The Virginia settlement of Point Comfort was steeped in heat and humidity one August afternoon in 1619. The stillness in the air clung to the twenty-two passengers aboard the English privateer ship docked just offshore. They were tired and sick after their long voyage. The captain, a man named Jope, had cared little for their comfort during the months they were at sea. His pilot, Mr. Marmaduke, had been no better.

The passengers were led off the ship into the bright August sun. Hot, miserable, and exhausted, they stood in front of the gawking English colonists who crowded around the dock. After the thin, haggard English had looked their fill, the new arrivals would be taken away by the governor, Sir George Yeardley, to live at his plantation. Instead of being honored as guests and treated to wine and roast beef in the governor’s comfortable home, the newcomers would be forced to live in tiny, dirt-floored huts, eat unfamiliar food, and work his fields for the rest of their lives. They would never return home to Africa, and their children would be fought over as property by the Virginia elites. The arrival of the English privateer ship and its African passengers marked the beginning of enslavement in the colonies, a nightmare that would not end for another two hundred and fifty years.

Enslaved Africans would be taken upriver to Chippokes within the next several decades.

By the 1630s, many more Africans had been imported on ships like Captain Jope’s and forced to work at Virginia plantations, including Chippokes. While the term “slavery” wasn’t in common usage yet, the practice was becoming more and more widespread. Africans in Virginia rapidly lost rights over the next few decades. In 1639, the House of Burgesses outlawed the ownership of firearms among Africans in the colony. In 1662, the lifetime enslavement of African-descended people became sanctioned by law. In 1670, it became illegal for free Africans to employ white servants. By 1700, black Virginians were no longer allowed to meet in large groups, own livestock, or marry white colonists. The New World, touted as a land of freedom and promise, was becoming anything but.

In the early 1700s, Chippokes was like most other Tidewater plantations. Its owner, Philip Ludwell, did not live onsite, and tobacco was the main crop. Tobacco demanded constant attention in order to grow, but suddenly there were not enough English citizens coming to Virginia to farm it. For a hundred years, lower-class English had been encouraged to come to Virginia as indentured servants.  This meant agreeing to work for a rich person in Virginia for 5-7 years in exchange for passage to the colony. Once the agreed-upon period was over, an indentured servant was free to buy their own land, start their own farm, or move wherever they chose. Now that fewer people were leaving England, the wealthy Virginia planters had a choice to make. They could either stop farming tobacco and find an easier crop to grow, or find another cheap source of labor. They chose to follow the tobacco money, and in the next fifty years, the population of enslaved Africans in the Chesapeake region tripled.

This 18th-century Virginia illustration depicts a white overseer directing the labor of two enslaved women

Chippokes began to change in the early 19th century. Brandy had become more popular than ever before, and Chippokes responded by increasing its peach and apple brandy output. The massive apple and peach orchards had to be tended by specialized gardeners called orchardists. The distillery, where fruit became brandy, required brewmasters who understood the intricate biological processes of fermentation. As revenue increased, the plantation grew to require its own blacksmith, carpenters, and bricklayers. When Chippokes’ owner, Albert Carroll Jones, had a daughter in 1846, the family took on additional nursemaids, housemaids, and cooks.

A poignant reminder of the enslaved women who used it, this spinning wheel is on display in Chippokes' Brick Kitchen, where it has been for 150 years

All these skilled workers across the 1300-acre plantation were enslaved. They and their families, for generations, had worked without pay while families like the Joneses profited from their labor. When Albert Jones moved to Chippokes in 1837, he brought with him at least five enslaved servants: Patrick, Lewis, Peter, Maria, and Louise. Within two decades, that number had risen drastically. In 1860, Albert Carroll Jones held 43 African-descended individuals in slavery, varying in age from 3 months to 65 years.

The recreated interior of the 1816 Walnut Valley slave house at Chippokes State Park

It wouldn’t be long, however, before freedom would come to Chippokes. In 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation freed all those held in slavery. Though a victory, an end to slavery was not an end to the story. Before the Civil War, enslaved African Americans were not allowed to own livestock, meaning they had no transportation. Additionally, they had been prevented by law from obtaining an education, being paid, and traveling long distances. This left many formerly enslaved people stranded on the rural plantations they had never left, without money or tools to strike out on their own. Still, many made a go of it anyway, relying on their wits and skills to become successful farmers, craftspeople, shopkeepers, writers, advocates, politicians, doctors, and much more.

Born in 1865 to formerly enslaved parents, Henry Blount was the innovative farm manager behind Chippokes' success for around 60 years 

This month marks exactly four hundred years since the Dutch ship arrived at Jamestown with its ill-fated passengers. That event sparked the greed, cruelty, and dehumanization that was slavery in America. Near the epicenter of these events was Chippokes, where for two hundred and fifty years the vast majority of those who lived and worked there did so against their will. After the nineteenth century, however, a brighter future would begin to dawn, where those who maintained one of the country’s oldest farms would be respected and rewarded. Today, Chippokes State Park stands as a reminder of the legacy of slavery in Tidewater Virginia, educating guests through programs, museum exhibits and a brand new memorial to the enslaved.

Join us on October 6, 2019 at 2:00 p.m. as we dedicate the Memorial Rose at the Jones-Stewart Mansion to honor those voices that were silenced for two hundred and fifty years.