Connecting with Clermont

We'd love to hear from you, please contact us if you'd like to share or volunteer at Clermont.

Connect to Clermont

General

We are always happy to hear from people and answer questions about Clermont. Please use the form below.

Family Connections?

We are especially interested in hearing from people whose ancestor family members are thought to have been enslaved at Clermont, because we have no records about the purchase, sale , or life of people who were enslaved at this site, 10-36 people at a time, between at least 1753 and 1865 (in the 1860 U.S. Census, 28 persons, including ten under the age of 12). In the late 1950’s, a member of the then-owner family deliberately destroyed all the family and farm records about the people who were enslaved on this site. We do have some first names from receipts for medicine and clothing, and from a few owner-family letters, plus some estate and other documents. We have only been able to identify two individuals. One was Josephine Williams, enslaved as a seamstress at Clermont, who developed her own business after Emancipation, and who helped broker the creation on Clermont land of the freed-people’s community of Josephine City between Clermont and Berryville in 1870. The other was James Lee, who was sold by Clermont’s owner in 1855 to the notorious Alexandria slave trader Joseph Bruin, and who escaped from Bruin’s slave jail and holding pens in that year. A fugitive slave poster from Bruin promised a $100 reward in September of 1855, and another promised $300 in March of 1856, but there is no evidence James Lee was ever recaptured.

We are also very interested in hearing from people whose family members or ancestors have otherwise worked at Clermont, lived at Clermont in some capacity, or are related to one of the owner families.

We have heard from descendants of the Vance, Wadlington, and McCormick-Williams families, but not from descendants of Edward or William Snickers. We also have detailed memories and photos of the farm in 1939-48 from two of the children of Gilbert Royston, who was the tenant farming Clermont at that time.