Just a side note here to recommend a book that might be of interest, though it deals with the families in a local free black community. I would guess that because it is self-published, it has been excluded from most scholarly notice (but don't get me started on that hobby horse!).
My great, great, grandfather's journey to an island of freedom in the middle of slavery /
Col Lafayette Jones
2007
English Book xvi, 119 p. : ill., ports. ; 22 cm.
Williamsburg, Va. : Jenlaf Pub., ; ISBN: 9780615223377 (pbk.) 0615223370 (pbk.)
"When plantation owner, William Ludwell-Lee, made a provision in his will that his slaves would be set free and allowed to settle on a small subsidy farm that was part of his Green Springs Estate, he set in motion, locally, a trend that had begun in other parts of America. This subsidy farm, known as the Hot Water Tract, signaled the birth of a Free African American Settlement that subsisted within the larger enslaved community for more than 60 years prior to the Emancipation Proclamation....
It's been available from Col. Jones ($20), Jenlaf Publishing, 102 Flintlock Road, Williamsburg, VA 23185.
As a further side note to the mention of William Ludwell-Lee above, he seems to have tried to set up a school for local free blacks on the land he gave them, and tried to affiliate William and Mary with the school as its overseer (that would have been the second school for black children affiliated with the College, the first being the Bray School, from 1760). The courts, however, deemed the College was deemed ineligible to receive the benefaction Ludlow-Lee wanted to give it; the school seems never to have opened.
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Terry L.. Meyers, Chancellor Professor of English, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg Virginia 23187 757-221-3932
http://wmpeople.wm.edu/site/page/tlmeye/
http://www.ecologyfund.com/ecology/_ecology.html
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Have we got a college? Have we got a football team?....Well, we can't afford both. Tomorrow we start tearing down the college.
--Groucho Marx, in "Horse Feathers."
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