Month: March 2023

Jenny Jacobs (~1675-1744+) was the daughter of Gabriel & Barbary Jacobs. John Custis II’s 1691 will was executed after his death in January 1696. The enslaved Jacobs family went to two heirs. Daniel Jacobs and mother Barbary were inherited by John Custis IV (grandson). Jenny Jacobs and father Gabriel were inherited by Tabitha Scarborough Smart…

In 1600 & 1700s, on Eastern Shore, the Jacobs were a part of the colonial free colored community that included the Beckett, Carter, Cane, Day, Drigger/Rodriguez, Fernando, Francisco, Hammond, Harmon, Johnson, Longo, Manley, Mongon, Payne, Pedro, Revel, Tony, Webb families. From other locations in Virginia, especially the Tidewater and Northern Neck came the Artis, Burnette,…

Brewingtons are cornerstone to many groups of color in eastern North Carolina.  Like the other old free-person-of-color families, they were in place before the Revolutionary War, and participated in it alongside their English & Scottish neighbors. The Brewingtons ‘bucked the trend’.  It appears that instead of migrating southward from colonial Virginia like the other FPOC,…

The Sampsons became one of the wealthiest and most highly educated of the free families of color in southeast North Carolina.  Sampsons and their close-kin built a middle class community of color in the midst of antebellum slavery, educated free and enslaved children, supported the Union, and held key national positions after the South was…