According to researchers at the Thoroughgood House, enslaved people were a key part of the everyday functions of the historic plantation, but there are no first-hand accounts of their experiences.
The information is part of the Thoroughgood House’s recent Focus Tour on the role of enslaved people in the Thoroughgood family’s history.
They hope to give attendees a more complete picture of the history of Virginia Beach through these tours, which highlight lesser-known stories of people and events that took place around the home.
“We have to talk about everybody who lived here,” said tour guide Mary Taylor.
“Tonight’s was the enslaved perspective, and that’s a huge population that lived here, that made this property work and was the backbone of its economic system.”
The Thoroughgood House was the home of colonial leader and one of the founders of Princess Anne County, Adam Thoroughgood.
The Thoroughgood plantation included an unknown number of enslaved people, but is typically considered one of the largest slave-owning families in Princess Anne County. The Focus Tour sought to examine the differences between how the house is usually viewed and how the enslaved population may have experienced it.
Historians have very little information about enslaved people who worked for and around the Thoroughgoods. There is no record of their housing and very few records of their occupations, lives or relationships with the Thoroughgood family. Researchers do have some names and approximate monetary values of the enslaved on wills and estate plans.
“The enslaved persons have been rendered as silent actors in the story of this house,” Taylor said.
For tour guides like Taylor, reconciling the troubling history of slavery with the longstanding impacts of people from the Thoroughgood family is difficult, but it comes down to perspective.
“So often we think of things in modern times…[slavery] is unacceptable to us, and while that does not make it acceptable back then, it was seen as part of the reality of the time,” she said.
Much of the tour focused on demonstrating the working and living conditions of enslaved people on the property, hypothesizing their roles and trying to connect the dots of their stories with the little information they have.
“It’s not to say that the white male perspective is not important, it’s just that that’s the one that has traditionally been incorporated into every aspect of history,” Taylor said.
The Focus Tour included information about an enslaved woman, Phoebe, who was set to be freed upon John Thoroughgood Jr’s passing in 1800. She was likely his personal attendant, and he arranged for her to be paid $20 annually (approximately $530 today).
After that, information on Phoebe is hard to come by, other than in a lawsuit brought by the executors of Thoroughgood Jr’s will, which sought money to ensure that Phoebe received her compensation.
Later this month, the Thoroughgood House will hold more Focus Tours; one called Plantapalooza to highlight Virginia’s agricultural history and another about espionage during the Revolutionary War.
