Day 24 VCCA: Crawford Cemetery at Sweet Briar College

In the Wallowas, I got “lost” enough to find a five-mile loop that turned into my favorite long walk. Once the snow melted, I got lost enough to find a 19-miler for my bike, which I repeated a few more times before I left the valley. In Michigan, getting lost involved getting my bike stuck in sand, because backroads in northern Michigan don’t turn to stone, they turn to sand. Now that was an adventure…almost as much as startling up wild boars while “getting lost” on Madrono Ranch in Texas.

Later, I learned that the Sweet Briar campus was a slave plantation:
“The Sweet Briar Plantation was owned by Elijah Fletcher and his family between the 1840s and 1900… He and his wife, Maria Crawford, [named] it ‘Sweet Briar’ after Maria’s favorite rose. The success of Fletcher’s farm relied on the labor of enslaved individuals, both African American and Native American (from the nearby Monacan Confederacy). Although initially opposed to the ‘peculiar institution,’ Elijah owned over 110 slaves upon his death in 1858. In 1858, his daughter Indiana inherited Sweet Briar [and in 1900], she died and gave the plantation and a generous cash donation to found a college for women in honor of her own daughter who died at the age of 16 in 1884.”
I also learned that there is an African-American slave cemetery somewhere on Sweet Briar’s campus. Now I know where my next bike ride will have to be…