Tag Archives: African Americans

- Petersburg Chancery Digital Project Now Complete

Published 16 May 2012
Plat showing the Virginia Passenger and Power Company's leased, operated, and independent lines in the cities of Richmond and Manchester, Petersburg Chancery Cause George E. Fisher for etc. vs. Virginia Passenger & Power Co. etc., 1907-055.

The Library of Virginia is pleased to announce the completion of the Petersburg chancery causes digital project. The scanning project was funded by the Circuit Court Records Preservation Program along with a $155,071 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). The collection has been digitized from 1787 through 1912 and the images added to the Chancery Records Index. The most recently added suits cover the years 1889-1912.

The following are a few suits of interest found in the newly added Petersburg chancery digital images. 

In chancery cause 1907-055, George E. Fisher, for, etc. vs. Virginia Passenger & Power Company, etc., the plaintiffs ask the court to take over the floundering Virginia Passenger & Power Company in order to protect their financial stake in the business. The suit contains numerous exhibits including plats (images 616, 2030, 2032), minutes from board of directors’ and stockholders’ meetings (images 1878 and 1673). In 1908-034, John F. Crowder, etc. vs. Eli Tartt, etc., the suit stems from the unhappiness of the First Baptist (Colored) Church members with their pastor Eli Tartt. The plaintiffs wanted the court to remove Tartt as pastor of the church and their bill of complaint gives an account of a church meeting that became so uncontrollable… read more »

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- “This is a bad fix I am in…”

Published 21 March 2012
Order finding Sam, a slave, guilty of the murder of Francis Sheridan and sentencing him to be hanged by the neck until he be dead, Commonwealth vs. Sam (slave), 1856 August, Highland County Commonwealth Causes (Barcode 0007281802).

Three Highland County Commonwealth Causes (Barcode 0007281802) reveal a tangled web of conspiracy, murder, and secret affairs. The cast of players includes Elizabeth Sheridan, wife of the deceased; Mary Ann Wily, Elizabeth’s daughter from a previous marriage; Sam, a slave; and Ellen, a slave and Sam’s wife. Commonwealth vs. Sam (slave), 1856 August; Commonwealth vs. Ellen (slave), 1856 August; and Commonwealth vs. Elizabeth Sheridan and Mary Ann Wily, 1856 November concern the murder of Mr. Francis W. Sheridan by Sam, a slave hired by Sheridan from William Wilson. Sam’s wife, Ellen, was also charged with being “concerned in the murder,” while Elizabeth Sheridan and her daughter Mary Ann Wily were charged as accessories.  The cases contain assorted court documents including depositions and statements from various neighbors and acquaintances of the accused and the murder victim. 

A document entitled “Evidence in Support of Prosecution” offers a wealth of information.  Notes from the coroner’s inquest give revealing physical facts about Francis Sheridan.  He was described as a small man about the age of 21 or 22 years whose body displayed visible signs of trauma due to strangulation.  The report reveals that the body was found lying face down in a drain twenty or thirty feet away from the public road and gives a detailed forensic… read more »

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- The Business of Racism

Published 22 February 2012

Business letterhead can offer a fascinating snapshot of a place or time. A striking example appeared in the Rockingham County chancery causes recently. In the case of Ridgemont Cement & Manufacturing Company vs. Manly Manufacturing Company, 1900, there is a piece of Manly Manufacturing Company letterhead dated 1 March 1895 featuring an image of stereotypical 19th-century African American caricature behind bars. Shocking to our 21st-century sensibilities, this type of advertising was very common beginning in the Victorian era. Caricatured images of African Americans and other minorities were commonly used to sell products because they capitalized on existing beliefs and, ultimately, reinforced existing prejudices.

Manly Manufacturing Company billed itself as “The First and Only Steel Jail Works in THE SOUTH.” Headquartered in Dalton, Georgia, the firm was originally Manly & Cooper, a foundry responsible for casting, amongst other items, the ornamental fence surrounding Thomas Jefferson’s gravesite in Charlottesville. Relocating from Philadelphia to Dalton in 1887, the company developed “Manly Portable Convict Cages,” horse-drawn, steel-wheeled cages to house prisoners working on outdoor projects. The cages became one of its best selling products.

A quick Internet search revealed that Manly Manufacturing is still in business today, 121 years later, as Manly Steel.

The Rockingham County chancery collection contains 534 Hollinger boxes or about 250 cubic feet of records. It is currently being processed for digitization.

-Vince Brooks, Senior Local Records Archivist

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- First Scott Co. Chancery Images Have Arrived!

Published 10 February 2012
View of Moccasin Gap, Clinch Mountain in Scott County, Va. (Image used courtesy of Wikipedia/author Mark Lindamood.)

