Slave and African American Cemetery

Simple fieldstones mark the resting place of enslaved people and African Americans who worked at Red Hill, helping make it one of the most productive tobacco plantations along the Staunton River during the 18th and 19th centuries. When Patrick Henry moved his family to Red Hill in the early 1790s, they were accompanied by a number of enslaved people, many of whom had been with his household for more than thirty years. Most of the fieldstones in this cemetery are believed to mark the graves of enslaved people who worked on the Red Hill plantation during the 18th and 19th centuries. After the Civil War, many newly freed people and their families continued to live and work at Red Hill as hired laborers into the twentieth century, and some of them are also believed to be buried here. The one marked headstone is that of Matilda Pannel, who married Harry Pannel after the Civil War, had at least sixteen children, and whose descendants still live near Red Hill.

Virginia · United States