Deed of gift for an enslaved woman named Lucy by Maynadier Mason: 1850-05-22-
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Deed of gift for an enslaved woman named Lucy by Maynadier Mason, C0363, Special Collections Research Center, George Mason University Libraries.
The donor is unknown.
Processing completed by Amanda Brent in June 2019. EAD markup completed by Amanda Brent in June 2019. This collection used to be a part of the Virginia historical documents collection, C0034.
The enslavement of individuals of African descent - as well as other peoples of color - was legalized in the United States in 1641, with African Americans being the majority of enslaved individuals around 1708. The demand for enslaved individuals to work on southern plantations in the U.S. began in 1694, which only increased over time. In 1861 the Civil War erupted, one of the key issues of the war being states' rights as they related to the institution of slavery. In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclimation, which declared all enslaved peoples in Confederate states free, but this did not end slavery entirely. Two years later on December 18, 1865, slavery in the United States was officially abolished with the 13th Amendment. Despite the legal freedom of African Americans post-Amendment, the racist treatment and oppression of African Americans did not wane, resulting in Jim Crow law and eventually catalyzing the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
Maynadier Mason was the son of John Mason and the grandson of George Mason IV. His brother was the U.S. senator John Murray Mason.
Deed of gift for an enslaved woman named Lucy by Maynadier Mason, written on March 29, 1853. In the deed, Mason - a resident of Fairfax County, Virginia - gives Lucy to his maternal aunt through marriage, Mary Ann Clark, who lived in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. Lucy is described as a twenty six-year old woman who Clark will enslave "for and during her life[.]"
The Special Collections Research Center also holds other collections related to the topic of slavery in the United States, including the
This is a single item collection.
A digitized version of this document can be found here:
"Causes of the Civil War." PBS.
"A History of Slavery in the United States." National Geographic.
Urofsky, Melvin I. "Jim Crow law." Encyclopaedia Britannica.