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|THE ROBINSON HOUSE |Archeology and Ethnography Program |

| |National Park Service |

The Robinson House

"The Robinson House is used as a Yankee hospital. In a visit there this morning, I found 100 of them [Yankees] packed in the rooms as thick as sardines.... The wounds of the majority were undressed, the blood had dried upon their persons and garments, and altogether there the most horrible set of beings it has been my lot to encounter."

Felix Gregory de Fontaine, Charleston Daily Courier, September 11, 1862.

Setting the Scene

James Robinson

On July 21, 1861, as the First Battle of Manassas raged around the Robinson House, James Robinson sent his family to safety at a nearby home. Unable to join them, Robinson hid under a bridge, emerging after the battle to find 13 Confederate soldiers lying dead in his front yard.

Barely one year later, in late August 1862, the Robinson House served as a shelter for Union dead and wounded during the Second Battle of Manassas. Despite the ravaged landscape, James Robinson and his family found the spirit to overcome the war’s destruction and to fashion for themselves an identity that was uniquely African and American.

For nearly a century, the Robinson House, located in what is now the Manassas National Battlefield Park in Manassas, Virginia, was home to the descendants of James Robinson.

Born a free African American in 1799, Robinson served a short indenture as a young man before working in a Virginia tavern where he earned the $484.94 needed to purchase 170 acres of land near Bull Run. In 1842, he built a small log cabin, which was enlarged and renovated several times over the years.

Through hard work and perseverance, the Robinson family turned the surrounding land into a prosperous farm, making James Robinson the wealthiest African American in the Manassas area in the mid-19th century.

Archeology

Preservation and Protection

Very few pre-Civil War free African American homesteads exist for archeological study, making the Robinson House unusual. According to the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, federal agencies must properly maintain historical and cultural resources located on lands they manage or own. Therefore, the home's location within the Manassas National Battlefield Park prevented it from being torn down.

The historic house was occupied by Robinson’s family until the early 20th century, eventually becoming the victim of arson in 1993. The family, which maintained a deep connection to the site, was understandably disturbed by the home’s near-total destruction. Sensitive to their feelings, park officials contacted the Robinson family after the 1993 fire in order to reach a consensus about what to do with the site.

Park officials and family members were faced with two choices: stabilize the still-standing parts of the house and rebuild the portions that were destroyed by the fire, or tear down the remaining structure and conduct archeological and architectural studies of the material remains.

Rebuilding the house would reestablish a visual memorial to the family and other African Americans, but archeological research could reveal new insights into the changing lifeways of free African Americans. It could also provide a more deeply researched commemoration of their lives.

Working together, park officials and family members decided to proceed with the archeological research, which included excavation, architectural studies, and oral history interviews with James Robinson’s descendants.

An Amazing Find

While dismantling parts of the house for excavation and architectural study, an incredible find surfaced. Wedged behind the insulation in the attic wall, awaiting discovery, were dozens of Robinson family account ledgers, letters, bills, and invoices – some dating back to the 1830s.

Despite being worn and yellowed by time, the documents provide invaluable information about James Robinson’s business transactions. These papers, often referred to as the Robinson Papers, supply evidence of the ways in which free African Americans negotiated their difficult social and economic circumstances and attest to the strength and resiliency of the human spirit.

Shaping Identity

Consumer Goods

The things we buy and use express who we are, often revealing and reinforcing our cultural or ethnic identity. Archeologists studying material remains from the Robinson House gained insight into the ways in which family members expressed their identity while negotiating their position as African Americans during the turbulent 19th century.

Similar to people today, they expressed themselves in a variety of ways—from clothing style and language to material goods and architecture. Ceramic sherds and broken glass, for example, provide clues to the family’s economic strategies and social aspirations by indicating to archeologists the things they bought and used.

Like other 19th-century American families, the Robinsons followed the dominant dining standards of the time. Rather than buying entire china sets, they used a few refined ceramic dishes in the latest style, and purchased similar pieces to complement them.

