Freedom and the Reservation Community

Freedom Comes, The Reservation Community Grows

During and after the Civil War, the Reservation community grew substantially. 

1862 – The Union army took control of Yorktown and the rest of the lower peninsula, freeing enslaved Black people in the area at least a year before the Emancipation Proclamation.
As a result, an estimated 40,000-70,000 enslaved people fled to these Union-held areas.

On the perimeters of Union-held territory, Black families established temporary camps, some located in Yorktown. Facing an influx of families seeking refuge, the Union army seized land that had been abandoned by white plantation owners. This included three plantations in York County: Tinsley Farm, Bellfield, and Indian Fields—the areas that would become the heart of the Reservation community. 

This document, for example, shows that the Tinsley plantation, whose location is listed as “Philguts + Kings Creek,” was officially declared abandoned on October 20, 1865 by Colonel and Assistant Commissioner Orlando Brown. As these old plantations were broken up into smaller tracts of land, it appears that Black families purchased or were given this land either by landowners or the government. Some Black farmers were tenants rather than landowners, paying rent in cash, in bushels of shelled corn, or through a mix of both.

Original document showing Abandoned Lands from York County

Abandoned Lands from York County, Records of the Field Offices for the State of Virginia, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, 1865-1872, National Museum of African American History and Culture 

The Freedmen’s Bureau aided efforts to acquire land. However, its officials also published notices and circulars that were condescending in their tone, belying the Bureau’s paternalistic approach to assisting Black individuals. For example, in the document below, Assistant Commissioner Brown, who certified lands as abandoned in York County, warned against idleness and vagrancy, often casting Black individuals as helpless and childlike.

Copy of an 1865 notice published by Orlando Brown, titled "To the Freedmen of Virginia"
Copy of page 2 of an 1865 notice published by Orlando Brown, titled "To the Freedmen of Virginia"

Notice published by Orlando Brown, “To the Freedmen of Virginia” (1865), Chase Family Papers: Alexandria, VA: Alexander Street, https://search.alexanderstreet.com/view/work/bibliographic_entity%7Cdocument%7C4148501

Not only did this paternalistic outlook of Bureau officials belittle African Americans, it also created an image of Black people as more suited to wage labor than land ownership, making the purchase of land and accumulation of wealth even more difficult. 

For some, access to land was short-lived. 

To appease angry white landowners, as early as 1865, President Johnson began restoring plantations that had been confiscated or abandoned back to their former owners. In some cases, this land had been informally parceled out to formerly enslaved people. For example, the government returned two properties in the Reservation, "Indian Field" and Tinsley Farms, to their former antebellum owners - Tinsley Farm returned on October 20, 1865 by order of Colonel O. Brown. In 1866, the Freedmen's Bureau estimated that 2,198 acres had been returned to white landowners in York County alone. President Johnson's policies left many residents of the Reservation landless and without livelihood. 

Those who could not secure land or had it taken from them often turned to tenant farming, renting land on old plantations. Those with even fewer options resorted to farm labor and were contracted for a wage, often living in old cabins on plantations that had housed enslaved people and receiving weekly rations from employers.
While poor whites also worked for wages as farm laborers, the so-called “Black Codes”, replacing the “slave codes” from before the war, made the experience of Black people significantly different. Black laborers were paid less, often could not work without their former master’s written recommendation, and were subject to a system of fines and penalties that further reduced their wages.

Indeed, in testimony to the U.S. Congress’ Joint Committee on Reconstruction in Washington, D.C. on February 3, 1866, Dr. Daniel Norton, a Black physician born in Williamsburg and living in Yorktown, explained that, while the Union had won the war, the Confederate supporters and returned soldiers in York County were unwilling to fairly employ formerly enslaved people or treat them with respect. Rather, Black communities in York County faced threats of violence.  

Scroll through Dr. Norton's testimony, which paints a stark picture of the difficult circumstances and threats of violence facing the Black community in York County in the wake of the Civil War:

Dr. Norton Oral History

Dr. Daniel Norton, as cited in Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction at the First Session Thirty-Ninth Congress. 1866. Washington: Government Printing Office, pg. 51-52. 

Securing Deeds and Building a Community of Landowners

Despite this adversity, many Black families gained access to land in the northern section of York County in the decades following the Civil War. As white landowners had difficulty keeping their farms solvent in the absence of slavery, some put land up for sale. 

