WE THE PEOPLE
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Bridging the Gap
Montpelier staff has been working with descendants of the plantation ’ s enslaved community for almost two decades , with the most visible outcome being the publication of Elizabeth Dowling Taylor ’ s A Slave in the White House : Paul Jennings and the Madisons in 2012 . The current effort is focusing on families who are not as well documented as the Jennings .
When Montpelier Research Coordinator Elizabeth Ladner arrived in 2015 to lead the organization ’ s new Rubenstein-funded research effort , she realized that records relating to the descendants had not been digitized and there was no good way to understand where dialogues with descendants had left off .
“ The biggest thing was trying to gain an understanding of what we had done that hadn ’ t been documented ,” Ladner said . “ We knew there was an impression out there that Montpelier would send out researchers and make contact and then nothing would come of it . That was the starting point and then the next step was trying to understand what the historic resources were out there that Montpelier hadn ’ t had time to track down .”
Montpelier has documented over 300 identified names of enslaved individuals from the Madison era , but only 10 distinct last names .
Tracking Montpelier ’ s slaves presents a particular challenge for researchers . Dolley Madison sold Montpelier in 1844 and only some of the enslaved individuals in the Madison household traveled with her to Washington , D . C . When her son , John Payne Todd , died in 1852 , he left a will freeing his slaves and leaving them $ 200 to start their new lives , but his debts , according to correspondence from the time , make it more likely that his slaves were sold by the executors of his estate . Prior to Emancipation , most enslaved individuals didn ’ t appear on census records , so the 1870 census records are the first comprehensive documentary records of African American families across the South .
“ Essentially from the 1840s and the last mention of them in the documents , you have to jump to the 1870 census , the first time they ’ re identified as free people , and maybe you find them listed in a household in D . C ., living with their relatives , and you can track their children and their relatives and move forward ,” said Neuroth . “ And that ’ s kind of the day-to-day of what we do , and how we get from a name , Abraham , listed in the Montpelier records , to Abraham Shepherd in the 1870 census .”
Neuroth and Ladner use digital tools like ancestry . com , but they also do the laborious work of combing through land deeds , tax records , personal
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