Slave Labor on Virginia's Blue Ridge Railroad

By Mary E. Lyons

Between 1849 and 1859, Virginia raced to pierce the Blue Ridge Mountains by rail and reach the Ohio River. At least 300 enslaved people labored involuntarily toward that goal, along with 1,500 Irish immigrants. The state leased the labor of enslaved Virginians from local slaveholders, including four connected with nearby University of Virginia. Blue Ridge Tunnel and Blue Ridge Railroad historian Mary E. Lyons explored hundreds of primary documents to write the first nonfiction book about slave labor on a specific antebellum railroad. She shares hundreds of enslaved people's names, traces where they toiled along the line and describes their backbreaking--and sometimes fatal--tasks.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: Mar 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9781439669471

Mary E. Lyons

Mary Lyons is the author of a number of award-winning books, including Sorrow's Kitchen: The Life and Folklore of Zora Neale Hurston; Raw Head, Bloody Bones: African-American Tales of the Supernatural; and Letters from a Slave Girl: The Story of Harriet Jacobs. She lives with her husband in Charlottesville, Virginia. Mireille Vautier has illustrated more than fifteen books for children in her native France. Her books have won many prizes, including an honorable mention for Yesteryear at the Bologna children's Book Fair. She lives in Paris, France.

Book preview

Published by The History Press

Charleston, SC

www.historypress.com

Copyright © 2020 by Mary E. Lyons

All rights reserved

First published 2020

E-book edition 2020

ISBN 978.1.43966.947.1

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019954252

print edition ISBN 978.1.46714.490.2

Notice: The information in this book is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. It is offered without guarantee on the part of the author or The History Press. The author and The History Press disclaim all liability in connection with the use of this book.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form whatsoever without prior written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

To the memory of

Commander Joseph Eugene Lyons (1944–2019), U.S. Navy, retired,

who loved planes, ships and trains.

CONTENTS

Preface

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1. 1849–50

In the Heat of the Summer

A Prejudice against Railroads

2. 1851–52

The Force Employed

Debts Incurred for the Hire of Negroes

3. 1853

Rented Like a Horse

Section Sixteen

Economy of Progress

4. 1854

Masters of Their Masters

Blanket and Hat

Poor Fellows

I Had Him Buried

Mysterious Disease

5. 1855–56

I Regret That We Did Not Hire Negroes

Wade in Blood

Cruel and Brutal Acts

6. 1857–58

For the Board of Negroes

Fatal Consequences

7. 1859–65

Ball of Fire

Run Off to the Enemy

8. 1866–95

Alike as Two Peas

Servile Insurrection

9. 1939–2008

I’ll Tell You Straight

Epilogue

Appendix 1. Transcript of Farrow-Hansbrough Contract

Appendix 2. Williams Obituaries

Appendix 3. Sections, Contractors and Labor Force

Appendix 4. Names of Enslaved Laborers

Notes

About the Author

PREFACE

Blue Ridge Railroad Papers at the Library of Virginia are organized in archival boxes containing folders stuffed with documents. None of the folders is conveniently labeled slavery. My decade-long mission has been to uncover details about Blue Ridge Railroad enslavement that have been scattered through the files for more than 160 years. As I read and transcribed many hundreds of handwritten sheets of paper, I noted every fact about slave labor that surfaced. What I learned as of 2014 was published in The Blue Ridge Tunnel: A Remarkable Engineering Feat in Antebellum Virginia. More material appears in The Virginia Blue Ridge Railroad, published in 2015. Slave Labor on Virginia’s Blue Ridge Railroad greatly expands the slavery content of the first two books and explores newly discovered documents.

Few specifics about the enslaved people’s daily lives are known. Still, we can now gauge the nature of their grueling toil, where they labored along the line and who controlled them. Circumstances affecting Irish workers often impacted enslaved laborers. So that readers can understand this cause and effect, I trace the dizzying loop the loop of ever-changing contractors (see appendix 3), wage fluctuations and other events such as strikes and the cholera epidemic in 1854. To place slave labor in context, I have provided details about various aspects of the railroad construction. For the most part, this book is presented in chronological order, which I deem the most logical way of comprehending a public works project that proceeded along seventeen miles for ten years.

My ongoing task has been the naming of enslaved people (see appendix 4). Thankfully, a surviving set of state payrolls lists names of those who labored in the Blue Ridge Tunnel. Blue Ridge Railroad contracts show names of men and boys and the slaveholders who rented their labor for other parts of the line. Ledger books reveal the names of deliverymen. I harvested more names from receipts and other miscellaneous documents. The name of Hannah Harden, a woman enslaved by a Blue Ridge Railroad vendor, shows up in a collection of his papers at the Library of Virginia. These papers prove that her labor indirectly supported construction of the line.

Recently found newspaper articles feature the memories of James Williams, who was hired out to labor on the construction when he was twelve years old. The articles contain rare details and photographs. Presented herein, they are the only known first-person account and image of any laborer, enslaved or free, who toiled directly on the Blue Ridge Railroad.

