re·sil·ience
/rəˈzilyəns/
noun
The power or ability to return to the original form or position after being bent, compressed, or stretched; elasticity; the capacity to rebound after difficult life events.
Unnamed Africans who endured the middle passage
Richard Adams, the second owner of Richmond Hill’s property, was a prominent politician and slave-trader. The New York Historical Society holds a plethora of documents relating to his slave voyages that together paint a grim picture – Adams commissioned at least 26 slave voyages from Anomabu, Ghana and elsewhere in Africa and the Caribbean on the Royal Charlotte and the Othello carrying hundreds of captured Africans between 1760-1772. Unfortunately, the related ship records do not contain the names of the people who were enslaved. Numerous accounts, however exist of Adams’ slave sales. In 1769, the year he purchased what is now the Richmond Hill property from Issac Coles, Adams wrote to his agents bemoaning the quality of the Africans he had received — “too great a proportion of children and the grown ones rather too old.”
We do not know if any of the people from these voyages ended up working at what is now Richmond Hill. Adams owned other properties, including mills and two large plantations in nearby counties and it was typical for enslaved people to be moved between properties as it suited the interests of their owner. Adams has the distinction of being listed first in “The One Hundred,” a listing in an article in the William and Mary Quarterly of Richmond’s top slave-owners in 1790. He enslaved 108 people and reserved for himself from his slave voyages certain “privilege slaves” negotiated as part of the slave-trading venture.
Judy
“Enslaved peoples understanding of their soul values transcended the external values placed upon their bodies. And with this realization, their souls were at peace.”
Daina Ramey Berry
Creator of the concept and phrase “soul value”
Judy, after whom Richmond Hill’s African American History Project is named, labored for the Richard Wilkins family in what is now known as the Adams-Taylor house from 1860-1865. By that time, she had already toiled for the Wilkins family for nearly four generations. Judy is said to have died around 90 years old. Writing in 1940 about his boyhood days in the house, Benjamin Harrison Wilkins remembered his beloved “mammy.” She always had one of his mother’s 10 children in her arms, he wrote in War Boy. Benjamin’s younger sister Mary also remembered Judy. In a letter to her children and grandchildren, Mary recalled the morning when Judy carried her to a high porch of the house and pointed off in the distance to the “Bluecoats marching into Richmond.” Perhaps with wonder and praise in her heart, Judy said to the young child, “Mary, always remember that you saw history in the making when you were four years old.”
In her long life of bondage Judy came of age in the Revolutionary era and witnessed the War of 1812 and the Civil War. She was surely affected by game-changing pronouncements including the US Constitution, Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th and 14th amendments abolishing slavery and recognizing citizenship in all human beings. Judy saw African Americans elected for the first time to public office during Reconstruction. Perhaps mercifully, she did not live to witness the painful setbacks, slavery by another name and the era of sharecropping, Jim Crow, terror and more violence. From the tobacco fields of Virginia to the sugar plantations of New Orleans and back again, this time to urban enslavement in Richmond, we can safely conclude that Judy possessed a strength that surpasses understanding.
Nan, Moll, Phyllis, Scotland & Dublin
The year 1747 was a sad one for five enslaved women. That year, the first owner of the Richmond Hill property, John Coles, died and gave as gifts to his children 46 people that he enslaved. Nan, Moll, Phyllis, Scotland and Dublin “with all their future increase” were among them. Through his will Coles stipulated that all the women’s children become the property of his children, forever. This was not an unusual occurrence. African women were often purchased as breeders, used to build their owner’s wealth.
Emeline, Martha and Martha’s child
Loftin Ellett, Clerk of Henrico County for several decades, owned property at Richmond Hill property from 1825 until 1865. Like many slave-owners, Ellett increased the number of people he enslaved as he grew older and acquired greater means. The average able-bodied slave in the American south in 1850 cost about the equivalent of $40,000 today. Consider Ellett’s wealth building over time. He owned:
Zero people in 1820
5 people in 1830
10 people in 1840
9 people in 1850
16 people in 1860
17 people in 1865
In 1858, while married to longtime wife Ann (nee Winston), Ellett fathered a daughter by a woman he enslaved named Emeline, according to birth and baptism records of the state of Virginia. The child is identified only as “colored slave.” By law, children fathered by white men and born by enslaved women inherited the status of the mother, ensuring the children would remain in bondage. There is no indication in the historical record that Ellett ever claimed this daughter of his.
Furthermore, it is conceivable that Martha who was enslaved by Loftin Ellett and who married Soloman Walthall at St. John’s Episcopal Church in 1855 is the same Martha who is the subject of an 1859 petition to the court Loftin Ellett’s grandson. James Ellett appealed to the court to sell Martha and her 12-year-old child so that the proceeds could be split between he and his younger brother. Sadly, the court ruled in his favor. The petition reads:
James T. Ellett seeks permission to sell “a woman slave named Martha & her child also named Martha age five or six years.” He points out that he and his brother, “who is an infant under twenty one years of age, are jointly entitled” to the said slaves, whom they “derived from their grandfather.” The petitioner requests that a partition of said slaves “between his said brother & himself be made & his interest therein be allotted to him.” Noting “that such partition cannot be conveniently made in Kind,” Ellett prays “that your worshipful Court will decree a sale of the said slaves in the bill mentioned and order the proceeds arising therefrom to be equally divided between the parties according to their respective rights.”