Ancestry Magazine

Prior to the Civil Rights movement, many of my family members joined the thousands of African Americans who migrated from the rural south to northern cities in search of a better life. By the close of the twentieth century, however, a substantial number of African Americans had resettled in the South. Among them was my mother, who in the mid-80s had moved back to her childhood home of King George County, Virginia. This county, which is known as the gateway to the Northern Neck, is a peninsula surrounded by the Potomac and Rappahannock Rivers. It is the earliest known residence of my ancestors who endured the arduous middle passage across the Atlantic Ocean in slave ships sometime before 1798. 

In the winter of 1998, I discovered my great-great-uncle Jacob Thompson’s memoir, which recorded the family history as it was told to him by his mother, a former slave. My discovery sent me in search of my roots. I was eager to take a trip to the King George Circuit County courthouse to verify my uncle’s claims, but I waited until spring when the weather was more suitable for traveling.

Immediately upon seeing the sign, “Welcome to King George County–The Gateway to the Historic Northern Neck,” I was overcome with nostalgia. Memories of childhood summers I spent with my siblings caused my insides to dance with childish excitement. We used to love roaming the thirty-eight acre farm my grandmother and her nine older siblings inherited from my great-grandparents. During those playful days of tire swinging, baseball playing, tree climbing, and horseback riding, I was unaware that the county that had been home to six generations of my family was indeed historic. Yet, as I now stood gazing up at the words, “King George County Circuit Courthouse,” I would soon come face to face with that history.

Once I reached the hall of records, I entered the room and immediately noticed the clerk’s counter to my right. I was eager to find any information I could regarding my family during the antebellum years. I had learned that some courthouses still had slave and plantation records. Since my ancestors had been slaves in King George County, I wanted to see if I could locate any of them on the registries.

“May I help you?” asked the friendly woman behind the counter.

I asked the clerk if there were slave schedules and/or plantation records available in the courthouse. The woman responded that she believed there were some records available, but she didn’t know where they were located. She said the clerk, Elizabeth Lee, who usually handled those types of records was not in. I was told that I might be able to catch her at the King George County Museum the next morning. 

Not only was I a bit disappointed, I was also unsure what step to take next. My heart had been set on spending the morning and part of the afternoon combing through those musty records. Now I would have to wait.

Early the next morning, I headed to the King George County Museum. The museum, located next door to the courthouse had, in former days, been the county jail. I entered the museum and walked around the room gazing at various items that had been donated to the museum: a saddle from World War I, a late-eighteenth-century water barrel, various oil paintings of prominent people of the county. Soon a woman emerged from a back room, “May I help you?” she asked.

“Yes,” I responded. “Is your name Elizabeth by any chance?”

“Yes, it is.”

I began inquiring about the slave schedules and plantation records. But the woman with whom I was talking was not the Elizabeth whom the woman at the courthouse had told me about. It turned out that the Elizabeth I wanted to speak with wouldn’t be available at the museum that day. This woman didn’t know where the records were kept either. 

Nonetheless, she invited me to a tiny research room. We searched all of the file cabinets and drawers, but we found nothing. I asked Elizabeth if she had any information on Spy Hill, the plantation that Uncle Jacob’s memoir had indicated was the place where my ancestors had been slaves. She assured me that there was nothing at the museum about it, but that I should check the Virginia Room at the regional library in Fredericksburg. I decided to make the thirty-mile drive to Fredericksburg; however, before doing so, I checked the King George County Library. It was located across the street from the courthouse.

The King George librarian eagerly responded to my inquiry concerning Spy Hill. “Do you know where it is?” she asked.

“No,” I said.

“Wait one moment, my husband can tell you better than I can how to get there.”

I could feel the anticipation building within me as the librarian dialed the phone. Her h usband gladly gave me directions. ”By the way,” he said as we concluded our conversation, “there’s an old cemetery there.”

Just then, the librarian handed me a small document containing information about Spy Hill.

“It isn’t much,” she said, “but there’s a bit of history here I’m sure you will find interesting.” 

Interesting indeed. Spy Hill, formerly known as Round Hill, was purchased in 1655 by John Washington, the grandfather of President George Washington. Upon John Washington’s death, his son, Lawrence Washington, had inherited Round Hill and acquired the land adjoining the estate. The property remained in the Washington family until it was sold in 1828 to Thomas Baber. Not far from the main house on what had been formerly known as the Round Hill Estate was a hill that provided a panoramic view of the Potomac River from Colonial Beach to Mathias Point. The hill had been used as an observation post to spy out British troops sailing up and down river during the American Revolution and the War of 1812. For this reason, Thomas Baber changed the name of the estate to the Spy Hill Plantation.

“I must see this place,” I said to the librarian, my heart leaping with excitement.

“I know Ruth Talliaferro [Tolliver] who lives at Spy Hill. Let me call to see if she’s home.”

