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The Mount Vernon Ladies Association has been maintaining the Mount Vernon Estate since they acquired it from the Washington family in 1858.
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After their manumission in 1801, many people formerly enslaved by George Washington settled in free black communities near Mount Vernon.
In the following decades, they purchased land, planted crops, started businesses, formed churches, founded schools, created civic organizations, and helped freed and runaway slaves. Many of their descendants continue to live in the area today.
Even as they celebrated freedom, formerly enslaved people faced great challenges. Many had been separated from family members who remained enslaved. African Americans also encountered racism and discrimination in Virginia, as laws restricted the rights of free blacks in the state.
Bowls were passed down in the family of Loretta Carter Hanes (pictured below), a descendant of Sukey Bay and her daughter Rose Carter—both enslaved field workers at Mount Vernon’s River Farm who were emancipated by George Washington’s will. The family has long used blue-and-white tableware, a tradition they trace to their ancestors at Mount Vernon. Many fragments of blue-and-white ceramics have been unearthed in archaeological excavations of 18th-century Mount Vernon slave quarters.
Lives Bound Together explores the personal stories of the people enslaved at Mount Vernon while providing insight into George Washington’s evolving opposition to slavery.
Cabinet card of West Ford, 19th century. This faded cabinet card (photograph pasted onto a cardboard backing) features a sketch of West Ford by an unknown artist. The original sketch was likely made in the early 19th century, when Ford was in his 20s or 30s. MVLA, Gift of Mrs. John Beebe, 1985
Gum Springs was founded in 1833 by West Ford, a man who had been enslaved by Bushrod Washington (who had inherited Mount Vernon from his uncle George Washington in 1802). Ford was likely the son of either Bushrod, his father, or one of his brothers. The family emancipated Ford in 1806, and, in 1829, Bushrod bequeathed him a 160-acre tract of land. Ford sold this property and used the money to purchase 214 acres adjacent to Mount Vernon, near a stand of gum trees and a spring that gave the place its name.
Charles Henry Quander founded the community of Spring Bank when he purchased 88 acres of land between Alexandria and Gum Springs after the Civil War. The Quander family has deep ties to Maryland and Virginia, tracing their history to the 17th century. Nancy Carter, an enslaved woman at Mount Vernon, married into the Quander family after receiving her freedom by George Washington’s will.
Before George Washington died, he wrote in his will that after he and Martha died, he wanted the enslaved people that he owned to be freed. But did the enslaved people know they were to be freed?
Certificate of freedom for Norman Washington, who was born at Mount Vernon. MVLA.
Virginia law required that free African Americans register every three years to obtain a certificate of freedom proving they were not fugitive slaves. Without proper documentation, they risked being arrested and sold back into bondage. Registration records consisted of name, age, a detailed physical description, and a report of how the individual became free (whether by birth or manumission).
William Anderson is a mulatto man, about 30 years old, 5 feet 10 1/2 inches tall, with smallpox marks on his face. He was emancipated by Sambo Anderson.
Many former Mount Vernon slaves and their children appear in these records. The entries reveal that some people who were emancipated in Washington’s will were able to buy the freedom of enslaved family members owned by the Custis estate. Sambo Anderson purchased and then freed his daughter Charity, his grandchildren William and Eliza, and Eliza’s children James, William, and John.
Detail, Tomb of Washington, by Augustus Köllner, 1848. Gift of Eleanor H. Seaman, Vice Regent for Wisconsin, and Douglas Seaman, 1994. MVLA.
In 1835, a group of twelve people formerly enslaved at Mount Vernon and their children returned to the estate to assist with landscaping around George Washington’s new tomb. They had all been emancipated by Washington’s will or were born free after his death.
According to a local newspaper reporter, they stated that “they had offered their services…as the only return in their power to make to the remains” of Washington.
The reporter continued, “I trust their names will not be forgotten,” recording them as: Sambo Anderson, William Anderson, Berkley Clark, William Hayes, Dick Jasper, Morris Jasper, George Lear, William Moss, Joe Richardson, Levi Richardson, Joseph Smith, and Nancy Quander.
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Nancy was eleven years old in 1799, when George Washington made a list of all the enslaved people on his plantation.
She lived on River Farm with her mother, Suckey Bay, a field-worker. Nancy’s father, an enslaved man with the last name of Carter, lived at the plantation of Washington’s closest neighbor, Abednego Adams.
Nancy had two siblings who also lived on River Farm. Because Suckey Bay belonged to George Washington directly, she and her children were among those freed in January 1801.
We only know snippets about Nancy’s life after freedom. Sometime in the next ten years, she married Charles Quander, a free black man from Maryland. The couple had three children.
Meet some of the descendants of Mount Vernon's enslaved population.
The content on this page was adapted from Lives Bound Together: Slavery at George Washington’s Mount Vernon, an exhibition on view in the Donald W. Reynolds Museum & Education Center from 2016–2020.
