Finding a Slave Quarter and an 18th Century Roadbed

Archaeologists discovered a two hundred fifty-year-old roadbed and the outlines of three structures, along with many artifacts including animal bones and kitchen tools. The roadbed location and the artifacts confirmed that a sixteen by twenty foot log cabin was part of a slave quarter. Tax records and primary documents show that in 1809 an enslaved community lived at Sully, including John and his wife Alice; their children Patty, Betty, Henry, Charles, Johnny, Margery, Milly, and Frank; Henny and her child Eleanor; Rachel and her child Rachel; two sisters, Kitty and Letty; their brothers Alexander and Alfred; and Ludwell and his wife Nancy with their children Caroline, Harriet, Frederick, Ludwell, and Barbara. In the nineteen eighties, excavation of the sunken eighteenth century roadbed revealed the road itself and the ruins of the slave quarter. In May two thousand, carpenters with the Fairfax County Park Authority built a representative cabin on the original archaeological footprint, the first of its kind in the region, representing one of three structures that had housed enslaved people more than two hundred years earlier.

Sully Square, Virginia · United States