Marriage License for William Jasper and Georgianna Jackson

William Jasper's wife Sarah had died, and in 1869, William married Georgianna Jackson at Alexandria's Theological Seminary. He listed his age as 58 and she listed hers as 34 on the marriage certificate. A year later the couple gave birth to Richard, the first of two children. Five years later, their daughter, Georgianna, completed the family.

Edith Sprouse, Fairfax County in 1860 (Fairfax: author, 1996) 2: 779-780; and 1880 census.

1869

Mount Vernon District map, 1879

In the Mount Vernon School District Laurel Grove was one of five black schools in 1890. The others were Gum Springs, Gunston, Springbank, and Woodlawn.

Reprinted in Richard W. Stephenson, The Cartography of Northern Virginia: Facsimile Reproductions of Maps Dating from 1608-1915. (Fairfax: Office of Comprehensive Planning, 1981).

1879

African-American Elementary School, Halifax County

Both the state and local governments supported the public school system, but black schools were chronically underfunded. Compare this primitive, wooden African American school in South Boston, Virginia, to the photographs of nearby white schools in South Boston from the same time period, the 1920s and 1930s.

From the Virginia Historical Society’s exhibition: the Civil Rights Movement in Virginia, 2004, Web site: http://vahistorical.org/civilrights/education.htm#images
Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
www.loc.gov

1920s -1930s

6th Annual Colored Fair

“Colored Fair Association” programs from 1916 and 1924 indicate that students could enter a variety of industrial and academic competitions for cash prizes. Contests in the domestic arts called for baskets, hats, photograph frames, embroidered and crocheted items. Agricultural exhibits featured garden vegetables, canned fruits, and poultry and livestock. Contestants vied for prizes of up to five dollars. To demonstrate their academic proficiency, students wrote essays on “What Good Roads will Mean to Virginia” or created a “Map of Fairfax County locating the Colored Public Schools and Fair Grounds.” Others submitted an illustrated poem, a list of words most often misspelled, an illustrated paper on simple fractions, or a sample of their best penmanship. Winners earned between twenty-five cents and one dollar.

In possession of Phyllis Walker Ford

Colored Fountain

Drinking fountain on the county courthouse lawn, Halifax, North Carolina, photographed by John Vachon, 1914-1975.

Students may notice an African American boy about middle school age, the "colored" sign indicating that only colored people can use the fountain, and the building looks like an important public building.

Farm Security Administration Collection, created 1938. Library Division: Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture/ Photographs and Prints Division.

1938

Odrick Colored School

Located on Lewinsville Road, McLean, VA.
In 1873 this one-room school was also used for community meetings and religious gatherings. School plans moved forward as the result of 30 acres of land by formerly enslaved and respected landowner, Alfred Ordrick. Multiple accounts link Ordrick to the establishment of this school. Lewis Jackson, the son of landowner John Jackson, was a teacher at Ordrick School.

African American Landowners, Churches, Schools and Businesses, Fairfax County, Virginia (1860-1900), 2nd edition. Text by Guinevere Scott Jones, November 2009.

1873

List of Colored Voters, Voting in 3rd Magisterial District, 1867

William Jasper and Thornton Gray were among the 226 Fairfax County blacks who registered. All 226 cast a ballot for a constitutional convention and all supported Radicals Orrin E. Hine, a Freedmen’s Bureau agent, and Linus M. Nickerson, another nothererner, as Fairfax county’s representatives. In 1869, Jasper and Gray returned to the polls and voted for adoption of the Constitution.

Brian A. Conley, comp. Return to Union: Fairfax County’s Role in the Adoption of the Virginia Constitution of 1870 (Fairfax: Fairfax County Library, 2001), 40-42, and Nan Netherton, Donald Sweig, Janice Artmel, Patricia Hicken, and Patrick Reed, Fairfax County, Virginia: A History (Fairfax: Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, 1992), 379.

1867

Graphic Organizer for Founding of “Colored” Schools

1860 Property Map superimposed on mid-twentieth century map

Useful to find the 13 acres of land that William Jasper bought in 1860. Also interesting to note that several of his neighbors were white landowners at this time.

Graphic Organizer for list of colored voters and marriage license