The Library of Virginia is pleased to announce that the first digital images, covering the years 1816-1857, from the Scott County chancery causes digitization project have been added to the Chancery Records Index. The Scott County chancery index covers the years 1816 through 1942 (bulk 1816-1912). The records will be scanned through 1912.

The following are a few suits of interest found in the newly added Scott County chancery digital images. In suits 1828-001, Madison Hill vs. Heirs of Joseph Johnson, and 1830-017, Joseph Jones & wife vs. Thomas M. Carter, one will find references to confrontations between Native Americans and the early settlers of Scott  County. Chancery causes 1831-009, 1832-009, 1837-001, and 1852-004 concern a free African American mother’s determined effort to liberate her two children from slavery.

Additional Scott County chancery images will be available in the coming months. Stay tuned for future Out of the Box posts on this valuable and interesting collection of historic Virginia court records.

The Circuit Court Records Preservation Program (CCRP), funded through a $1.50 of the clerk’s recordation fee, is committed to efforts, like the Scott County chancery causes digitization project, that preserve and make accessible permanent circuit court records. Unfortunately, the downturn in the real estate market and the General Assembly’s diversion of CCRP funds have negatively impacted the CCRP’s budget in recent years and slowed the pace of digital chancery projects. The projects remain a high priority for the agency and it is hoped that the initiative can be resumed in full when the economy and the agency’s budget situation improve.

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- “Tell the court that I love my wife…”

Published 8 February 2012

Commonwealth vs. Richard Perry Loving and Mildred Delores Jeter was the criminal case that began in 1958 in Caroline County and terminated in a landmark civil rights decision by the United States Supreme Court in 1967. The Supreme Court decision declared Virginia’s anti-miscegenation statute, the Racial Integrity Act of 1924, to be unconstitutional, thereby ending all race-based legal restrictions on marriage in the United States.

Mildred Delores (Jeter) Loving, an African American woman, and Richard Perry Loving, a white man, were residents of Caroline County who married in June 1958. The wedding took place in the District of Columbia because Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act banned marriages between any white person and any non-white person. Upon their return to Caroline County, they were charged with violation of the ban. On 6 January 1959, the Lovings pleaded guilty and were sentenced to one year in prison, with the sentence suspended for 25 years on condition that the couple leave the state of Virginia. The trial judge in the case was Leon M. Bazile who wrote the famous opinion of the court for the Lovings’ appeal of their original sentence – since God had created people of different colors and placed them on different continents He therefore never intended for the races to intermarry.

The Lovings moved to the District of Columbia even though they found it a great hardship for both them and their children to be separated from their families in Virginia.  Terms of their sentence directed that even when visiting family they were not allowed to come into the state together but had to make individual trips.  On 6 November 1963, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a motion on the Lovings’ behalf in the state trial court to vacate the judgment and set aside the sentence on the… read more »

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- Nelson Co. Chancery Now Available

Published 20 January 2012
One of Nelson County's historical markers. (Image used courtesy of author Artaxerxes.)

The Library of Virginia is pleased to announce that Nelson County Chancery Causes, 1808-1912, are now processed, indexed, and conserved; and the index is now available on the Chancery Records Index. These records contain considerable historical and genealogical information. Because the records rely so heavily on testimony from witnesses, they offer a unique glimpse of the people of Nelson County from the early 19th century through the First World War. Following are a few suits of interest found in this collection.

In chancery cause Tobias~ vs. Heirs of John Campbell, 1816-005, Tobias, a free Negro, sues for the payment of a judgment won against the administrator of John Campbell.  In chancery suit Eliza A. Figures vs. Christopher T. Estes, 1838-035, Eliza Figures was hired by Estes, a tavern owner, to take care of the house business and culinary affairs, and she sued for lack of compensation.  In Eliza Ann Figures vs. Dr. Matthew Figures, 1840-013, the same individual is the plaintiff suing for divorce from her husband citing cruelty, abandonment and repeated acts of adultery.  Daniel M. Harris, trustee vs. Christopher T. Estes, etc., 1846-017, includes a typical item found in many of Nelson County’s pre-Civil War chancery causes – a cash valuation of slaves.  The effects of the Civil War are noted in Elijah R. Walker vs. William H. Loving, 1871-079, and in chancery cause 1880-012 which consists of multiple suits involving members of the Coleman and Hamner families. Modernization within the county is a topic dealt with in J.R. & Mary E. Peebles vs. W.M. Tunstall, 1906-032, which involves a dispute… read more »

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- Cohabitation Registers Added to Digital Collection

Published 9 December 2011
Goochland Co. Regsiter of Colored Persons Cohabiting, 1866, information includes ages, occupations, names of slave owners, and names of children the couple had together or from a previous relationship.

The Library of Virginia is pleased to announce the addition of records from Fluvanna, Goochland, and Montgomery Counties to the cohabitation register digitization project.  This project, via the Virginia Memory website, aims to index, digitize, transcribe, and provide access to all known Virginia cohabitation registers and the related registers of children whose parents had ceased to cohabit.

