Project Description and Process:
In early 2020, the CSSR began a research project called the Genealogy of Slavery. The Genealogy of Slavery project focuses on the specific history of slavery at Roanoke College and the surrounding region.  This research attempts to identify the enslaved people whose labor helped build the College, and were owned by some the College’s founding members.  Moreover, the project supplements larger efforts to think about the epistemic genealogy of Roanoke College, and the role that slavery and institutional racism have played in shaping our college.  Throughout the process, the central goal of this research has been to tell a broader history of Roanoke College, to expand our understanding of the people who created the institution, and to better situate the college within its broader historical and geographical contexts.

The research team – Roanoke College students Ashtyn Porter and Ivey Kline, and CSSR Director Jesse Bucher – have already made important discoveries related to the history of slavery at Roanoke College.  The initial phase of the research primarily focused on identifying rates of ownership of enslaved persons from the college’s Board of Trustees, Administration, and Faculty in the period before 1865.  Additionally, it addressed the use of enslaved labor by the construction firms that the college hired to construct campus buildings (Administration Building and Miller Hall) in the period before 1865.  This initial research informed the plaques unveiled on the administration building in April of 2021.

The second phase of the research, which will continue over the next few years, has attempted to identify the names and history of enslaved people connected with Roanoke College.  In the process of carrying out this work, the research team decided to further document other enslaved people from the region that could be identified so that the information might be shared with other researchers.  This phase of the research is both more challenging and the most important.  Federal Census Records that documented rates of slave ownership (called ‘Slave Schedules’) documented the age and sex of enslaved people, but rarely listed their names.  The Genealogy of Slavery researchers work through companion sources in attempt to identify these people including: Virginia Slave Birth records, tax records, voter rolls, marriage records, and other sources that named enslaved people…

Read the provisional notes gathered in the second phase of the project. Yes – they name names! Fascinating… Some amazing research.