they and their descendants are more likely than Belinda to be among those listed as her property in 1860.
As tends to be the case in pre-emancipation records, Belinda’s children are much harder to trace than her White charges (and Belinda herself is traceable in part because of legal documents arising from William W. Ball’s legal and financial troubles). At least based on these documents, we don’t know how many children Belinda had, when they were born, how long they survived, what their names were, who their fathers were, or whether they lived with one or both of their parents during some or all of their childhood (though given that Belinda appears to have been moved between households as the needs of the Ball children and their parents dictated, it seems likely that, if they were born during the late 1840s or 1850s, they experienced at least periods of separation).
We do know, based on Belinda’s own account, that people she considered “her. . .children” grew to adulthood, were living in Richmond and Northern Virginia in the 1890s, and were in close touch with her at that point. Based on Belinda’s marital history, it seems possible that they could have used the last names Johnson, Pierson, or perhaps Brown (as far as I can tell from post-emancipation documents, there is no record of Belinda and John Brown having children together, though that’s certainly a possibility, and, if they did, those children could have been young adults by the 1890s. Silas is also hard to trace; there are some candidates in various Fairfax County records, but I haven’t been able to establish a clear connection between any of them and Belinda, let alone find children of which they are listed as the parents).
The address on the 1892 letter, 1302 30th St. in Richmond, seems like a possible lead. Unfortunately, that address and its residents in the 1890s are hard to trace, since the 1300 block of 30th street was outside the city limits in the early 1890s, and doesn’t appear in city directories until 1897. Even then, the specific address 1302 isn’t present; the earliest census record I’ve found for the address is from 1910, and the earliest directory entry is 1912. Sanborn maps tell a similar, though not identical, story: the 1302 lot, with no structure recorded, first appears in 1905, and it still appears to be vacant of any insurable structure in 1925. Based on information in directory and census records, this also appears to be an area where most residents rented their homes, and moved frequently, often within the neighborhood.
There are some records from the early 20th century of people named Brown living at 1302, including William and Gertrude Mills or Miles Brown in the 1910 census, and Elijah Brown in a 1912 city directory. Both William and Elijah come from families whose histories are well enough documented to rule out the possibility that they are Belinda’s children or grandchildren, though they could still be relatives of some kind.
It’s also possible, of course, that the address was mistranscribed in the typescript version we have of that letter, or that an earlier dwelling at that address, perhaps one that did not meet the criteria for inclusion in directories, was gone by the time the area began appearing in formal records.
So we know some of the details of Belinda’s life, but a number of questions, especially about her early life and possible descendants, remain.
Sources:
Where possible, digital copies of primary sources mentioned in the text have been linked above.
Ball, William Selwyn, Reminiscences of an Old Rebel, including the appendices containing letters from Belinda Brown, is available in photocopy in the manuscript collections of the Virginia Museum of History and Culture (Mss5 :1 B2106:1 ). I also consulted a photocopy, probably derived from the VMHC copy, held in the Virginia Room of the Fairfax County Public Library (Fairfax City Branch).
Mackenzie, George Norbury, and Nelson Osgood Rhoades, editors. Colonial Families of the United States of America: in Which is Given the History, Genealogy and Armorial Bearings of Colonial Families Who Settled in the American Colonies From the Time of the Settlement of Jamestown, 13th May, 1607, to the Battle of Lexington, 19th April, 1775. 1912. Volume II. Reprinted, Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc., 1966, 1995. Downloaded from https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/61175/images/colonialfamiliesii-000989_36 .
Archy’s story is one of the most direct examples we have of resistance among people enslaved by early Lewinsville members: while Mottrom Ball’s estate was being settled, Archy ran away twice from the people to whom he was hired. The response of the administrator, Lewinsville land donor Spencer Mottrom Ball, reminds us of the very real power he and other enslavers held over the people they enslaved: in Sept. 1846, the estate sold Archy for $725 to the slave trading firm of Bruin and Hill. At that time, Bruin and Hill were sending regular shipments of human property from Virginia to states farther south. While we cannot be sure, that is probably where Archy ended up, far from friends and family.
The first record of Archy I have found is in the inventory that William Swink and others conducted of Mottrom Ball’s estate on Dec. 29th, 1842. Archy is one of 20 “Negroes” included in the inventory along with livestock and household and agricultural equipment. No ages are provided, but at $375 he is valued toward the top of the range, which extends from $0 for older people, including Sandy, “Old Charlotte,” “Old Nancy,” and “old John,” a carpenter, to $400 for a man named William, who may have had particular skills, or just have been recognized as a particularly effective laborer. Archy’s relatively high valuation suggests that he was probably at the height of his physical powers, and therefore his value as a laborer, in 1842 – an older teenager or younger adult.
Many of the enslaved people listed in the inventory were hired out in the years that followed: in other words, they worked for various people, and their wages were paid to the estate, increasing the wealth that would eventually be distributed to Mottrom Ball’s heirs. Some of the hiring took place within the Ball family (before Martha and her children divided up the legal ownership of the people listed when the estate was finally settled); some was to others in the community.
Archy was hired to Spencer M. Ball, apparently without incident but for a relatively low amount ($20 a year, in comparison to the $35-$45 the work of other enslaved people brought), for 1843. In 1844, he was hired to S. Cutts, but the estate only received $13 because he ran away. Apparently he was recaptured, because in 1845 the estate received $40 for his hire to F.A. Dickens. He was hired to F.A. Dickens again in 1846, but ran away; the estate accounts show that $13 was received for the work he performed.
We don’t know why Archy ran away. The most likely explanation, especially if he was a young single man without children (or had already lost people to whom he was close to sale or relocation), was that he was hoping to free himself by reaching the northern states (which were not yet bound by the Fugitive Slave Act in the mid-1840s, though they would be after 1850). It is also possible that he was trying to get closer to people important to him: a partner, child(ren), sibling(s), parent(s), or friends. Since he ran away from two different men who hired his labor, it seems unlikely that he was responding to the labor or living conditions in a particular workplace.
Whatever his motives, he seems to have taken what he saw as a chance to improve his situation, and instead experienced the consequences of challenging the unjust but very real legal power of people who considered him property. Though we have no record of what happened immediately after his recaptures, it is very likely that he was whipped or physically punished in some other way. After his second escape and recapture, in September 1846 (one month before Lewinsville celebrated its formal founding), he was sold to Bruin and Hill, a slave trading firm in Alexandria. At the time, Bruin and Hill were actively shipping enslaved people from Virginia, which had more laborers than lands worn out by several centuries of unsustainable agricultural practices required or could support, to areas farther south that people of European descent were only beginning to colonize and cultivate using enslaved labor.
Being sold south was one of the threats, explicit or implicit, that enslavers in Virginia could use to exact obedience from those they enslaved. The word of Archy’s sale may have spread immediately among members of the enslaved community surrounding Lewinsville, or it may have trickled out more gradually, perhaps during the week after Christmas 1846, the part of the year when enslaved laborers had the most freedom to meet and socialize with friends and relatives who lived at some distance. In any case, it seems likely that the enslaved people who occupied the gallery of the newly-built Lewinsville sanctuary would have been recently reminded of the very real power those who gathered for worship on the floor below held over their lives, and of their willingness to exercise that power.
Archy’s sale contributed $725 to the total value of Mottrom Ball’s estate. That amount, and the amounts paid to hire Archy and other enslaved laborers listed in the estate accounts, serve as reminders of just how directly the labor of enslaved people, and on occasion the profits of selling them as property, contributed to the wealth that made the Balls’ land donation, and hence the formal founding of Lewinsville Presbyterian Church, possible.
For comparison, when Lewinsville pastor Franklin Gillespie was researching the history of the church in 1946, he found an 1847 report to the Board of Domestic Missions recording that Lewinsville’s “house of worship was erected at an expense of $650.” It’s not clear whether that amount included materials, labor, or both, but it gives us some idea of what $725 could buy in 1846 (apparently that amount was more than the equivalent of a building campaign, at least for the materials of what the report described as a “comfortable” sanctuary). It also gives us some idea of the sort of independent life Archy could have made for himself and those he cared about if he had been able to claim the $40 a year at which the Balls and their neighbors valued his labor.
