Winfree Cottage

Winfree Cottage. . , This two-room house, moved to this location in 2002, is the former home of Emily Winfree (1834-1919). The house once stood near the intersection of Porter and Commerce Streets in south Richmond in what was then the separate city of Manchester. Emily Winfree's cottage was part of a once-thriving African-American community organized around the First African Church, established in 1820, now known as First Baptist Church of South Richmond, which stood at the corner of 7th and Perry streets. Ms. Winfree was one of the thousands of black Richmonders who made the transition from bondage to freedom, and made a life in Reconstruction era Richmond amidst her extended family and neighbors. Emily Winfree's life story is an intricate narrative of hardship, resilience, and triumph which was revealed through the unprecedented rescue of her modest cottage., Research into the lost world of Emily Winfree shows her at the center of a complicated network of both black and white family members and neighbors. Immediately after the Civil War in 1866, when she could at last own property, Emily's former owner, David Winfree, gave her this cottage and the land where it was located, and another hundred acres in nearby Chesterfield County. Records suggest he fathered her six children , four of whom were born into slavery. Despite these resources, Emily Winfree and her children all resided in one room of the 700 square foot house, often renting the other room to make ends meet. Winfree also worked as a domestic servant and was a well-known cook in Manchester. Even with these relative advantages, Ms. Winfree, like many Richmonders, struggled to raise her family in the lean years following the Civil War. Distinctions between races frequently blurred as did many family trees, like the Winfree's, which included members with the same last name who had once owned, or been owned by, one another., The little cross streets in Manchester that formed Emily Winfree's world once rang with commerce and industry, and were alive with Richmonders of many colors. The riverfront drew workers, black and white alike, as did a growing commercial corridor on Hull Street. Over time the entire area has transformed into a collection of equipment sheds, warehouses, apartments, and surface parking lots, replacing what was once a thriving working-class neighborhood into South Richmond. The Winfree cottage gives us a glimpse into her neighborhood as it existed when she was alive: a complicated place in which blacks and whites learned to navigate Reconstruction, as the dark cloud of Jim Crow was spreading across the American South., In 2002, a Manchester construction company planned to demolish Emily Winfree's cottage in order to expand a parking lot. Alerted by concerned Manchester residents, the Alliance to Conserve Old Richmond Neighborhoods (ACORN) was able to intervene, transporting the cottage across the James River to its current site. The cottage survives to tell its story of dire necessity, cold winters reeking of coal smoke, and long years of living in the same room. Throughout those years, family members that might have come through Ms. Winfree's door were likely of a variety of colors and social stations. It is also a story of triumph, as African-Americans like Emily Winfree and her family persevered in the face of unending adversity and consistent injustice. Preserving the Winfree Cottage gives us an architectural artifact that tells the important story of complex relationships throughout Richmond's long and complicated history., About the Trail , Designed as a walking path, the Richmond Slave Trail chronicles the history of the trade in enslaved Africans from their homeland to Virginia until 1778, and away from Virginia, especially Richmond, to other locations in the Americas until 1865. The trail begins at the Manchester Docks, which, alongside Rocketts Landing on the north side of the river, operated as a major port in the massive downriver slave trade, making Richmond the largest source of enslaved blacks on the east coast of America from 1830 to 1860. While many of the slaves were shipped on to New Orleans and to other Deep South ports, the trail follows the footsteps of those who remained here and crossed the James River, often chained together in a coffle. Once reaching the northern riverbank, the trail then follows a route through the slave markets and auction houses of Richmond, beside the Reconciliation Statue commemorating the international triangular slave trade and on to the site of the notorious Lumpkin’s Slave Jail and leading on to Richmond’s African Burial Ground, once called the Burial Ground for Negroes, and the First African Baptist Church, a center of African American life in pre-Civil War Richmond., Guided Tours: for information call (804) 646-3012, (caption) , A portrait of Emily Winfree Image courtesy of Library of Virginia