Welcome back to the African Roots Podcast! You can reach me HERE.
I am coming to you this week from beautiful Central Virginia, in Fluvanna County. I am here for a special event at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center tomorrow in Charlottesville. I am completely amazed at the rich history of Virginia and even while traveling here yesterday, passing through historic sites and how amazing! I have been taking note of the sites that I can only call hallowed ground. Looking out over the fields I could almost see the labor of the slaves in those fields, and when I would see the plantation sites, I strained to see the slave cabins. Every one of those sites one knows was supported by slave labor. As a researcher it is now impossible to drive through the country and not see.
However, my experience reflected the need for us to find the sites where events that altered the lives of many occurred. Not only battlefields or places where important papers were signed, but the places where African American lives were dramatically altered.
My day consisted of truly an amazing adventure—I began with a visit to the shrine for St. Katherine Drexel, in Columbia Virginia. From there we drove through amazing country of old plantations, incredible vegetation, and even critical landmarks.
Amazing Twin Oak Trees
I visited a Freedmen’s Bureau site today, and it dawned on me that this was the first time that I had visited a place where a Field Office of the Bureau was located. The site was the old Gordonsville Virginia Freedmen’s Bureau office.
While touring the site I learned more of the building’s history, including the fact that the building was at one time a Civil War hospital, and after the war, it was also the site of a Freedmen school.
Within a few years the building became a hotel, and it was the site in front of the hotel that another change was made. It was a site where African American women became financially solvent, where they added to their family income as cooks.
Photo: City of Gordonsville
Accessed from This Site
Their fried chicken was well known, and the “chicken ladies” resulted in giving Gordonsville the Friend Chicken capital of the country.
The critical part of the day however, the experience that I had with Dr. Shelley Murphy visiting the Civil War Museum in Gordonsville Virginia. But? not only for the amazing history, but for the fact that we need to not only study the history of these sites, but also to work to preserve them. Many are working hard to index Freedmen’s Bureau records, but how many of us have visited these sites or even know where they were located? We need to find out not only what cities the field offices were, but to learn where the Union Army occupied the area, which will point to the exact location of the Bureau. A task that we should consider undertaking, is to mark the site and work with the state or regional historical society to have the landmark officially designated. These sites are our hallowed ground, and it is our task to identify them, and if they still stand, then work to preserve them. What a mighty charge we have.
Old Freedmen’s Bureau Field Office, Hospital, and Freedmen School, of Gordonsville, Virginia
Thank you all for tuning in this week and remember to keep researching, keep documenting and to keep sharing what you find.
