“I remember that the father of Indian Janny was an Indian … who had Janny by a black woman,” reads a tattered 1811 court record where the enslaved Janny petitions a judge for her freedom because her grandmother was free.
This is one of the records uploaded to the Morven Park 246 Years Project, a free, online searchable database of enslaved people in Loudoun County. It’s the first-ever database of its kind in the U.S., according to Morven Park.
While there is no indication of this case’s final judgment, digitized copies of historic records, deeds, oaths, and judgments shed light on a time when enslaved people were legally property.
Morven Park’s relatively new social justice initiative organizes information so people can trace their families between 1619 and December 1865, the 246 years when birth and records were limited to property ledgers.
“Its main focus is to be a tool for descendants to locate information about their ancestors. It’s not doing any kind of storytelling or interpretive work,” says Jana Shafagoj, Morven Park’s director of preservation and history.
“The 246 Years Project is about documenting and honoring the millions of enslaved men, women, and children whose names and life stories need to be known,” says Stacey Metcalfe, executive director and CEO of Morven Park.
About seven years ago, a team began investigating the early 1800s history of enslavement at Morven Park, a private Leesburg estate. The project’s scope expanded when Loudoun County Circuit Court supplied over 20,000 records for the database, which Amazon Web Services developed. Forty volunteers and 10 high school students entered the records. Users can now research a person’s name, gender, status (enslaved, free, emancipated, deceased), skills, and physical traits. Metcalfe says the project has extended its records search to Fairfax and Arlington counties and the City of Alexandria.
“There’s a lot that is inspiring, and these documents are very powerful, but there’s a lot that can destroy you and just break your heart,” says Shafagoj.
The database offers descendants of enslaved people a look at the strength and resiliency of those who came before them. Author Kevin Grigsby, whose Loudoun County family dates back to the 1700s, worked on the project’s advisory committee and sums up the effort. “Every single name that is there is power. That gives a name to those who we thought were lost.”
246 Years Project By the Numbers
20K+ Records in the database
7,800+ Relationships identified
81 People were enslaved at Morven Park in early 1800s
Source: Morven Park 246 Years Project
Feature image of Morven Park courtesy Rodney Brown for Visit Loudoun
This story originally ran in our August issue. For more stories like this, subscribe to Northern Virginia Magazine.
