Slave Cemetery

This burial ground is the final resting place for many members of Montpelier's enslaved community. Their belief in a spiritual world, originating in African religions, was reinforced by Christianity, and burials brought people together in their Sunday best, with clothing serving as one of the few ways enslaved people could express individuality. Some graves were marked with fieldstone, but many had no markers, so none of the gravesites can be associated with specific individuals. One enslaved man, Sawney, who spent his later years at Montpelier, is likely buried here; in 1769 he accompanied James Madison to college at Princeton, later supervised a work crew responsible for several hundred acres of tobacco fields, and in his final years served Nelly Madison as a personal servant. The cemetery is about one-half acre in size and has 38 visible grave depressions, yet because close to 200 enslaved people lived out their lives at Montpelier, these graves represent only a small percentage of the total burials. Other unmarked cemeteries at Montpelier were likely additional burial grounds for enslaved people. The visible depressions resulted from coffins deteriorating and collapsing so that the soil above settled, and although the enslaved community maintained the cemetery and would have filled such depressions as they appeared, the remaining visible ones mark the last burials, which would have settled after slavery was abolished.

Virginia · United States