Architecture

Like the goods we buy, the way we organize our houses and the space around them may also be an indicator of cultural identity. Aspects of African heritage can be seen in the manner in which African Americans constructed their homes and used the surrounding space.

Many African peoples, both enslaved and free, lived in small houses that opened onto communal areas or yards. While their homes were used for storage and sleeping, the communal spaces, yards, and porches were used for cooking, household chores, and other domestic activities.

These external spaces were considered extensions of the house, serving as places where family members could socialize with others in the community while they worked. In this way, social ties with other African Americans were strengthened and their sense of community was reinforced. This may have been the Robinson family practice as well.

One of the most noticeable features of the original Robinson House was its small size - only 1½ stories with 400’ of living space and a porch. According to 1850 census data, nine people lived in James Robinson’s small home.

While the choice to build such a small structure may have been governed in part by socioeconomic constraints, cultural ideas regarding what constituted a proper homestead were probably as important as economic considerations in determining the layout and size of the structure. It is believed that the Robinson family chose to keep a small home, despite having the means to construct a larger house, in order to remain unobtrusive and guard their privacy in a predominantly white community.

Africanisms

In the colonial era, some of the largest ethnicities to arrive in the colonies were peoples of West and Central Africa who were brought in as slaves. While enslaved, Africans interacted with each other, as well as with Europeans and Native Americans. They mingled their varied cultural practices in creative ways that were both subtle and obvious, and left a lasting imprint on American culture.

These imprints, often called Africanisms, are elements of culture that are traceable to an African origin. Through these Africanisms, African Americans maintained their unique cultural identities while also establishing themselves as an integral part of America’s cultural landscape. Archeological evidence for Africanisms is varied and complex. Two examples are found in colonoware and "mancala".

Colonoware, a well-known Africanism, is a low-fired, unglazed earthenware produced and used in the 18th and 19th centuries. It has been found along the east coast of the United States and in the Caribbean. Colonoware takes many forms, including bowls, plates, jugs, and pipes.

In the Chesapeake and Mid-Atlantic regions, these various forms have been found at sites associated with enslaved African Americans as well as sites where free African Americans are known to have lived. At Manassas National Battlefield Park, archeologists have found colonoware at several African American sites.

Archeologists often disagree about the correct interpretation of colonoware because this type of ceramic may have been made and used by different groups in different regions.

Some archeologists believe that colonoware represents traditional African potting techniques, indicating the continuity of an African identity despite enslavement. Others argue that colonoware is the product of cultural interaction between African Americans, Europeans, and Native Americans, sometimes exhibiting characteristics of all three cultures. Still other experts suggest that colonoware was produced exclusively by Native Americans and found its way into African American hands through barter and trade.

During excavations at the Robinson House site, archeologists discovered a ceramic sherd that may be colonoware. Given the controversy surrounding colonoware, it cannot be conclusively identified as the type associated solely with African American traditions. The sherd, however, provides intriguing clues to the possibility that the Robinsons used colonoware and were involved in its distribution among African Americans of the time.

Oral Traditions

The Robinsons Remember

Oral history is an effective research tool that archeologists use when descendants of people who lived in the past are willing to share their memories, family stories, and other information passed down over generations. The information gleaned from these interviews reveals details and provides insights into the past that documentary sources and physical evidence alone do not offer.

Typically, archeologists ask questions which will help them interpret the artifacts and physical history of a site, or will help them put the time period being studied into a better social context.

In 1995 and 1996, archeologists interested in the changing lifeways of free African Americans during the late 19th and early 20th centuries undertook an in-depth study of the Robinson House site. A major part of their research included oral history interviews with members of the Robinson family who had once lived in the house or visited it as children.

Participants included James Robinson’s great-grandchildren (Edna Chloe, Oswald Robinson, and Louie Robinson) and great-great-grandchildren (Romaine Lewis and Richard Robinson).

