Letters from Bremo read at the Bremo Enslaved Cemetery 2022-09-07

2023-01-12 (Creation date: 2022-09-07)

Will Rourk

These are two recordings from 2022-09-07 made at the Bremo Enslaved Cemetery, Upper Bremo Farm, Fluvanna County, Virginia.  The video includes two letters, one from Liberia to the former Bremo plantation written by Peyton Skipwith (1834) and the other coming from Lower Bremo former plantation to Liberia by Jack Creasy (1840).  Both men were enslaved at the former Bremo plantations in the early 19th century.  The Creasy letter is read by Horace Scruggs of the Fluvanna Historical Society and descendant of the Bremo enslaved.  The Skipwith letter is read by Thomas Nynweph Gmawlue Jr, visiting student from Liberia participating in UVA Landscape Architecture class ALAR  8993 : Cultural Landscape Networks Across the Black Atlantic, lead by Professor Allison James.  The readings were done as part of a collaborative field trip between ALAR 8993, ARH 5600 : 3D Cultural Heritage Informatics, lead Professor Will Rourk of the UVA Library and the Fluvanna Historical Society.  Sources for the letter were provided by Tricia Johnson, executive director of the Fluvanna Historical Society.  The source of the Creasy letter is from the Fluvanna Historical Society Bremo papers and the Skipwith letter is from UVA Library Special Collections.

Horace Scruggs; Thomas Nynweph Gmawlue Jr; Tricia Johnson

University of Virginia Library

History

Slavery

1834/1840

Fluvanna (county)

3DCHI

Scholars' Lab