I have recently posted an unpublished manuscript by a local historian, Gayle M. Schulman. Read below for background on her work and a link to download the article….
In 1996, local historian Gayle Schulman came across a series of letters written in 1866 by Isabella Gibbons, a newly freed slave who taught in the Charlottesville’s Freedman’s School. Ms. Schulman’s project to research the life of Gibbons and her family (part of which was published in the Magazine of Albemarle County History, Vol. 55) led her to other studies of local African American history.
During her research into the Gibbons family she learned that both Isabella and her husband, William Gibbons, had been owned for part of their lives by University of Virginia Professors. In 2003, Ms. Schulman began a systematic review of archives, manuscripts, census data, church membership lists, and birth and death records searching for clues to their lives as individuals and as members of a community. A portion of this research is illustrated in her manuscript titled “Slaves at the University of Virginia.” To download a copyrighted version of this 33-page article (pdf file), click here.