For the remaining slaves, I have no names at all. Most of the contractors kept their own payrolls and probably discarded them after their jobs ended. The 1850 and 1860 federal slave schedules listed slaveholders’ names and the age, gender and color of slaves—but no slave names. If a slaveholder hired out an enslaved person, the census enumerator sometimes included the name of the lessee on the same line that listed the owner. The information can be helpful for linking a slaveholder and unnamed enslaved person with a contractor’s name—but only for the census years of 1850 and 1860. Slave schedules for the in-between years—most of the Blue Ridge Railroad construction period—do not exist.

After the great wall of slavery fell in 1865, full names of African Americans became part of the country’s official records. In Reconstruction-era Freedmen’s Bureau records, tax lists, federal censuses, marriage records and newspapers, first and last names appeared where they should have been all along. Many of the documents are available online, making it possible to trace the lives of some—but by no means all—formerly enslaved people, their families and their communities after emancipation.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

For a residential and affiliate fellowship that has allowed research on the Blue Ridge Railroad for ten years, I give ongoing thanks to Virginia Humanities, located in Charlottesville, Virginia. A 2016 grant from the Railroad and Locomotive Historical Society—the oldest such organization in the country—permitted me to transcribe 130 primary documents from the Blue Ridge Railroad Papers at the Library of Virginia. The transcripts were invaluable for linking pieces of information about enslaved laborers that initially seemed unrelated.

I thank William T. Ellison Jr., a member of the audience during my presentation at the Waynesboro Public Library on October 9, 2018. He alerted me to a newspaper article about James Williams. Dale Brumfield, writer, generously forwarded all of his saved clippings on Williams before the day was over.

Sharing my excitement, dedicated researcher Jane C. Smith located more clippings and connected me with a living descendant of Thomas Jarman, original enslaver of James Williams. The descendant patiently shared with me everything he knew about his ancestors and Williams. Tom Carlsson of the Waynesboro Historical Commission kindly located a deed providing details about the farm that James Williams bought in 1893 and assisted with the photograph of Hannah Harden’s gravestone.

Karen Vest, archivist at the Waynesboro Public Library, helped identify a photograph of Hannah Harden and gain permission to print it. Karen and the library’s archives are rare treasures. I also thank Debra Weiss, who alerted me to Fountain Hughes’s Works Project Administration interview. Special thanks to Jim Kauffman, who provided up-to-the-minute photographs of the Blue Ridge Tunnel restoration.

A Blue Ridge Tunnel Foundation board member explores the Dove Spring Hollow culverts. Paul Collinge, 2016.

The following members of the Blue Ridge Tunnel Foundation Board of Directors risked life, limb and cellphone accidents to hike mountainous sections of what Claudius Crozet called the dangerous mile of Blue Ridge Railroad tracks: Allen Hale, president of the board and an advocate for all my Blue Ridge Tunnel books; Paul Collinge; Bob Dombrowe; and Wayne Nolde. Their intrepid explorations and photography made it possible to annotate maps indicating the general location of slave labor along the line.

Most of the slave labor on the Blue Ridge Railroad occurred in Albemarle County, Virginia. Ann Mallek, member of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors and a Blue Ridge Tunnel Foundation board member, also encouraged publication of this book. I thank her for recognizing the historical importance of documenting slave labor in Albemarle County.

The presence of Edwina St. Rose at my Blue Ridge Tunnel talk and tour on October 6, 2018, was much appreciated. Her restoration efforts—along with those of many others—at the Daughters of Zion Cemetery made it possible to learn the probable burial place of two enslaved Blue Ridge Railroad laborers.

I thank Arthur Collier for reading two drafts of the text. His encouragement and insightful suggestions gave me heart. Finally, infinite thanks to my husband, Paul Collinge. A superb researcher, he unearthed many of the hidden facts needed for a history of slave labor on the Blue Ridge Railroad.

INTRODUCTION

On August 1, 1818, a commission of twenty-one Virginia state senators convened at the Mountain Top Hotel in Augusta County. The hotel was situated in a windy gap that cuts through the Blue Ridge Mountains mere yards from what is now the intersection of Interstate 64, Skyline Drive and the Blue Ridge Parkway. This spot, including the east and west slopes, was known—and still is—as Rockfish Gap. More commonly, people call it Afton Mountain.

The view from Mountain Top was splendid. Gazing east, members of the commission could see the long descending grade of Rockfish Gap and the distant Southwest Mountains that framed the small town of Charlottesville. The city of Staunton and the Alleghany Mountains were visible to the west. With its cool breezes, Rockfish Gap was a felicitous location for a summer gathering. Moreover, it was a convenient midway point between the eastern Tidewater part of the state and the mountainous western section. Climbing the Blue Ridge from either direction meant an uncomfortable stagecoach journey along rough mountain roads. Commission members split the difference by meeting at Mountain Top.

Former U.S. presidents Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were in attendance. Jefferson authored the first draft of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. Madison was one of