Existing comment:
The People of Ferry Hill:
Enterprising individuals lived at the site of Ferry Hill since its beginnings in the 1750s with ferry operator Thomas Van Swearingen.
Six generations of three families related by blood or marriage -- the Blackfords, Douglases, and Beckenbaughs -- followed to manage Ferry Hill as a plantation estate.
Until the Civil War, Ferry Hill's success depended on the labor of enslaved African Americans who toiled alongside free black and white workers. Along with their various activities, their names were recorded in plantation journals -- Caroline, Daphney, Enoch, Jupe, Murf, Ned, and others.
"I rode to the clearing Will cuting Murph plowing. Caroline Isaiah & Enoch hauling off old corn stalks."
-- Plantation Owner, John Blackford, 1838
In 1798, John Blackford married Sarah Swearingen, a direct descendant of ferry owner Thomas Van Swearingen. Sarah died in 1805, leaving Blackford with two children under the age of nine. |