We are exploring and researching the reality of slavery at Red Hill. We believe our evolving Quarter Place research brings the opportunity to discover new history together to foster engagement and dialogue.
Quarter Place is the best way to expand Red Hill’s interpretative focus. Moving beyond the story of Patrick Henry as one of the nation’s Founding Fathers and his family as plantation owners, this project focuses on the enslaved community that Henry and Red Hill relied on to work the land and enrich the family’s well-being.
One aspect of expanding our recognition of the people who lived and worked at Red Hill but who have been left out of its history is to restore Quarter Place Cemetery and the surrounding areas. The cemetery is in a quiet corner at the end of Quarter Place. This is a project that needs additional funding. It requires historical advising and research, as well as the delicate physical endeavor of restoring the gravesites and area. Currently, the Research Advisory Council and Community Engagement Committees have assisted Red Hill by furthering research about enslaved life and engaging local descendants.
The name Quarter Place appears on 19th-century deeds and maps of Red Hill to describe the grouping of living quarters of the enslaved Africans and African Americans living there from the 18th century until the mid-20th century.
Quarter Place Cemetery
Through a grant in 2018, Red Hill re-acquired 77 acres of adjoining property originally part of Henry’s Red Hill. On that land, referred to as Quarter Place, sits a cemetery that Red Hill maintained over the years, believing it to be a sacred burial ground for people enslaved at Red Hill, their ancestors, and family members buried after them. In early 2019, Dr. Brian Bates, Director of Longwood University’s Archaeology Field School, surveyed the area using LiDAR and marked 147 graves. Additional gravesites have been identified more recently. Only one grave is marked with a name. Matilda Pannell died in 1923 and was buried here with her ancestors. Matilda’s great-grandmother, Vilet, is listed on the 1799 inventory as an enslaved child. The other graves are marked with field stones at the head and foot. Ongoing research is being completed to identify the names of those interred here. Acquiring the cemetery allows Red Hill to integrate, in a meaningful way, the birth, life, perseverance, and resilience of those enslaved by Henry into the history of Red Hill and the nation’s founding. Research on this project has just recently started. If anyone has information regarding the cemetery or descendants of Red Hill’s enslaved community, please contact us directly.
To date, 53 names of individuals buried at the Quarter Place Cemetery have been identified.
The Trail
Quarter Place Trail is a half-mile long and culminates at the Enslaved & African American Cemetery. The terrain slopes at the trailhead, levels off, and then steepens as it descends to the cemetery. The one-mile, round-trip walk is of moderate difficulty.
Exhibit Cabin
Quarter Place starts with a historic log structure. Moved to Red Hill from West Virginia in 2003, this 19th-century barn represents the types of buildings that the enslaved and later free Black population worked in from the mid-19th to 20th centuries. It now houses an exhibition titled The Price of Chains & Slavery: Enslavement, Jim Crow, and the Black Experience at Red Hill. This exhibition showcases Black life at Red Hill and reveals Patrick Henry’s association with the institution of slavery.
Building Foundations
Immediately northwest of the Exhibit Cabin are the stone foundations of an early slave quarter and barn that survived into the 20th century. Historical photos of these cabins, which enslaved families would have inhabited, served as the basis for the Quarter Place Cabin design.
Tobacco Curing Barn
Tobacco was Virginia’s cash crop. During Patrick Henry’s ownership of Red Hill, the plantation yielded over 20,000 lbs. of tobacco each year. After the plant was cut from the ground, the stalks were split up the center and then hung over wooden sticks inside the tobacco barn to dry for 4-6 weeks. The leaves were cured with heat generated by fire, then pressed into large barrels known as hogsheads and sent to market to be sold.
Ordering Pit
The enslaved workers utilized the ordering pit, a covered, dirt-floored cellar, to bring cured tobacco into a state of “order” or pliableness during the late 19th and early 20th centuries in preparation for processing it for market. The ordering pit is located to the left of the trail.