The cohabitation registers were the legal vehicles by which formerly enslaved couples legitimized their pre-slavery marriages and the children of unions that no longer existed in 1866 due to death or other circumstances such as the wife being sold away.  These records are invaluable resources for genealogists and historians alike.

Goochland and Montgomery have to date only uncovered their cohabitation registers.  Fluvanna, however, includes both the cohabitation register and the register of children whose parents had ceased to cohabit by 1866.  The registers, transcriptions, and searchable indexes are available online along with the other registers from Virginia localities in the Cohabitation Register Digital Collection in Virginia Memory. To find it use either the link provided or go to Virginia Memory, choose Digital Collections, then Collections A to Z, and finally Cohabitation Registers.

For more information on the cohabitation registers, see an earlier blog post Solid Genealogical Gold, about the Register of Colored Persons of Smyth County, Virginia, cohabiting together as Husband and Wife on 27th February 1866.

-Sarah Nerney, Senior Local Records Archivist

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- The Gingaskins of Virginia

Published 16 November 2011
Gingaskin Indian reservation historical marker located near the site of the reservation in Northampton County. (Photo by Bill Pfingsten, 4 May 2008/used courtesy of Historical Markers Database.)

November is Native American Heritage Month, a month set aside to recognize the significant contributions the first Americans made to the establishment and growth of the United States. Here at the Library of Virginia we have documents that tell the story of the Gingaskin Tribe. In 1641, the Accomac Indians, an Algonquin-speaking tribe located on the Eastern shore and part of the group collectively referred to as Powhatan Indians, became known as the Gingaskins when they accepted a patent from the English government for the remaining 1,500 acres of their ancestral lands on the ocean side of Northampton County. Various legal and boundary struggles with their English neighbors over the years reduced the lands reserved for the Gingaskins to 650 acres, which was patented again in 1680.

Investigations of people, including free negroes, living on Gingaskin lands, 1785. (Northampton County Land Records, 1785-1815. Barcode 1168316)

Over the years, Indian lands were often leased to outsiders by the state and county governments in order to help support Gingaskin members, most of whom chose to maintain a traditional lifestyle and not farm the lands. Great concern was exhibited by white neighbors about the Gingaskins intermarrying with free negroes and charges were made in petitions to the… read more »

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- CSI: Old Virginia: Coroners Edition

Published 7 November 2011
Slave quarters under the oaks at the Hermitage in Savannah, GA., circa 1900-1915. (Image public domain/used courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Collection.)

At one o’clock in the morning on 1 September 1859, Milly T. King arrived at the home of James Clary and found his slave Hannah “lying on the hearth gasping for breath, and I thought dying.” When King saw Hannah an hour later, she was dead. The following day Brunswick County coroner William Lett arrived to examine the body.  With him were twelve men, none of whom had a medical background but rather were chosen as upstanding men and representatives of the county. The office of coroner held inquisitions in cases when persons met a sudden, violent, unnatural, or suspicious death. In this case Hannah had certainly met a sudden and suspicious demise.

Hannah, owned by the late Elizabeth H. Harwell, had been in the possession of James Clary, who adamantly maintained that the marks found on her feet and legs and the wound on her head were not from anything suspicious but came as a result of a fall from a window occurring a few weeks before her death. The coroner and his jury of white men were left to decide if Hannah had suffered an accidental death or if her death had been caused by something more malicious. Clary’s wife, Eliza, backed up her husband’s statements and claimed to know nothing of Hannah’s death, maintaining that her wounds were caused by the fall. But the Clarys’ neighbors painted a different picture of the events… read more »

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- Don’t Block the Vote

Published 2 November 2011

 

In honor of the upcoming Election Day, today’s post presents a record that illustrates the struggles that some Virginians experienced while attempting to exercise the right to vote guaranteed them by the Fifteenth Amendment.  Today’s ease of voter registration belies the fact that this has not always been so in Virginia for everyone.  The Commonwealth’s Constitution of 1902 was a post-Reconstruction attempt to whittle down the voter rolls by making property ownership, poll taxes, and literacy tests prerequisites to voter registration, thereby eliminating large numbers of African Americans and poor whites.  Section 19 of Article II specifically mentions the so-called “understanding clause” –  the requirement that a person applying to register must be able to read or have read to him a section of the Constitution and explain its meaning to the registrar.  It seems fairly clear that this understanding clause was not applied to every person registering to vote.

Voter refusal of Snowden Robinson, 15 September 1902.

Warren County kept a register of voters  titled “Refused Colored Applicants,” 1902-1903 (Barcode 1205724) consisting of dated entries by name of African American men attempting to register to vote, along with their ages, dates of birth, occupations, and how long they had lived in the state, county, and precinct. Also recorded is the section of the Virginia constitution that was given to the men for… read more »

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