Browse Items (38 total)

This photograph depicts another perspective of the cramped staircase used by the enslaved people of Gunston Hall.

This photograph depicts the narrow stairs that enslaved people of Gunston Hall were forced to use when moving between the first and second floors of George Mason IV's home.

Pictured in this photograph is a horizon view from the back of the manor. The area containing Mason family gardens in the 1700s extends away from the path lined by dwarf boxwood trees. In the distant left corner of the image is the Potomac River. On…

The burial sites surrounding the red rectangle may contain the graves of enslaved individuals of Gunston Hall, including people who grew up as children on the plantation.

This trial book shows the absence of George Mason IV, a presiding Justice of the Peace, in a court case involving the public acknowledgment of the ages of enslaved children, possibly for the purpose of reinforcing their rightless state or…

This 1751 court case focused on a dispute over property; proceedings involved the defendant Ann (Thomson) Mason (1699-1762) and plaintiff Sarah Brooke (1716-1768) of Essex County, Virginia.

In this letter to John Mason (1766-1849), one of George Mason IV's children, the patriarch of Gunston Hall tells his son that enslaved people on the plantation were inoculated against small pox. This originally hand-written document was typed in…

This ledger entry shows that George Mason IV's neighbor Martin Cockburn (1731-1820), a white planter born in Jamaica, paid Gunston Nell, an enslaved woman of Gunston Hall, for her expertise in delivering a baby. This originally hand-written document…