Slaves on the Grounds

Neale. On the home page: Henry Martin, born a slave at Monticello on the day Thomas Jefferson died, was known to generations of students as the ringer of the Rotunda bell.
Photo by Jack Mellott. Martin's photo courtesy of the Holsinger Studio Collection (#9862), Special Collections, University of Virginia Library.

The scene: before sunrise on the Lawn of the University of Virginia, founded by Thomas Jefferson. Students are still sleeping in their rooms along the inspiringly beautiful colonnades, but already there is much activity. African-American slaves in roughly made clothing are hurrying with water and fresh towels and wood to start the fires for the young scholars.

The slaves, owned or rented by the University and the hotel-keepers who board the students, cook and serve all the meals, clean the rooms, wash the clothes, black the boots, run students' errands and fully maintain the institution, which slaves also built, from terracing the land to making and laying the bricks to topping the landmark Rotunda. In the faculty homes nearby, the same pre-dawn scene is being carried out by the slaves every professor owns or rents. With 150 or more slaves on Grounds, the University has hired an overseer.

The factual details of this picture of slavery at the University from its origins in 1817 until 1865 -- including numbers, names, occupations, costs, daily routines and occasional tragic violence -- have been documented in one historical account for the first time. The extensive research was conducted by Catherine S. Neale of Richmond (History, American Studies ’06), who will also be the student representative on the Board of Visitors in the coming year.

Although everyone knows that African-Americans had important roles to play in the early days of the University, almost no scholarly literature exists on the vast amount of slave labor used. Until recently, University tours have made little mention of slavery, emphasizing instead the successes of modern-day African-Americans at what is now an internationally renowned institution.

Neale's work has added a new dimension to historical tours now, and she has provided training for the University Guide Service, one of the numerous University groups and councils she serves on. Her research, conducted with a prestigious William R. Kenan Foundation grant with Arts & Sciences Dean Edward Ayers as her adviser, is available at the Rotunda and eventually will be on the Kenan Foundation Web site.

Observing how other universities and Jefferson's Monticello were coming to grips with the deep scar of slavery in their early histories, "it was really shocking to me to realize that U.Va. had no full research on the topic," said Neale, who plans to pursue the project further in a history distinguished-major thesis.

After reading previous University histories and Jefferson's writings, she took a notebook computer and spent a summer in the Special Collections department of the University Library, poring through census records and the complete minutes of the Board of Visitors and the Faculty Committee that ran the University, as well as the Proctor's Papers, and faculty, student and alumni letters and papers. She found "thousands of fragments": a mention of a "servant" or "hand" by name in a letter, a receipt for bacon to feed laborers, a complaint by a student of poor service. "This place could not have been built or maintained without slavery, and I wanted to put together as broad a picture as I could," she said.

Although Jefferson would not allow students to hold slaves on Grounds, enslaved people were part of students' daily life all around the University and Albemarle County, where African-Americans outnumbered whites. Neale documents that there were as many as 185 slaves living on Grounds in any year, housed in the basements of pavilions, structures in the gardens and nearby sheds. Although they were well cared for by standards of the Deep South, their conditions were still harsh, with inferior food, mostly corn and  bacon and the produce of a small garden. Neale uncovered several cases of habitual mistreatment by students, including violent beatings and a rape for which the students were expelled.

The names and stories of a few enslaved people have survived in University legend, such as the longtime bell-ringer Henry Martin. Neale adds many more: a young man named William so brash he was forbidden to serve the students' meals; the housemaid Maria whose son Caesar was fathered by a student; "Anatomical" Lewis, who cleaned the medical students' anatomical theater; Jefferson's own slave Burwell Hemings, who helped construct the Rotunda's marble steps.

They all played key roles in establishing the University of Virginia. "Building and running a university in the antebellum South would have been impossible without them," Neale said. "The University of today wouldn't exist. To understand its foundations helps us understand U.Va. better today."