Freedmen's Bureau Records: Thomas P. Jackson to John
A. McDonnell, July 3, 1867
Summary:
Jackson recounts the story of Patience Spencer, whose children were taken by a
slave trader in 1861. According to Jackson, she desperately wants to find them,
and he forwards what few details he has in the hopes of locating them.
Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands,
Office 4th Division, 9th
Sub-District, Virginia.
Captain John A.
McDonnell
Sub Assistant Commissioner
Winchester
July 3, 1867
Staunton, Virginia
Captain
Patience Spencer (colored) seeks her two children James
Thomas (15 years) and Melissa Ann Maria Spencer (11 years) The children were
taken from her at Samuel Spencer's 5 miles from Amherst Court House Amherst County
Virginia by John Mitchell a slave trader who then lived
at Lynchburg and who sold them at Richmond, Virginia in
July 1861. Who bought them or where they were taken to she never could learn,
but thinks perhaps John Mitchell or Landon Talieferro who lives at New Glasgow,
Amherst County
Virginia may know. The poor woman it appears hid herself
in the woods with her children to escape the sale but hunger compelled her to
let her children return to the house for food, when they were seized and carried
off. Her information is I fear too indefinite for discovery but she
[page 2]
she is so earnestly desirous of regaining them that I respectfully forward her
request in the hope some clue may be obtained from Mitchell or Talieferro.
Your obedient servant
Thos P. Jackson
Agent
