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This historical photo shows Ella R. Rowser's 1953-54 class at |
By CATHY JETT
Moncure Daniel Conway was the "black sheep" of his family, but his abolitionist ways helped save their Falmouth home.
The Conways fled their brick mansion on the Rappahannock River before the Battle of Fredericksburg, locking all the doors and leaving their slaves behind, Lenetta Schools told visitors Saturday at the first Stafford Freedom Project event in the Rowser Building.
But someone fired a single shot when Union soldiers approached the house, wounding one and prompting the rest to go on a looting spree in retaliation, said Schools, who now owns the house with her husband, Norman Schools. The soldiers stopped only because they spotted Conway's portrait, which some of them recognized.
"It's mars' Monc the preacher, as good an abolitionist as any of you," house servant Eliza Gwinn reportedly told them.
Gwinn and her husband, Dunmore Gwinn, were among the more than 3,000 slaves living in Stafford before the Civil War. Afterward, Conway led them and the rest of his family's slaves to freedom in Yellow Springs, Ohio, where Dunmore Gwinn helped found the First Anti-Slavery Baptist Church.
The Gwinns' story--and those of other African-Americans living in the county before and after the war and during the civil rights era--is the focus of the six-month Stafford Freedom Project series.
It's sponsored by the National Park Service, the Stafford County Historical Society, Stafford County Parks & Recreation and Stafford County Tourism.
The project is designed, in part, to broaden understanding of Stafford's history by telling the little-known stories of its African-American community, said John Hennessey, chief historian of the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park.
He said former slaves used to sponsor and run Memorial Day ceremonies to honor the Union soldiers who'd help set them free. Then, in 1882, the soldiers asked that their former Confederate foes be included in an act of reconciliation. The ex-Confederates agreed, with the condition that African-Americans be excluded.
"From that point on, stories about the black community diminished," Hennessey said. "Yet it's very much a shared history. One of our hopes is to reconnect these disparate stories."
It's also hoped that the events will increase tourism in the county, said Megan Orient, Stafford tourism manager. She said there is a growing desire for more information about African-American historical sites.
Saturday's event, held at the Rowser Building, attracted about 100 blacks and whites. They read Park Service displays about the history of slavery in the county; saw old photographs the Schoolses have collected of Conway, his family's slaves and their descendants; picked up book lists from the Central Rappahannock Regional Library and literature from the NAACP; and talked with Al and Jane Conner, who've written books about Stafford County history.
Stafford slaves worked in the Hunter Ironworks, which was instrumental in winning the American Revolution, and helped quarry stone used in the White House and Capital building, the Conners pointed out.
"The two national symbols of freedom were created by slaves," Al Conner said.
Visitors also got to tour the Rowser Building, which opened in 1939 as the Stafford Training School for African-American students, the largest school for Stafford blacks during segregation. It now houses the Stafford Parks and Recreation Department.
For some, the displays of the building's history was a trip down memory lane.
"This is our old stomping ground," said Joyce and Edward "Gary" Mercer, high school sweethearts who graduated from there in 1961 and now live near the Rowser Building.
Both have fond memories of Ella Rowser, the teacher and principal for whom the building is named.
"She was a go-getter and no-nonsense," Joyce Mercer said. "You had to look up to her. She was the best teacher I ever had."
The highlight of Saturday's program was a one-woman show about Harriet Tubman by actress Gwen Briley Strand.
She began by having the audience sing "Go Down, Moses," a spiritual that came to be associated with the woman who successfully led slaves to freedom on the Underground Railroad 19 times. Then she used hats, canes and a whip to tell Tubman's story, including her cruel treatment by white masters as a child, and eventual flight to freedom after discovering she'd been sold to a plantation owner in Georgia.
"It was very moving," said Leslie Jackson of Stafford, who brought her three young children to the program. "I could only imagine my 4-year-old daughter as a slave. It made me want to cry."
The Chaplin Youth Center, a residential facility for court-involved adolescents in Stafford, took its 11 students to the program because they have had some racial issues.
"We figured it was because they didn't know the history [of slavery]," said Joel Walor, a resident adviser. "Now we can go back and discuss what they got out of this. It was an eye-opening experience."
The Stafford Freedom Project will include a special event each month. The next one will be about John Washington, a Fredericksburg slave whose story has never been told. It will be held at 7 p.m. Feb. 11 at Shiloh Baptist Church (Old Site) in Fredericksburg.
Other programs will include such topics as slavery and slave places in Stafford; Moncure Conway, the "Southern Emancipator"; the quest for equal rights in the county; and reconciling slavery and the Civil War in 21st-century Fredericksburg.
The series will culminate with Juneteenth: A Community-Wide Celebration, on June 19th, the anniversary of the date President Lincoln freed the slaves. Among those expected to attend are descendants of the "Conway Colony" in Yellow Springs.
To reach CATHY JETT:
Email: cjett@freelancestar.com
