Slave Dwelling Project coming to two Manassas slave quarters May 15-17

Standing in someone else’s shoes often helps to understand the experiences that person faced. And that’s what Joe McGill, Jr., field officer of the National Trust of Historic Preservation and creator of the Slave Dwelling Project, is doing.

Since 2000, McGill has been traveling across the country sleeping in and interpreting original slave quarters to raise awareness of the enslaved population who lived in them. He’s putting himself in the “shoes” - or the living quarters - of slaves and is telling others about it. He will be coming to two slave quarters in Manassas, May 15-17.

Bill Backus, historic interpreter for Prince William County Historic Preservation Division, said McGill has held his programs throughout the south, but this will be his first time with the project in northern Virginia. “He’s been to Maryland and Surry County, Virginia, but not yet to our area. We learned about him through his work in Surry County,” Backus said.

McGill, a descendant of slaves, founded the Slave Dwelling Project, which is an incorporated non-profit organization in South Carolina.

On May 15, McGill will present his program inside the Clover Hill slave quarters on what was once called Clover Hill Farm. The stone slave quarters was built in the early 1800s and is now on the property of Grace United Methodist Church on Wellington Road in Manassas. The program begins at 7 p.m. and is free to the public.

On May16-17, McGill will be at the slave quarters on the Ben Lomond Historic Site in Manassas, sharing in period dress first with school groups on May 16, and then with the general public on May 17 from 11 a.m. until 4 p.m.

The main house at Ben Lomond Historic Site will also be open to visitors. Cost for the program is $7 per person; children six years old and under are free.

Proceeds go towards preservation of the Ben Lomond slave quarters. Backus said, “Since both slave quarters [Clover Hill and Ben Lomond] are fairly small; the programs take place both inside and directly outside of the slave dwellings. And McGill sleeps overnight inside the cabins.”

Along with McGill, Marion Dobbins, a noted historian who lives in Bristow, will join McGill at the Ben Lomond site and share about slave life prior to the Civil War (1700s through 1850).

Dobbins is a seventh-generation Virginian. Her great, great-grandfather was James Lee who was born free in 1840 in Upperville (Fauquier County). Lee’s great-great-grandmother was likely one of the 452 slaves who were freed in 1792 by Virginia land baron, Robert “King” Carter.

The property now known as Ben Lomond was part of the Cancer land tract owned by Robert “Councillor” Carter, the grandson of Robert “King” Carter.

The land passed to Carter’s grandson, Benjamin Tasker Chinn, who inherited 730 acres in 1830 and named this portion “Ben Lomond” after a mountain in Scotland, home of his ancestors. By 1832, he built the two-story, Federal-style manor house and slave quarters from locally-quarried red sandstone.

By sleeping in surviving slave quarters and delivering messages to the public, McGill hopes to stir and “wake up” people’s attention to those who lived in these structures so they don’t become a footnote in American history.

McGill’s next stop? May 18 at 1 p.m. in Old Town Alexandria at the slave quarters on the grounds of the Lee-Fendall House built in 1785 on 614 Oronoco Street.

Grace United Methodist Church is located at 9750 Wellington Road in Manassas. The phone number is 703-361-7800 and the website is http://www.umcgrace.org Infor.mation on Ben Lomond Historic Site go to http://www.pwcgov.org/benlomond .

More information on the Slave Dwelling Project can be found at http://www.slavedwellingproject.org and on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/TheSlaveDwellingProject