In 1869, a Virginia Gazette article noted that “(u)pwards of 500 farms, varying in size, are now offered for sale in Virginia. Prices from $5 to $40 per acre. Many of these farms are situate (sic) on the York, James, Mattopony, and Pamunkey rivers. Every conceivable soil is represented. The lands are adapted to the growth of wheat, corn, cotton, tobacco, peanuts, grass, etc.” 

Source: as cited in Mahoney 2013:91-2 

Families gained access to land through various means. 

Mr. Edward Ratcliff was born into slavery on February 8, 1835 to his mother, Hannah. Following the Emancipation Proclamation, Mr. Ratcliffe "laid down his hoe in the field and walked all the way to Yorktown to join the Union army camp and fight for his and his family's freedom." He served in the United States Colored Troops and won the military's highest award, a Medal of Honor, as he "commanded and gallantly led his company after the commanding officer had been killed."  Mr. Ratcliff was one of only 16 Black soldiers to receive this honor and was posthumously recognized by the Virginia General Assembly for his heroism.

Sources: Senate Joint Resolution No. 484 (2007); Congressional Medal of Honor Society (2022) 

Following the war, Mr. Ratcliff returned to live in the Reservation community with his wife, Grace. His brother, Mr. Washington, had acquired significant property and welcomed Mr. Ratcliff to live on his land in the Reservation while Mr. Washington sought other opportunities in Newport News. Edward and Grace Ratcliff farmed on this land and raised seven children.

Listen to Mr. Ratcliff's granddauther, Ms. Grace Radcliffe, recount the importance of these family ties in this excerpt from a 1984 oral history:

Source: Grace Radcliffe (1984)
Photo courtesy: Media Services, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation

Source: Edward Radcliffe, as cited in Senate Joint Resolution No. 484 (2007)

In another example, Mr. James Monroe Lee survived slavery and then the difficulties of sharecropping before securing his own land. According to 1976 and 1984 oral histories from his grandson, Mr. Harris Lee Sr., James Monroe Lee appears to have first found work in what was likely a sharecropper relationship, on the Helm Farm after Emancipation. As Harris Lee explains, "there was forty men living off this farm - the farm and the river: fishing, oystering, clamming, and so forth. The only way they had of making a living." When Mr. Helm died, his son, Gustav, decided "they had to get off there - he made them get off and get out and get something for yourselves." In the early 1880s, Gustav Helm, whose farm was "hundreds of acres," appears to have given each family who worked on his farm, including James Monroe and his brother David, about 3-4 acres each - "enough to grow crops on to feed yourself," Harris Lee explained. 

Source: Harris Lee (1984:1, 2, 5, 6; 1976)

Photo of James Monroe Lee

James Monroe Lee
Courtesy: The Lee Family

James Monroe Lee became a successful carpenter, building many homes in the Reservation, and raised six children with his wife, Emily Byrd Lee. Despite the barriers to literacy facing someone born enslaved, James Monroe Lee further developed an understanding of the law and court system and how to use it to protect his family's and community's assets. Listen to his great-great-granddaughter, Mary Lassiter, talk about him as a "mover and shaker":

Source: Mary Lassiter (2022)

Quotation from Alexander Lee who was born on the Reservation: “After slavery, that’s the biggest thing that Black people did, they bought land.”

Alexander Lee, as cited in Andes, 2003

Many residents obtained deeds in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries to legally verify land ownership. 

This is significant because it indicates that Reservation residents, some of whom were formerly enslaved and economically disadvantaged, overcame obstacles to literacy and used the law to protect their property. For example, in 1903, Reservation residents William T. and Nancy Redcross obtained title for a five-acre tract of land from R.W. Shield. In the deed below, the tract is described as bounded on the north by the land of Charles Redcross, on the east by the main road to Green Wood’s Mill, on the south by land formerly part of the Anderson estate, and on the west by a tract owned by J. W. Scott.

1903 Deed documenting the sale of land by R. W. Shield to W. T and Nancy Redcross.

1903 Deed documenting the sale of land by R. W. Shield to W. T and Nancy Redcross. National Archives and Records Administration. Record Group 125 (Box 24) 

This deed and others like it reveal that family members often purchased adjacent tracts and that Black residents sold land to each other. While further research is required to illuminate Reservation settlement patterns, these deeds suggest that owning and conveying property served to strengthen family ties and community networks.

In another example, this deed documents the sale of land by Cicero and Clemintine Blake to William Moses Lee in 1911.

1911 Deed documenting the sale of land by Cicero and Clementine Blake to William Moses Lee.

1911 Deed documenting the sale of land by Cicero and Clementine Blake to William Moses Lee. National Archives and Records Administration. Record Group 125 (Box 32)

Sources: