![free full version cake mania 2 free full version cake mania 2](https://images.fineartamerica.com/images/artworkimages/mediumlarge/1/100-year-old-church-located-in-pocahontas-va-steven-cox.jpg)
That means history has played out here from an African American point of view from before the Revolution until today. For a time, in the spirit of liberty after the Revolutionary War, a few planters freed their slaves.Īnd Pocahontas Island was where many went to live.
#Free full version cake mania 2 free#
Petersburg was one of the busiest slave markets in the old South, but it also had one of the highest concentrations of free blacks, attracted by jobs and by the presence of a community of their own. Today, it’s more of a peninsula, as the main channel of the river clogged after a flood in the early 1970s.
![free full version cake mania 2 free full version cake mania 2](https://visittazewellcounty.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/cemetary.jpg)
It became an island after a canal was built in the late 1700s. Slaves and free blacks lived side by side on Pocahontas Island, which was a port on the Appomattox before joining the city of Petersburg. Betsey and the children wound up somewhere in Chesterfield County, but Richard Stewart doesn’t know their fates. So he took her back to Richmond, sold her - and the children - for $350 and used the money to buy a horse. But Charles grew frustrated that she wouldn’t give up voodoo, Richard Stewart said. One of his ancestors, Charles Stewart, was profiled in an 1884 edition of Harper’s Monthly magazine under the headline, “My Life as a Slave.” Richard Stewart tells how Charles, who had money because he was a champion horse trainer, went to Richmond to buy a wife for $350.Īfter four years, Betsey Dandridge had borne him three children and done untold amounts of laundry and cooking. As the neighbors got older, some gave him discounts to buy their property, with the understanding that he would take care of it. He left to work for the military and civil service, but always came back. He was orphaned by age 16, but others on the island looked out for him. Stewart grew up here when it was still full of life, and he swam in the river and played Civil War in the woods.
![free full version cake mania 2 free full version cake mania 2](https://www.nps.gov/jame/learn/historyculture/images/Rountree-loss-of-lands-map-for-web.jpg)
He installed a Black History Museum in one of his houses, and he painted the others in eye-catching colors, festooning them with flags to catch attention. He cuts the grass, patches walls, even reframes collapsed roofs. “This is my place.”Ī retired federal worker, Stewart, 72, has used his pension and a little family money to buy several properties on Pocahontas Island and create a homespun historical park. “The richness of the soil and its history - can’t no money replace that. White people lived here, too, but the community always had African Americans at its heart. Pocahontas became a town in 1752, a center of tobacco trade and, later, shipping and railroads.
![free full version cake mania 2 free full version cake mania 2](https://live.staticflickr.com/2846/8999294255_1e838d5bff_b.jpg)
Pocahontas Island - 70 acres in the middle of the Appomattox River next to downtown Petersburg - is home to one of the oldest African American communities in the United States. “Nat Turner father sold less than a mile from here” “1861-65 we were called black confederate” “Ain’t no looking back master I’m at the promised land.” Using a black magic marker, Stewart scrawls the words of 12 generations of ancestors on old porch rails, doorways and window frames. The collection of modest homes, tucked between an empty lumber factory and an abandoned rail yard, doesn’t look like a rare and haunted place.īut in Richard Stewart’s eyes, Pocahontas Island is alive with an unexpectedly dramatic past. He roams from house to house along the quiet streets of this little neighborhood, giving voice to its history and spirits. Richard Stewart, the unofficial mayor of the town, has dedicated his life and earnings to preserve what he calls a "very sacred place." (Ashleigh Joplin/The Washington Post) Pocahontas Island is a peninsula located within the city limits of Petersburg, Va., and it is said to be one of the oldest black communities in the United States.