Linking Present and Past at Clarke County’s Blandy Farm

Linking Present and Past at Clarke County’s Blandy Farm

Kyle Davis, Blandy associate director, Dave Carr, Blandy director, and Antonio Austin, archival research intern, with a copy of a 1905 plat showing the existence of a cemetery for the enslaved. The area was recently studied and encircled.

Photo by Linda Roberts

By Linda Roberts

“Hopefully I will be able to give these people a voice that they didn’t have in their lifetime,” said

Antonio Austin, archival research intern at the Blandy Experimental Farm.

Austin has spent the spring and summer months working to identify some 40 enslaved people who are buried at Blandy in Clarke County, which is the State Arboretum of Virginia.

A Howard University student working on his Ph.D. in history, Austin learned about the position at Blandy earlier this year and was “elated when I got the job,” he said. His days have been filled with researching old records in both Clarke and Frederick counties, as Clarke was once part of Frederick.

“Timing is everything,” he said. “With history, you don’t find everything you want immediately. It eventually comes out over the years.”

Dave Carr, Blandy director, and Kyle Davis, Blandy associate director, have worked closely with Austin and on another project underway at Blandy. A century-old plat of the property helped identify the likely existence of a cemetery believed to be where enslaved people were buried as early as 190

years ago. Blandy contracted with Leesburg-based GeoModel to survey the site with ground-penetrating radar. Evidence of 40 graves was found within the coordinates. Due to the close proximity of some of the graves, it is believed that some individuals were interred in family groups.

The State Arboretum, or Blandy, didn’t always exist as the 700-acre property we know today. It was once the more than 800-acre Tuleyries tract, which dates back to the ownership of Joseph Tuley Sr. in the early 1800s and later his son, Joseph Tuley Jr. The son directed construction of the Tuleyries mansion west of Blandy. Into the 1860s, it is believed that more than 50 enslaved people worked the land and at the mansion.

Other owners followed the Tuley family until Graham Blandy, a New Yorker, purchased a portion of the original Tuleyries tract, about 1924. His will stipulated that upon his death, Blandy would go to the University of Virginia for the purpose of training students in farming practices.

In 1927, Orland E. White was appointed Blandy’s first director, and it is he who today’s students, naturalists, scientists, and recreational users can thank for the amazing trees and plantings that make the property so unique. In addition to continuing farming practices

and using Blandy as a field research station, Dr. White took a special interest in nurturing the growth of trees not thought to thrive in Virginia soil.

In the early 1980s, the property was opened to the public free of charge and it is open daily from dawn to dusk. A wide variety of plant and insect studies, classes, lectures, field trips and summer camps also bring students, naturalists and horticulturists to Blandy.

A grassy area on Blandy’s eastern perimeter has been designated as the cemetery of the people the Tuley family enslaved. Another very prominent reminder that slaves were once housed on the property is the eastern wing of the handsome brick, two-story building now known as the Quarters. Historians believe this section was built in the 1820s or ‘30s, while the other two wings were built in 1941. Today this U-shaped building serves as offices for Blandy’s staff and lodging for research students, as well as space for a library and meeting room.

According to Davis, “perhaps our research might someday enable us to identify living descendants (of the enslaved) … our efforts will not provide justice for those who lived and died here, but we will strive to ensure that they are not forgotten.”

Details: Blandy 540-837-1758 or blandy@virginia.edu.