Slavery and redemption at the meadows

According to the 1850 slave schedule, there were 80 slaves who lived at The Meadows. This large number is on account of the size of the plantation in 1850. At one point, The Meadows surrounded other nearby plantations and its southwestern border was Castle Hill, over five miles away.

Slavery was an unfortunate reality in antebellum Virginia and it would be naive to ignore or dismiss the fact that The Meadows great expanse was built upon the backs of others.

There is little left on the property that would indicate their presence of slavery here. Even so, there are things to be seen that remind us they lived in this place. The first is the summer kitchen.

The summer kitchen, with its nearby proximity to the main house, most likely housed the family of the slaves that served in the kitchen.

So too, the winter kitchen (located in the cellar of the house). There are indications that slaves also lived in this space.

Finally, there is the craftsmanship. In the process of renovating and restoring, we removed the plaster ceiling in what now serves as the kitchen, to reveal remarkable craftsmanship that was the work of slaves skilled in the art of carpentry. Each time I am in the kitchen, it’s hard not to marvel at their work while also lamenting their plight.

Thankfully, this is not the end of the story. Successive generations of the Patton family not only lamented the scourge of slavery and its effects on the black population, but worked to do something about it.

Robert Williams Patton (1869-1944), son of Confederate Col. Robert Mercer and Sallie Patton, was an Episcopal clergyman, who served for over 20 years as the director of the American Church Institute for Negroes, which worked to right the wrongs of the past in the area of education. The Rev. Mr. Patton worked tirelessly to see that African-Americans were given every opportunity for educational advancement, even at the university level.

In the next generation, Sarah Patton Boyle (1906-1994) was an author and early civil rights activist. Born at The Meadows, she saw firsthand the injustices suffered by blacks in the South. By the early 1940s her prejudices were challenged. By 1951 she was actively involved in the civil rights movement mainly through writing letters to the editor. These letters caught the attention of the editor of the black Charlottesville newspaper, The Tribune. She began writing a weekly column for the paper and gained the attention and scorn of her white neighbors, at one point experiencing crosses being burned by the Ku Klux Klan at her home (see above picture).

In her book The Desegregated Heart: A Virginian's Stand in Time of Transition (1962), Boyle wrote of her decision in 1951 to join the civil rights movement: “I knew I must decide, definitely and finally, whether or not I would fight in the Negro’s battle for equality.” She showed this commitment with more than words.

Boyle was actively involved in the work of the NAACP and was arrested (alongside Martin Luther King, Jr.) for protesting at the Monson Motor Lodge in St. Augustine, Florida. She participated in the March on Washington in 1963 and remained active in the movement throughout her life.

Slavery was an evil that existed at The Meadows, but the same bloodline that kept people in bondage worked to right the wrongs of our nation’s greatest sin.

The Meadows is a sign of this redemption, a remembrance of where we have come from, but also what we have to look forward to.