CHAPTER EIGHTEEN — ANARCHA AT OLD MANSION

[The Anarcha Archive is a series of short essays about the sources for Say Anarcha. A great deal more about the sources can be found at AnarchaArchive.com.]

Up to now, we’ve followed Anarcha as she left Alabama, and stayed for a time in Richmond. Around 1854, she came to be owned by a man named William L. Maury. Today, we’ll be looking at where she lived for the next few years of her life.

When I first went to Virginia to search for Anarcha’s later life, I stumbled across several Anarchas, but none of them fit with the Anarcha who appeared in the case register of Woman’s Hospital in New York.

This woman, however, provided an important clue. This was a woman named Anarcha, married to a man named Goodwin, with a daughter Henrietta; And then I found a record for the same woman, husband named Goodwin, daughter, Henrietta — but now she was called Ankey:

In Virginia, Ankey was a shortened form of Anarcha. That would be true of our Anarcha, as well.

In New York, we saw Anarca, belonging to William L. Maury of Caroline County, Virginia. And here we see a reference to “Wm L. Maury’s woman Anky, and three children, came here from Dctr. White’s last night.”

This is actually from the farm book, kind of a farmer’s diary, of William G. Maury of Old Mansion in Bowling Green, Virginia. In an earlier essay, we saw that William L. Maury’s father had purchased Old Mansion in 1842.

And this new reference, to “Ankey” coming to Old Mansion with three children, comes just after Anarcha is discharged from Woman’s Hospital in New York. The discharge happens on January 22, 1857, and the arrival at Old Mansion takes place on March 12, 1857.

But the record suggests that Anarcha came to Old Mansion sometime earlier than that.

The Maurys are probably one of the best documented families in the country. There are huge troves of letters between family members in archives across Virginia, and in other locations as well.

Prior to Anarcha’s time in New York City, the Maury farm book shows when a cabin was being constructed for Ankey.

There are other references to her in the letters as well — usually, there’s a description of her house being “out” and away from other houses, probably even apart from the other slave cabins on the Old Mansion property.

Old Mansion is very well recorded as well. It was originally a very large plantation, and a stopping point for George Washington, as he journeyed from Richmond to D.C. A very famous racehorse was bred here, and the horsetrack in front of the house is one of the birthplaces of modern thoroughbred racing.

The property was smaller by the time Anarcha lived here, but there were still approximately twenty enslaved people living on the Old Mansion grounds in the late 1850s. The locations of the original quarters have been identified, and there is another site on the property where a cabin likely stood, but it’s impossible to pinpoint the exactly location with certainty.

The problem is that Old Mansion is still held in private hands. The current owners aren’t particularly interested in the history of the home.

Still other letters indicate that Anarcha — Ankey — was working as a midwife at this time.

The whole picture is a bit much to go into in these essays, but, building off of documents we showed in previous essays, what seems most likely is that William L. Maury — Lewis — purchased Anarcha when he believed he was going to be re-marrying.

Anarcha, and her daughter, Delia, were sent first to Old Mansion, and then, when Lewis did get married — in New York — he sent for the woman he had purchased to be his wife’s nurse. And in New York, Anarcha was sent again to Woman’s Hospital.

After, Anarcha returned to Old Mansion, and this is where Lewis’s wife would eventually come, particularly as Lewis resigned from the Navy, and the Civil War began to approach.

But there’s still that mystery of the farm book.

Ankey and three children. Well, Lewis had two daughters by his first wife, who died in childbirth. If Anarcha was traveling back to Old Mansion, it makes perfect sense that she would be escorting Lewis’s daughters.

Anarcha’s own daughter, Delia, would have been the third.