Through these interviews, archeologists learned a great deal about the physical layout of the Robinson farm during the early 20th century.

Although archeologists knew from historic maps that a number of outbuildings comprised the Robinson homestead, they discovered the specific functions of these structures from the interviewees.

Romaine Lewis remembered “a hen house, smokehouse, [a] meat house, [a] corn crib, and [a] barn” as well as “chickens, turkeys, geese, guineas, and ducks” that roamed around the yard. Information about the trees, flowers, and vegetables that the Robinsons planted offered insight into both the appearance of the landscape and the family’s daily diet.

According to Oswald Robinson, the Robinson farm workday was from sunup to sundown and consisted of chores, school, and play. Unfortunately, farming was not always lucrative and better economic opportunities could be found in large urban centers like New York, Baltimore, and Detroit. Edna Chloe, James Robinson's great granddaughter, remembered that some of the Robinson men eventually gave up farming in the hopes of finding "decent jobs" in the cities.

The Drover’s Tavern

“[James Robinson] is a good deal of a public man, and does more business than most people,” Albert Flagler, one of Robinson’s neighbors, said in 1872.

During an oral history interview in 1982, Oswald Robinson, James Robinson’s great grandson, recalled that his great grandfather once operated a drover’s tavern on the Robinson farm. Situated as it was on the busy Warrenton Turnpike, Robinson’s tavern provided weary livestock drovers, stagecoach drivers, and farmers traveling to market with lodging and a hearty meal.

Some of the Robinson Papers discovered when the fire-damaged Robinson house was dismantled support Oswald Robinson’s recollections and indicate numerous occasions between 1850 and 1851 when James Robinson purchased items that may have been used to serve his tavern guests.

Others sources of information about the drover’s tavern include a sketch map by Beverly Robinson, another great grandson of James Robinson. Lillian Robinson, James Robinson’s great granddaughter, remembers that the tavern, “was down on the Pike in front of [the] house.”

Using the Robinson family’s oral histories, archeologists attempted to locate the site of the drover’s tavern through a systematic metal detector survey. After mapping the locations of various 19th-century artifacts like hand wrought iron nails and horseshoes, the archeologists studied the artifacts’ placement and distribution to establish possible sites for the drover’s tavern. Ultimately, two promising sites were discovered, and further excavation may conclude that one was the actual location of James Robinson’s drover’s tavern.

The Robinson House—A Portrait of African American Heritage

Learn More

Kids

Ferris, Jeri

2003 Demanding Justice: A Story about Mary Ann Shadd Cary. Carolrhoda Books, Minneapolis.

Forten, Charlotte L.

2000 A Free Black Girl Before the Civil War: The Diary of Charlotte Forten, 1854. Edited by Christy Steele and Kerry Graves. Blue Earth Books, Mankato, Minnesota.

King, Wilma

2000 Children of the Emancipation. Carolrhoda Books, Minneapolis.

Loeper, John J.

1999 Meet the Webbers of Philadelphia. Benchmark Books, New York.

Lowery, Linda

2002 One More Valley, One More Hill: The Story of Aunt Clara Brown. Random House, New York.

Rappaport, Doreen

2000 Freedom River. Hyperion Books for Children, New York.

General

Barrigher, Clara Frances

1999 The Forgotten, Despised, and Chosen: The Free Black Class in the U.S.A. During the Slavery Period (1619-1865). C.F. Barrigher, Pleasantville, New Jersey.

Berlin, Ira and Leslie S. Rowland, Editors

1997 Families and Freedom: A Documentary History of African-American Kinship in the Civil War Era. New Press, New York.

Berlin, Ira

1974 Slaves without Masters: Tthe Free Negro in the Antebellum South. Pantheon Books, New York.

Bethel, Elizabeth Rauh

1997 The Roots of African-American Identity: Memory and History in Free Antebellum Communities. St. Martin's Press, New York.

Bogger, Tommy

1997 Free Blacks in Norfolk, Virginia, 1790-1860: The Darker Side of Freedom. University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville.

