History
Samuel Drake (1787-1863), a justice of the peace, coroner, inn owner, militiaman, and son of James Drake (1740-96), a Revolutionary soldier, Methodist minister, and blacksmith of Little Deep Creek, owned 1048 acres including Caxamalca Plantation and 18 slaves. In 1879 Martha Wood (1843-1920), Drake's mulatto former slave and nurse, appeared in court for violating miscegenation laws; her ancestors were Bamileke people of Cameroon, W. Africa. In 1882 Frank Falcon, a Belmead freedman and sharecropper born in 1822, acquired 10 acres including the Drake House. The property was later sold to Edmonia Harden Booker, cook at Mohemenco Colored School, in 1943, and then to Sandra Morris Kemp in 2004, the first Afro-American graduate of Powhatan HS and Martha Wood's great-granddaughter.
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