History

Land, Enslavement, and the Burying Ground

Indigenous Lands and Colonial Control

Pre-18th Century

The campus that has been home to the University of Richmond since the early 20th century is located within the upper Fall Line region of the James River. The Fall Line marked the meeting point of the traditional lands of the Monacan and Powhatan peoples. The land of the Monacan Indian Nation once extended west from the Fall Line to parts of present-day Augusta County. The Powhatan (along with confederated tribes) controlled vast territory to the north, south, and east to the Chesapeake Bay.

After the arrival of the English, members of these and other indigenous tribes were subjugated by colonial governments. Many were killed or violently displaced. The areas they once stewarded were divided into large tracts and distributed to the colony’s planter elites.

In 1619, the first group of kidnapped and enslaved Africans to be brought to the colonies arrived in Virginia and were sold in Old Port Comfort. This began 246 years of enslavement that served as the foundation of Virginia’s economy.

Enslavement & Landownership

1702 to 1865

In 1702, a colonial official granted the land now home to the University of Richmond to its first individual owner, a county sheriff and enslaver, who received the property in exchange for funding the importation of poor colonists, most of whom were likely indentured servants. Land transfers in the decades after his 1713 death provide the earliest records located to date showing connections between the land and enslavement. A father bequeathed the land and sixteen enslaved individuals to his son in 1742, and in January 1753, an owner sold the land with the stipulation that those he enslaved remain until the end of the growing season to bring in his last harvest.

By 1765, land consolidations extended Westham Plantation to 5,000 acres (close to 8 square miles). The property’s new co-owners agreed to “stock the land” with “thirty working negroes” (a number that would have excluded any small children and elderly individuals).

The earliest recovered name of an individual enslaved on this land is that of Robin, who escaped slavery at Westham Plantation in late 1766 or early 1767. Twenty years later, 44 men, women, and children were held at Westham, and were listed by name in a division of the plantation and the enslaved community.

The land was subsequently subdivided and transferred numerous times. The tract to the west of present day Little Westham Creek retained the name Westham and was the site of the Westham Plantation house. Only a small portion of that approximately 626-acre tract crossed the creek, forming a sharp angle that included the Burying Ground site. That line appears to have been drawn to keep the Burying Ground with the original plantation. Two subdivided tracts on the same side of present-day Westhampton Lake became associated with a milling operation on its shore. Both Westham and the mill side tracts changed hands numerous times over the next decades. Another property, at times referred to as Paradise Farm, included a section of present campus at the top of the lake.

Between the start of the 19th century and emancipation, hundreds of adults and children enslaved or leased by the landowners were forced to cultivate and harvest crops and to labor in enslavers’ homes (work that would have included childcare, meal preparation, cleaning, garden labor, making and tending fires throughout the house, and sewing). They drove wagons, piloted canal boats, and worked in commercial operations. Some were carpenters and blacksmiths. Others were sent to labor in owners’ coal pits and granite quarries. They raised families and formed deep connections despite the profound constraints on their lives and the constant threat of violence and separation from loved ones. At great risk, some escaped or exercised their autonomy in other ways.

The number of those held by enslavement era landowners continued to climb. An 1821 announcement of the auction of Westham Plantation included 50 individuals enslaved there. In 1832, another set of Westham owners planned the auction of 53 adults and children, listing their names and family groups in a liquidation document. The Henrico County sheriff and Westham neighbors appraised those enslaved by another landowner in 1846, listing 122 individuals by name and organizing them by family group. Between the mid-1840s and emancipation in 1865, more than 200 people were held by the last enslavers to own multiple tracts, parts of which now form current campus.

Land Transitions

1865 to 1912

In the decades following the 1865 Federal defeat of the Confederacy that fully emancipated the enslaved, some once held on and around the present campus purchased land from their former enslavers, and many formed communities in the area. These emancipation towns grew over decades and included Ziontown and Westwood.

