Enslavement at Liberty Hall: Archaeology, History, and Silence at an 18th-Century College Campus and Ante-Bellum Slave Plantation in Virginia

Summary

Liberty Hall Academy, the forerunner of Washington and Lee University, operated outside of Lexington, Virginia from 1782 until 1803. When fire consumed the institution’s academic building, the school relocated a half-mile closer to town. Following the move, Andrew Alexander and Samuel McDowell Reid, wealthy local residents and trustees of the school, operated their family farms at the site. Alexander owned between twelve and twenty-four slaves, and on the eve of the American Civil War, Reid owned sixty-one slaves. For over half a century, enslaved people lived and worked in the buildings erected by Liberty Hall Academy, yet generations of archaeological and historical research here make scant reference to slavery. Based on recent excavations and further archival research, this paper seeks to remember John Anderson, an enslaved blacksmith, and his peers whose labor formed the foundation of the workforce at this plantation, which these later owners called, ironically, Liberty Hall Farm.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Laboring in the Landscapes of Learning: The Archaeology of Slavery at Virginia’s Colleges and Universities   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2016

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Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 367