CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE — ANARCHA AT ALTO
[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.]
In this essay, we’ll begin to look at the final turn of Anarcha’s life. Where she would be married, where she would have her final children, and where she would become free.
For a long time, as I searched for Anarcha, I was stuck here, at Old Mansion, in town of Bowling Green, in Caroline County, Virginia. Anarcha lived here for about ten years, owned by the Maury family, until she was leased out during the Civil War.
There was really just one additional clue about her fate.
In late 1864, a man named Charles Mason wrote to James T. White, of Bowling Green, about an enslaved woman named Ankey, who had been leased for about a year.
As we saw in previous essays, “Bowling Green” was the name of Old Mansion before the town took the name, and James T. White had married into the Maury family, and became the owner of Old Mansion in 1862. This meant that, for a very brief time, James. T. White was Anarcha’s owner, though it seems that for all practical purposes she was still enslaved by the Maury family.
But probably in 1863, she was leased to Charles Mason — for a year. And after a years’ time, Mason was writing to White to find out what Anarcha’s owners wanted to do with her for the coming year.
Mason described her as sickly, and unable to work. But she had children with her, and a husband who doted on her.
There was one clue in the original letter that wasn’t in the transcription of the letter I found. It was a return address. Charles Mason was from a place called “Alto.”
I remained stuck right about there for quite a while. After 1864, it seemed that Anarcha just dropped off the map. The problem was that I couldn’t find any Charles Mason’s in Caroline County, Virginia.
In Bowling Green, I managed to find the graves of Anarcha’s enslaver, William L. Maury. He was here, with his wife, though they had actually lived most of the rest of their lives in New York, on Long Island. More research into the Maury family revealed a lot more about what Anarcha’s life in Bowling Green must have been like, but after 1864, I just didn’t know what happened to her.
That’s when I started driving around to counties around Caroline County, talking to archivists, talking to volunteers at local historical societies, and looking through records in probate offices.
And that’s when I came here. This is the country offices of King George County, Virginia, in the town of King George. It wasn’t particularly fancy, but there was a lot of history packed in here.
And here was Charles Mason, in census records, in slave schedules, and other documents.
And it turned out that Charles Mason had a plantation called Alto — and Alto, like Old Mansion in Bowling Green, had a horse track on its property.
There’s still actually an Alto Lane in King George, and it wasn’t that hard to find. But I was still a little stuck. What everyone in King George told me was that, for local history, the person to talk to was a woman named Elizabeth Lee.
And for quite a while, Elizabeth Lee wouldn’t answer my calls or return my emails.
But I was certain now. The search for Anarcha had lasted years by now, and I’d been staying in Bowling Green for some time. But it was time to give up those accommodations and come here, to King George, to find Elizabeth Lee.
Next time, before we do just that, we’ll dive a little bit more into who exactly Charles Mason was. It turned out he wasn’t just anybody — he was a Confederate spy, and he was married to a great-granddaughter of Thomas Jefferson. And there was a story to be found there that I had no idea I would uncover.
