Mapping the Memories of Fauquier’s African-American Communities

Mapping the Memories of Fauquier’s African-American Communities

By Pat Reilly

A large quilt greets visitors at the entrance to the Afro-American Historical Association (AAHA) in The Plains. Patches of cloth in earth-toned designs appliqued in the shape of an 1868 land plat tell a story of Blackwelltown. Each patch represents a lot with the names of the owners on it. The significance of those lots lies in the date. It’s 1868, post-Civil War Virginia. The landowners were all African-American.

Karen Hughes White

AAHA Collections Manager Norma Logan made the memory quilt, and AAHA co-founder and director Karen Hughes White can reel off the family ties of the landowners as if they were still her neighbors. She’s been researching, documenting and preserving the history of African-Americans in her native Fauquier for more than thirty years. Her goal, she said, is “a more complete history” of the county than what she learned in its schools.

A lot of these places have nothing left,” Kendall said. “Without the story map, they are only a memory. It’s preserving the memory of these places for the future.

Now, with a partnership with the Piedmont Environmental Council (PEC), much of the information AAHA has unearthed and archived is finding a 21st century home in an interactive online version of a memory quilt that can be accessed by anyone at AAHAFauquier.org.

Called simply “the story map,” this exhibit fleshes out the African-American communities that blossomed after the Civil War close to where residents found freedom.

“People tended to stay in the area,” White said, adding that a community often began with a church and a school. They might have taken their names from a former plantation or landowner (Morgantown or Blackwelltown) or a landscape feature (Crest Hill, Frogtown).

Before the Civil War, Fauquier County’s population was slightly more than fifty percent Black. Today, African-Americans represent eight percent of the population. After emancipation, former enslaved persons had to apply to the state to remain in Virginia.

“The people who lost the war made it difficult for free Blacks to survive here,” said White, citing atrocities and fear campaigns as well as the loss of jobs over voting. “It was not a pleasant time.”

The story map allows users to view layers of history: schools, churches, communities peopled with photos of congregations, families, and buildings. Family names and occupations are based on primary research. More recent aerial views from PEC drone photography provide visual context.

“This is national history from a local standpoint,” said White, who credits the idea for the story map to Kristie Kendall, PEC’s Historical Preservation Coordinator. Kendall recalled a “lightbulb moment” when she and White were identifying significant African-American sites and White asked how they could make the information more accessible to the wider community.

PEC already was using GIS (government information systems), which can mesh information from databases and geographical coordinates to create a map. Kendall said she was “amazed and impressed” by what AAHA provided. “It’s the most important body of research on African-Americans I’d ever seen.”

Both women cited the critical assistance of Dan Stell, director of the Fauquier County GIS Department, for helping them bring the map idea to fruition. Community foundations helped cover the costs.

“A lot of these places have nothing left,” Kendall said. “Without the story map, they are only a memory. It’s preserving the memory of these places for the future.”

White is already imagining a future when universities come on board to help glean information from state and national databases; more people learning about the project and sharing the personal diaries of landowners, family photographs and oral history.

“This is the story of a county that wants to preserve all of its histories,” she said. “I would like to host more conversations with people coming to terms with our history.”