A new chapter for a legacy

Bethany Pace’s family legacy really hit her during a visit to Sweet Briar College last fall.

Pace is a descendant of the Fletchers, one of the slave families who worked on the Sweet Briar plantation in the 1800s before it became a college.

During the visit, Pace snapped a photo of her then 3-year-old daughter, Daphne, in front of an old slave cabin that still stands on the campus, behind the president’s house.

“It was this juxtaposition of this very vibrant girl … who has no worry or concern of any limitation, standing in front of this cabin, which is really a symbol of limitation.”

She says it was touching to know that her ancestors’ work has resulted in an institution that educates women.

“Our family’s labor, you see evidence of it in these wonderfully talented women who graduate from the college,” she says.

As she learns more about her family’s history, “I continue to be transformed,” Pace says.

She wants the rest of her large, extended family to feel the same way and is trying to do that as coordinator of this year’s Fletcher Family Reunion, which is scheduled for the weekend of Aug. 1-3 at Sweet Briar.

It will be the first time the family has gathered at the college for the reunion, which they began holding in 1972.

“The family had spread, and we had relatives and everything that you didn’t know,” says Jasper “Eddie” Fletcher, one of several descendants who still live in Amherst. “(We wanted to) come together and reintroduce ourselves. And it’s expanded since then.”

The first reunion was held in Amherst at the home of Jasper’s parents, Patrick and Julia Fletcher.

He says about 40 or 50 family members, mostly Patrick’s siblings and their children, attended.

Pace grew up attending the reunions and says they’ve always been more about activities than history.

“Because it’s never been held (at Sweet Briar), it’s never really had the environment to explore it.

“I think we were in need of a champion, someone encouraging to look beyond the history that’s just slavery,” she says.

“No one wants to think a lot about (slavery). It’s easier to be hands-off about it.”

As a child, Pace often heard stories about her family’s connection to Sweet Briar, but nothing had been proven.

“I wanted to uncover information,” says Pace, who majored in journalism in college and now works for a community college near Baltimore. “I wanted to know the specific link … to make the link official and formal, and know that it’s authentic.”

Enter Lynn Rainville, a former Sweet Briar archaeology professor and the founding director of the nearby Tusculum Institute, a resource center for historic preservation. She’s spent the past seven years studying and working in Sweet Briar’s slave cemetery.

She recently directly linked the Fletchers to three of Sweet Briar’s slaves.

Rainville says some people don’t want to acknowledge the history of slavery. She’s dedicated to keeping that history alive.

“(People) think it’s best if we forget about it and move on. But any historian will tell you forgetting about things — such as the Holocaust, such as slavery — (makes) you doomed to repeat them,” she says.

“It’s important that we remember these individuals, what they went through, what their contributions are.”

Tracing the family tree
Slave owner Elijah Fletcher, a Vermont native who settled in Central Virginia in 1810, originally owned the land that now makes up Sweet Briar College.

When he first came here, he was practically destitute but began building his wealth through various means, including buying property in Amherst, Rainville says.

By 1840, he had moved to Sweet Briar and began acquiring black and Native American slaves to work the nearly 8,000 acres he owned.

Between 50 and 160 slaves worked on the plantation at various times, and Rainville says Sweet Briar wouldn’t be what it is today without them.

“There is a 200-year history here of African Americans who were not just working here, but were a crucial part of daily operations,” she says. “The place would not have been successful without African Americans.”

Elijah died in 1858, before the end of the Civil War. In his will, he divided his land and slaves among three of his children: Sidney, who lived on the nearby Tusculum plantation, Elizabeth, and Indiana, who got the Sweet Briar plantation and eventually founded the college.

He listed the slaves by name and divided them up into family groups. Rainville has linked two names on that list, a mother and her son, to today’s Fletchers. Through more research, she was also able to find the name of the woman’s husband. The family wants to keep the three names secret until the reunion, when Rainville will reveal them during a keynote address.

Those three ancestors are separated by a generation or two from the Fletchers’ current family tree, which they’ve traced back to the 1889 marriage of Patrick Henry Fletcher Sr., and Jennie Louis Carter. They had 12 children (including Jasper Fletcher’s father, Patrick Jr., and Pace’s grandmother, Jennie Louis).

“It’s very, very hard to trace someone’s family history into the antebellum period, especially if they’re black because slaves didn’t have last names,” Rainville says.

When they were freed, some of the slaves who didn’t have last names took the surname of their last slave owner. That’s why Pace’s ancestors share a last name with Elijah Fletcher.

Once the Sweet Briar slaves were freed, many settled nearby and continued to work for Elijah’s children as paid laborers. At Sweet Briar, Indiana had about a half-dozen servants. When she died in 1900, Indiana’s will left her entire estate to found a college in memory of her daughter, Daisy.

Up until a generation ago, some of the Fletcher family descendants still worked at the college. Jasper’s father, Patrick Jr., retired as a custodian there in the late 1970s.

“It was (the slaves’) work which created the monetary wealth that ultimately enabled us to have a college,” says Sweet Briar President Elizabeth Muhlenfeld. “It’s a very direct, founding role, although not voluntary.”

A new generation
Pace, who is 34, says this year’s reunion is ushering in a new chapter of the family’s history.

In the past, older family members have coordinated the reunions, and when Pace was approached about organizing this one, she says it seemed appropriate.

“There was a sense that a new generation of our family really needed to be more responsible about knowing our history,” she says. “It seemed like a natural time for that.”

The reunion, which begins with a welcome reception the evening of Aug. 1, will be part social event, part history lesson.

Past gatherings have always attracted large numbers, but everyone usually ended up gravitating toward the family members they already knew, Pace says. So she’s starting Saturday off with a welcome session and a few icebreakers — “from my days as an R.A. in college,” laughs Pace, who went to Penn State — so distant family members can get to know each other.Rainville will speak at 10 a.m. and will reveal the names of the three verified Fletcher descendants she has linked to Elijah and the plantation. Later, tours of the plantation house, slave cemetery, slave cabin and museum will be available.

The feather in Pace’s reunion cap is an exhibit room, which she says will look like an eighth grade science fair full of display boards about the Fletcher family history.

“I hope this is kind of the impetus that creates a 2010 reunion where there’s an even greater emphasis on learning,” she says.

There will be an interactive “Find Your Branch” family tree and a U.S. map, where family members can mark where they live and get a sense of how spread out the family really is. (For the record, Pace says they’ve got family coming in for the reunion from as far away as California).

“It’s fun for me to see how the family has developed into all different fields,” Jasper Fletcher says. “They’ve really just stepped out into the world.”

Pace has also set up a Sweet Briar admissions booth for the college-age family members.

A dinner and dance will follow Saturday night, and Pace says most family members will attend a church service together Sunday morning.

Pace, Rainville and Pace’s cousin, Annette Anderson, will also be conducting an oral history project throughout the weekend, collecting stories from the oldest family members.

“I would love for the family to say (they’d) love to hold reunions here every two years,” Pace says. “It just feels really, really right to be there.”