Freedom in Alexandria | Bottoms Neighborhood | Hayti Neighborhood
African American Freedom in Alexandria
While only 52 free blacks lived in Alexandria in 1790, the number continued to increase as newly freed people moved from rural areas to the cities of the Upper South. By 1840, the town’s 1,627 free blacks had created at lest two churches, four neighborhoods and many businesses. Alexandria’s newly freed black families acted swiftly to secure basic necessities: individual freedom, independent households near other free blacks, freedom for family and friends, long-term lease or ownership of properties, education, and spiritual freedom through separate church buildings and self-help groups.
Members of Alexandria’s Quaker community, prohibited by their beliefs from owning slaves, frequently purchased people out of slavery and emancipated them. The location of the earliest free black neighborhoods--the Bottoms and Hayti--can be traced to two white families who rented and eventually sold land to free blacks. Excavations in the Bottoms and Hayti have yielded tangible remains of early free black families.
The first free black families moved into the low-lying area in Alexandria’s southwest quadrant known as the Bottoms in 1799. In 1979 archaeologists from the City of Alexandria and the University of Maryland excavated portions of several blocks in the Bottoms which were slated for urban renewal. One important discovery was a well made of three wooden barrels with metal hoops, found at 916 Gibbon Street. Once used as a privy, the well was full of domestic trash, such as broken plates and food remains, discarded by the family of Moses and Nancy Hanless. These artifacts, discarded in the 1840s, are the only ones found in Alexandria from a well on a free black property.
The Hanless family’s trash was quite different than that discarded by the slave, Harriet Williams. The Hanless’ well had fewer serving dishes, and fewer of the expensive imports found in the Williams’ well. Their dishes were similar to those used by middle class white families, but with more inexpensive hand painted and plain wares, and without matched sets of dishes.
Whiteware pitcher, annular finger painted design, English, ca. 1830-1860.
Annular ware, also called Mocha, was first produced around 1795.
An inexpensive ware usually used for hollow wares such as
mugs, bowls, and pitchers, it is found more abundantly on African American sites,
as well as at Alexandria’s tavern sites.
City archaeologists and volunteers worked for three years to study and excavate historic Hayti, including an 1832 wood frame duplex at 420-422 South Royal Street. The excavated foundations document that the homes each had two rooms with fireplaces on the main floor and one room upstairs. As many as ten people lived in one of these small homes at one time.
As in the Bottoms, the dishes and glassware were inexpensive and unmatched, and had seen many years of use. At least one plate was purchased from a Quaker china merchant, Robert" Hartshorne Miller, who also sold many of the Hayti residents their homes. Buttons found near a row of post-holes show the location of backyard laundry lines. Musket balls, a gunflint, a fishing sinker and animal bones show that the diet was supplemented with game and fish. Also found were two pierced coins. These were common items of personal adornment in parts of Africa, and have been found on a number of African American sites.
Pierced and carved silver dime, or Love Token.
Rebecca at the Well Tea Pot
This Rockingham tea pot was made
in Baltimore between ca.1846 and 1880.
