09/05/2026
On this day – September 5 – in 1791, former owner of Oatlands, Robert Carter III, filed a deed of emancipation in Northumberland County District Court. This Deed of Gift gradually freed over 500 people that he enslaved. It is believed to be the largest private emancipation in our country’s history. We honor the people whose lives were changed on this day 235 years ago and their descendants who make their stories known.
A religious experience was one of the reasons Carter came to believe that holding people in bo***ge was immoral. His Swedenborgian Bible is on display until October 5 in the Oatlands Carriage House Visitor Center along with a copy of the Deed of Gift and the list of enslaved people at each plantation who were scheduled to be freed. Please stop by to see the exhibit.
Carter’s son George inherited a large portion of his father’s voluminous library, and the books are now part of our collection. Unfortunately, George did not follow in his father’s footsteps, believing it was wrong to hold people in bo***ge. The Carters at Oatlands then became the largest enslavers in Loudoun County by 1850.
To learn more about Robert Carter III and the Deed of Gift, please join us on September 10 at 7 p.m. for Before and After Leo Plantation, a program about the people freed at Carter’s Leo Plantation and how the land has evolved to the present day. More: https://oatlands.org/event/before-and-after-leo-plantation/
Learn about the freed people and the decades-long research to connect descendants at the Nomini Hall Slave Legacy Project.
