April 7, 2022 Pen Park is a Charlottesville City Park. Many years ago Lynn Rainville noted there were likely enslaved graves outside the Gilmer, Craven, and Hotopp cemetery. Recently the City of Charlottesville hired a firm which found there are likely 43 or so enslaved graves there. The City asked the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society if they would investigate and try to determine the surnames of the families that lived
Secret Charlottesville with Marijean Oldham
April 5, 2022
March 3, 2022 Join us this Thursday – March 3 – to hear Marijean Oldham explore the secrets of Charlottesville, the weird, wonderful, and obscure.
The Original Communities of Free State, Dunlora, and Belvedere
April 5, 2022
February 3, 2022 Join us this Thursday to hear Dr. Angela Anderson discuss the Original Communities of Free State, Belvedere & Dunlora, specifically where she grew up in Freestate. her research over the past 20 plus years has provided her with some rich historical information and when she came home to visit last year, she was amazed at the progress and changes that have been made since she left and
Robert Pleasants and Abolition with Bill Hardin
April 5, 2022
January 5, 2022 POSTPONED — Bill Hardin will discuss Robert Pleasants of Curles (Henrico County) who was a Virginia abolitionist during the Revolutionary period. Pleasants was the plaintiff in the case of Pleasants v. Pleasants (1799), a decision by the Supreme Court of Virginia that recognized a legal right to freedom for hundreds of enslaved persons retained in bondage by members of the Pleasants family. Robert Pleasants also founded a