Bracey, John H., Jr., August Meier, and Elliott Rudwick

1971 Free Blacks in America, 1800-1860. Wadsworth Publishing, Belmont, California.

Brown, Letitia Woods

1972 Free Negroes in the District of Columbia, 1790-1846. Oxford University Press, New York.

Bruce, Henry Clay

1996 The New Man; Twenty-nine Years a Slave; Twenty-nine Years a Freeman; Recollections. Introduction by William B. Gatewood. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, Nebraska.

Clamorgan, Cyprian

1999 The Colored Aristocracy of St. Louis by Cyprian Clamorgan. Edited with an introduction by Julie Winch. University of Missouri Press, Columbia, Missouri.

Curry, Leonard P.

1981 The Free Black in Urban America, 1800-1850: The Shadow of the Dream. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Deetz, James

1993 Flowerdew Hundred: The Archaeology of a Virginia Plantation, 1619-1864. University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville.

Delaney, Ted, and Phillip Wayne Rhodes

2001 Free Blacks of Lynchburg, Virginia, 1805-1865. Warwick House, Lynchburg, Virginia.

DuBois, W.E.B.

1992 Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880. Introduction by David Levering Lewis. Atheneum, New York.

DuBois, W.E.B.

2003 The Souls of Black Folk. Fine Communications, New York.

Ferguson, Leland G.

1992 Uncommon Ground: Archaeology and Early African America, 1650-1800. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C.

Fields, Barbara J.

1985 Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground: Maryland during the Nineteenth Century. Yale University Press, New Haven.

Finkelman, Paul (Editor)

1989 Free Blacks in a Slave Society (Articles on American Slavery, Volume 17). Garland, New York.

Franklin, John Hope

1969 The Free Negro in North Carolina, 1790-1860. Russell and Russell, New York.

Freeman, Rhoda Golden

1994 The Free Negro in New York City in the Era Before the Civil War. Studies in African American History and Culture. Garland, New York.

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1998 Chained to the Rock of Adversity: To Be Free, Black & Female in the Old South. University of Georgia Press, Athens, Georgia.

Henry, Christopher E.

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Horton, James Oliver, and Lois E. Horton

1997 In Hope of Liberty: Culture, Community and Protest among Northern Free Blacks, 1700-1860. Oxford University Press, New York.

Jackson, Luther Porter

1971 Free Negro Labor and Property Holding in Virginia, 1830-1860. Russell and Russell, New York.

Landers, Jane G.

1996 Against the Odds: Free Blacks in the Slave Societies of the Americas. Frank Cass, Portland, Oregon.

Lanusse, Armand

1945 Creole Voices; Poems in French by Free Men of Color. First published in 1845. Edited by Edward Maceo Coleman with introduction by H. Carrington Lancaster. The Associated Publishers, Washington, D.C.

Mandle, Jay R.

1992 Not Slave, Not Free: The African American Economic Experience since the Civil War. Duke University Press, Durham, North Carolina.

Mintz, Sidney, and Richard Price

1992 The Birth of African-American Culture: An Anthropological Perspective. Beacon Press, Boston.

Morgan, Phillip (Editor)

1986 Don't Grieve After Me: The Black Experience in Virginia, 1619-1986. Hampton University, Hampton, Virginia.

Orser, Charles E.

1988 The Material Basis of the Postbellum Tenant Plantation: Historical Archaeology in the South Carolina Piedmont. University of Georgia Press, Athens, Georgia.

Rael, Patrick

2002 Black Identity and Black Protest in the Antebellum North. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill.

Russell, John H.

1969 The Free Negro in Virginia, 1619-1865. Dove, New York.

Savage, Beth L. (Editor)

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Stevenson, Brenda

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1983 Free Frank : A Black Pioneer on the Antebellum Frontier. University Press of Kentucky, Lexington.

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1998 The History of Black Business in America: Capitalism, Race, Entrepreneurship. MacMillan Library Reference USA, New York.

