Fletcher family visits sacred site for ancestors

AMHERST — Jasper “Eddie” Fletcher raises his arms in thanks as he leads a prayer between a few dozen of his living relatives and the more distant ancestors who are buried beneath them.

Two from younger generations of the Fletcher family ceremonially perform a libation — easing water from plastic cups onto the hundreds-years-old graves below.

They stand in a sacred spot for their family, in Sweet Briar College’s slave cemetery. This is where their enslaved relatives were buried long ago.

All around, family members call out the names of their ancestors, asking for guidance as they seek to piece together their past.

Today, the Fletcher family concludes its first family reunion held at the campus that their ancestors called home.

“It has been a marvelous thing for the younger generation,” Jasper Fletcher said while visiting the cemetery Saturday. “When you have knowledge, you have light.”

The more than 175 family members attending the event this weekend trace their roots to the 1889 marriage of Patrick Henry Fletcher Sr. and Jennie Louis Carter.

Fletcher, a former slave, took his last name from Elijah Fletcher, who was the plantation owner. Elijah’s daughter, Indiana, later became the founder of Sweet Briar College.

Henry Fletcher and Jennie Carter had 12 children, including Jasper Fletcher’s father, Patrick Jr.

“This is a history that must be told,” said Annette Anderson, who came to the reunion from Pennsylvania.

She used to listen to stories her grandfather would tell about his life growing up.

“As a kid, it was boring to me, and I didn’t get it until my grandfather died,” she said. “And then becoming a mother myself, it became critical to me.”

Today, she plans to hold an oral history gathering, where family members can sit and tell some of their own stories.

“A lot of this was hush-hush because people were ashamed,” she said, but she urged her family to get past the discomfort in talking about their painful past and instead embrace it as a part of their family’s legacy.

Many family members found themselves learning details about their past for the first time Saturday morning as Sweet Briar Professor Lynn Rainville spoke to the group.

Seven years ago, she began studying and working in Sweet Briar’s slave cemetery, and started learning about the families who built up Sweet Briar plantation.

Using old wills, letters and runaway slave notices, she recently directly linked the Fletchers to three slaves at Sweet Briar.

“The history of your family is not just about enslaved people,” she told the group.

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.

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

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 Fletcher had about a half-dozen servants.

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

Earl Fletcher, who grew up in Amherst County but now lives in Pennsylvania, also has ties to the college.

“My brother (William Fletcher) used to work here,” he said. “All my family worked here. I never thought I’d see the day that we would have a reunion here.”

Each family member wore a name tag with a different colored ribbon on it — pink, purple, orange, red, blue — to signify their lineage.

“It was really meant to give everyone context,” said Bethany Pace, who organized the reunion. “I know all the pink people well.”

After listening to talks from Rainville, Anderson, Sweet Briar President Elisabeth “Betsy” Muhlenfeld, and others Saturday morning, the group split up and took turns touring the campus.

They visited the 18th Century Sweet Briar House, where Muhlenfeld lives, the slave cemetery, a Sweet Briar museum and the only remaining slave cabin on campus.

Gerald Sandidge traveled with his wife and two children from Pittsburgh to get to the reunion.

He sat outside Sweet Briar House in the early afternoon Saturday, and said he didn’t get the chance when he was young to learn much about his heritage.

“It gave us a good lesson on the history of our family,” he said, adding that the stories could eventually be passed on to future generations.

Barbara Rose Page and her daughter Janet Page, both alumna of the college, had a unique perspective on returning to their alma mater and viewing it with a fresh perspective.

Rose Page, who lives a short drive away in Piney River, in Nelson County, said this is the first family reunion she has attended since they began in 1972.

“This is a very special day,” she said, grinning as she made her way to see the house where her ancestors may have once worked.