The librarian thumbed through a card index on the counter and then dialed a number. After a brief introduction, she handed me the phone. I explained to the kind voice on the other end that I was working on a family history project. I told her about my uncle’s memoir, which named Spy Hill as the place where my ancestors had been slaves. Ruth Talliaferro invited me to come over.

Fifteen minutes later, I was on a long driveway that stretched up a hill. At the top of the hill was an old, large, dilapidated house.

“That must have been the big house where the sla ve master and mistress used to live,” I thought as I continued past an old barn standing to the left. I drove a half-mile down the road and turned into a smaller driveway that led to a beautiful contemporary house–the home of the descendants of my family’s slave owners.

Ruth Talliaferro was a middle-aged woman. Her hair was cut in a neck-length bob with strands of gray running sparingly through it. She had a kind face and welcoming smile. I liked her immediately.

Ruth greeted me warmly and invited me into her home. We stepped into a hallway that revealed a beautifully decorated living room to the right and an equally elegant dining room to the left. She led me through the dining room and into a modest kitchen.

After we enjoyed a hot cup of tea and a bit of small talk, she went to another room and came back with a large manila folder and a black loose-leaf notebook. As she laid the items in front of me, Ruth explained that she was related to the Baber/Garnett families by marriage (her husband was a direct descendant), and that due to her love for personal family history, the family had appointed her as the family historian. The information she was about to share with me was information she had spent the past twenty-five years gathering.

Ruth began going through the various documents, telling me the history of Spy Hill and the families–the Babers and subsequently the Garnetts–who had owned the property. 

My great-great-grandfather, Joshua Thompson, had been owned by the Baber family and my great-great-grandmother, Eliza Stuart Thompson, had been owned by the Garnetts, a prominent family in Westmoreland County, which lies southeast of King George. 

Thomas Baber’s daughter, Emma Baber, married Thomas Stuart Garnett, a physician and later a Brigade General in the Confederate Army, who was killed during the Battle of Chancellorsville in May 1863. After losing a husband and two brothers to the war, another brother to alcoholism, and her father, Thomas Baber, to illness, Emma Baber Garnett became the sole heir of the Spy Hill Estate. 

She returned to her childhood home in 1871, bringing her domestic servant, Eliza Stuart, with her. On 3 August 1873, Eliza and Joshua Thompson were married. It was Eliza who had passed on to her son the oral history of our family.

As I sat listening to Ruth confirm the history that Uncle Jacob had recorded in his memoir, I quietly thanked my great-great-uncle and great-great-grandmother for the enormous gift they had left me.

Once we had gone through the books, Ruth escorted me to her living room and showed me the family pictures. I could hardly believe that I was staring into the faces of the people who had once owned my family. They were a good-looking family, genteel, and without a hint of malice in their eyes. It was hard to imagine these people had ever owned slaves.

Later, Ruth gave me a tour of what is now a 500-acre estate, formerly known as Spy Hill Plantation. Our first stop was a wooded area that stood to the right and left of the driveway leading up to what was once the big house.

“This is where the slave quarters used to be,” Ruth said.

We stopped for a few moments and I gazed at the area that had been home to my slave ancestors. Several hundred feet away from the old slave quarters and across the road was the slave cemetery, which contained the remains of slaves who had died before the year 1843. I was glad Ruth was there to show it to me. Had I driven there on my own, I would have never guessed it was a cemetery at all. The area was just a blanket of leaves surrounded by trees. There were no markers or signs to indicate that it was a cemetery. 

Ruth parked the car on the side of the road, and we walked a short distance to another cemetery. I believe this was the cemetery the librarian’s husband had told me about. This burial plot, which began in 1843, was an appendage to t he original slave cemetery and had been used as a segregated burying place for African Americans until 1943. My great-great-great-grandparents and numerous other family members were buried in this plot. Although there were only three headstones, it was easy to see the burial impressions in the ground. The graves without headstones were marked with wooden stakes.

We drove back up the hill, passing the big barn, and turned down a little road to the Spy Hill family cemetery. There, beneath lovingly inscribed tombstones, laid the remains of the masters and mistresses of my ancestors. It was a small cemetery surrounded by a cast-iron fence. The bars reminded me of the oppression that had once held my forbears captive. Our tour concluded at the old antebellum house that was much too dilapidated for an inside tour. But Ruth and I walked along the grounds, and she allowed me to take pictures of the house and grounds.

As we concluded the tour, it was hard to determine my feelings. Initially, I was excited. It was as though I had walked through a time capsule and had taken an excursion through history that few African Americans will ever experience. It wasn’t until I returned to my home in Delaware the following afternoon that I felt the pain of the experience surface without warning. Slavery was no longer something that had happened to unknown black people 150 years ago. It had happened to my family, my ancestors, people whose names and faces are no longer those of strangers. No, slavery was no longer an intangible historical event; it had become a tangible reality.

Arica L. Coleman began researching her family history as a senior project while obtaining her bachelor of arts degree from Vermont College. She is presently an American Studies Ph.D. student at the Union Institute and University. She resides in Newark, Delaware, with her husband and two children.