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2000 Creating Freedom: Material Culture and African American Identity at Oakley Plantation, 1840-1950. Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge.

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2002 Gentleman of Color: The Life of James Forten. Oxford University Press, New York.

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1971 The Free Negro in Maryland, 1634-1860. Octagon Books, New York.

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The Robinson Papers

James Robinson and an enslaved woman named Susan Gaskins had six children, all born into slavery. Susan and four of the children were the property of John Lee, a resident of the Manassas area. Found with the Robinson Papers, this contract documents Robinson’s purchase of his son Tasco from Lee for $30. Terms such as “hire” or “bound out” are believed to mean “indenture”. Eventually, Robinson purchased two of his sons from Lee, while the remainder of his family was legally entrusted to him upon Lee's death in 1847.

This contract is a poignant reminder of slavery’s painful separation of family members and of the extraordinary lengths to which African Americans went in order to maintain their family ties.

Transcription

“On or before the first day of January next we promise and bind our slves our heirs or assigns &c to pay or cause to be paid unto John Lee his heirs or assigns the Just sum of thirty dollars for the hire of a servant boy named tasco and and we further bind our selves to furnish said tasco with the custommary clothing and [?] taxes this first February eighttenhundred and forty six”

Memory in Stone

In spite of the 1993 fire, the east chimney remained standing. Still carved in it were the initials of several Robinson family members. Some initials may belong to one of the sons who were taken out of the state when they were sold as slaves.

According to family tradition, one of James Robinson’s sons walked from Louisiana to the family home in Virginia after emancipation.

Although the chimney was ultimately dismantled due to structural instability, it had defied time and arson. It stood like the Robinson family itself, as a symbol of strength and perseverance.

Consumer Choices

Most of the glass fragments found at the Robinson House site were from Mason jars, suggesting that the family preserved much of the food they grew. During the 19th century, it was common for families, both African American and white, to preserve their homegrown fruits and vegetables for later use. However, it is also possible that by canning their own food the Robinsons were able to avoid a potentially discriminatory marketplace.

Despite their self-sufficiency, archeological evidence also indicates that the family consumed brand name, mass-produced goods like Vaseline, Smith Brothers cough syrup, and Pepsi Cola.

Changes Through Time

ca 1849

The original Robinson House was small - only 1½ stories with 400’ of living space and a porch. According to 1850 census data, nine people lived in James Robinson’s small home.

ca 1862

The small Civil War-era house and its outbuildings formed an outdoor work area used for cooking, household chores, and other domestic activities. This extended the house, allowing family members to socialize with others in the community while they worked.

ca 1871

After the war, the Robinsons more than doubled the size of their house with two additions. The larger of the two was built in the early 1870s and likely contained additional living space.

ca 1888

The second of the two additions, built in the 1880s, was much smaller and probably enclosed part of the work area that formerly was outside.

ca 1926

In the mid-1920s, the house was completely rebuilt. Although the footprint of the house remained essentially the same size as it had been in the 1870s, the house now featured a full second story. In addition, the porch had been moved from the back or south face of the house to the front.

ca 1993

In 1993, arsonists burned the Robinson House. The family, though deeply affected, agreed with Park Service officials that an appropriate monument would be the archeological, architectural, documentary, and oral studies done to learn more about the lifeways of 19th-century African Americans.

Mancala

One Africanism, mancala, is still played today and is believed to be one of the world’s oldest games. African people often played with pebbles or cowry shells, using hollows scooped into the earth or pecked into stone. African peoples brought their variations of mancala with them to the United States during the 17th and 18th centuries.

Archeologists at several plantation sites in Virginia have identified pieces of glass and ceramic modified into gaming pieces. Archeologists working at the Robinson House also recovered a number of such small items that may have been used as mancala pieces. By playing mancala, families such as the Robinsons could maintain cultural ties within the African American community as well as recall their cultural ties to Africa. They also contributed to the creation of a lasting Africanism.

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