According to census data, in 1860 there were about 490,887
slaves in the state of Virginia. About 26% of Virginia families owned slaves at
that time, including several Russell County families. To see the names of
Russell County slaves and slaveholders in 1860, just prior to the Civil War,
you can view the slave schedules on Ancestry.com. The library has a
subscription, so you can view them here if you can’t access Ancestry at home.
Few personal
accounts of slaves from Russell County exist now. An interesting story appeared
in The Lebanon News, January 11, 1951
paper, about a West Virginia man named Henry Jones, who reported he was born a
slave in Russell County in about 1855. He was 96 at the time the story was
published in 1951, but he stated that he clearly remembered the day he was
almost sold when he was 10 years old. He recalled that the mistress of the farm
he lived on did not want him sold, but that a woman had no authority at that
time to stop it. However, when she began to cry, the men conducting the auction
relented and did not sell him. He returned and worked on the farm for her years
later, after emancipation, until he married and moved to West Virginia. There,
a mine injury temporarily left him unable to work, and he was able to convince
a local school teacher to teach him to read as he recovered.
Other brief
mentions of former slaves appear in obituaries, names such as Hence Browning,
who died in 1938, Johnson Alexander, who died in 1961 at the age of 104.
Another, John Duff, was still living in 1958 at the age of 103, and could
remember watching boys and young men sign up for Confederate service at the old
Russell County courthouse.
To learn more
about Black History in Russell County during the 20th century, stop
by the library and take a look at Memories
from Dante by Kathy Shearer, which contains memoirs from students of the Straight
Hollow School and the Arty Lee School in Dante. You can also visit the H. Lee
Waters film collection at http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/hleewaters/
to see films of some of the students and teachers at these schools.
