Period Sources

A number of period sources provide valuable information on the structural details of buildings used to house enslaved Africans.

Included herein are copies of several stand-alone documents, such as entries in newspapers, journals, and magazines.

Also included are minutes and notes that were produced as an outgrowth of research conducted at two historic sites, Carter’s Grove plantation (Colonial Williamsburg Foundation) and Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello (Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association). The documents include transcriptions from plantation accounts and ledgers, extracts from the papers of Thomas Jefferson, and associated drawings and miscellaneous memoranda, along with  transcriptions and compilations of data from other period sources.

- Comments on Virginia slave housing extracted from articles on slave management, compiled in, James O. Breeden, editor, Advice Among Masters: The ideal in Slave Management in the Old South, Greenwood Press, Westport, CT: 1980.

- George W. Hughes, “Economical Dwellings for Plantation Laborers,” The Cultivator, May 1845: 144-146.

- Ann Randolph Meade Page, “A Comfortable and Cheap Establishment for Two Families of Our Domestics,” Clarke County Historical Association, Berryville, Virginia; Anne Mead Page Collection, 154 CCHA.

- Carter’s Grove Quarter Design Meeting Minutes, June 18, 1987-November 17, 1987
(unpublished manuscript)

- Mulberry Row and Thomas Jefferson Related Cabin and Outbuilding References (unpublished manuscript, no date)