The dreariest of places…
It was in 1619 that the first enslaved Africans arrived on the shores of Virginia Colony. Over the next two and a half centuries, as the colonies expanded, so too did the number of enslaved persons. Also on the rise were the number of men and women willing to risk everything in an attempt for freedom.
In Virginia, many of those men and women who fled enslavement took refuge in the Great Dismal Swamp. From as early as 1700, those men and women, known as maroons, established settlements within the seemingly inhospitable swamp.
Knowledge about what life was like in the Dismal is uncertain. But it is certainly a place of duality, where freemen escaped to, but companies brought enslaved men to work.
Although little physical evidence remains today, it is believed that prior to the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, more than 2,000 people lived in the Great Dismal Swamp.
