African American History

PETERSBURG - One of the most fascinating characters in Petersburg's African-American history is Isaac Jefferson, an ex-slave of former President Thomas Jefferson, who worked as a blacksmith in Pocahontas until his death in 1847.

For decades, the story of Jefferson's slave was forgotten. Last year, local historian Richard Stewart began his search for Isaac's grave site, which he believes to be at the People's Memorial Cemetery.

Ronald Seagrave, a historian from Dinwiddie County who is currently working on a book about Isaac Jefferson, has recently discovered new, previously unknown records that show why attempts to find Isaac's headstone were unsuccessful so far. According to those records, Thomas Jefferson's slave was not named after his slave master.

His true last name was Isaac Granger. Read More

Denise Dennis' ancestors were among the first farmers who settled in northeast Pennsylvania, in 1793. They were free African Americans, extraordinary because they became integrated in a largely white community, 70 years before emancipation.

Their 153-acre farm has remained in the family for seven generations. The Smithsonian Institution has taken an interest. The National Trust for Historic Preservation called it "a rare and highly significant African American cultural landscape."

But as Dennis strolled last week through the snowy burial grounds that include the remains of her great-great-great-great-grandfather, a black Revolutionary War veteran, her mind was on something buried much deeper: the Marcellus Shale. Read More

A Virginia archaeologist is using modern technology to locate and mark gravesites in the older half of Old Plateau Cemetery.

The cemetery is at Bay Bridge Road and Cut-Off Road, near the Cochrane-Africatown Bridge.

Often known as Africatown Cemetery, it is the final resting place for Cudjoe Lewis and 109 other surviving African slaves from the slave ship Clotilde.

On a Sunday in July 1859, the Clotilde, also known as the Clotilda, struck a sandbar the Mobile River. The federal government had outlawed slave importations since 1808, but slavery still was legal in Southern states. The Clotilde was the last ship known to have carried African slaves to the United States.

After the ship's slaves were freed, they founded Africatown in what is now Plateau and Magazine Point. Read More

An Impressive Array of New and Encore Programming Before and During Black History Month

ARLINGTON, Va., Jan. 6 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Throughout the year, PBS invites viewers to explore the vast contributions of African Americans. In honor and celebration of Black History Month, February 2010, PBS presents new and encore programs, beginning in January and continuing through February.

They say an old slave called Uncle Rube resembled Moses as he carried a tiny boy’s lifeless body to his favorite tree, where an open grave waited.

It was March 1798 when little Crippled Dan’s grave became the first in the largest known slave cemetery in the region. More than 210 years later, it lies along the western fringe of Sugar Hollow Park, about 15 yards from orange plastic fencing marking the path of a new road under construction.

Crippled Dan was born five years earlier with feet so deformed he never walked, said local historian V.N. “Bud” Phillips. Dan’s parents were slaves on Robert Preston’s vast Washington County, Va., plantation. They, and dozens of others, took two breaks a day from the fields and gathered under a mighty white oak that came to be known as the Resting Tree. Full Story

After what was deemed a successful dig in October, archaeologists will resume their task of unearthing a freed slave settlement called Timbuctoo.

David Orr, a professor of anthropology at Temple University, announced last week that the team of archaeologists that found several artifacts predating the Civil War will return to the township for two months next summer to continue its work.

The 4.5-acre site off Rancocas Road and Church Street is believed to have been a settlement for freed slaves, a haven for fugitive slaves and possibly a stop along the Underground Railroad during the 1800s. Read More