After the 1867 bankruptcy of the last enslavement era owner of Westham Plantation, the land changed hands many times. In 1897, it was purchased by William Washington Browne (1849-1897), leader of the African American mutual benefit organization, the Grand Fountain of the United Order of the True Reformers. The tract included the Burying Ground. The True Reformers’ Richmond operations included a bank, a theater, and a newspaper, and Browne intended the former plantation house to become a home for the elderly and orphans. While the first resident did not arrive until 1902, the organization developed the farm, used the house and surrounding property for large membership gatherings, and planned Brownesville, intended to be a neighborhood of 130 lots for Black homeowners between the southwest portion of the present campus and Ridge Road.

In 1901, the mill side tracts, one of which adjoined the Burying Ground, were purchased by the Westhampton Railway Company for a planned amusement park intended to attract riders to the end of the rail line. The ideal design for park roads depended on the acquisition of the Burying Ground site, which sat at the far edge of the True Reformers’ Westham Farm. The True Reformers set a price for the desired acreage, but the railway stockholders refused to pay and instead obtained legislative approval to condemn and seize the land. By then, however, the park plan had been scaled back, and the Burying Ground remained in the hands of the True Reformers for seven additional years. Documents detailing the conflict refer to the site as the “negro burying ground” and note a Virginia law forbidding road construction through burial places. A detailed map drawn for park development gave the location of the Burying Ground and designated it with the words “Grave Yard.”

By 1909, the short-lived railway park was in receivership and the True Reformers were experiencing organizational and financial upheavals that necessitated the sale of what was then known as Westham Farm. At the same time, Richmond College, located in what is now the city’s Fan District, was seeking a new site for its campus. A syndicate of area residents consolidated Westham Farm and the park property for the development of “villa sites” in what was advertised as a “White Man’s Settlement,” a reflection of the new neighborhood’s deed covenants which ensured the exclusion of Black homeowners. In 1910, the syndicate provided two large tracts of land to Richmond College for five dollars each. For ten dollars, the college acquired the 251 acres that included the Burying Ground. 

Campus Development and Site Desecrations

1912 to mid-1950s

In spring 1912, as plans for roads on the new campus moved forward under the supervision of J. Taylor Ellyson – head of the college’s Board of Trustees and the chair of the committee directing campus construction – a surveyor compiled sketches of key land features. In one, he noted two of the Burying Ground’s boundaries in relation to a railway spur track constructed to bring in supplies. Three months later, during early landscaping and roadbuilding work, laborers clearing brush encountered “at least twenty graves” in the path of a planned road. The site supervisor notified Boston-based landscape designer Warren H. Manning. Manning alerted Ellyson and recommended that the human remains be moved to a cemetery. Because he also feared what students might do to other graves on the site once the campus opened, he advised that the entire area be cleared of remains. “Knowledge of this,” he wrote, “cannot be hidden.” In his reply, Ellyson acknowledged the Virginia law protecting graveyards from road construction and said he would look into the question but indicated that he did not anticipate “any trouble in regard to this graveyard.” The road appears to have been constructed as originally designed.

A 1935 sociological study of the nearby community of Ziontown (Howard H. Harlan, Zion Town [sic]: A Study in Human Ecology) included a description of campus laborers uncovering a “pile of bones and skulls” when digging near the Westhampton Lake dam several years before. The remains were described as those of “slaves” once interred in the “old burying ground.” The description points to the possibility that these were relocated remains from the 1912 roadbuilding project.

When the university widened the same road in 1947, two graves containing what one journalist called “skeletons of slaves” were revealed. Two city newspapers reported the discovery, citing university officials who described the area as a “burying ground for slaves in the Ante Bellum period.” The remains were reburied a “few hundred feet” away, though the location of this reburial is not known.

In the mid-1950s, a university project to upgrade the steam tunnel system revealed what an engineer on site recalled as “a series of unmarked graves.” The discovery stopped the work and the “university arranged to have the bodies buried someplace else.” Again, the location of the reburial is not known.

Research & Memorialization

2018 to 2025

Extensive research on the Burying Ground and the connections between enslavement and the land that became the University of Richmond campus began in fall 2018. On April 23, 2025, the Burying Ground Memorial was dedicated. The process over the intervening years – research, committee work, the location and involvement of descendants, community discussions of design principles and concepts, ground penetrating radar (GPR) studies that confirmed remaining graves at the site, final design, and memorial construction – is detailed on the About page.