Site Type: Plantation

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Historical Significance:

Sweet Briar College is located on the former Sweet Briar Plantation site, home of Elijah Fletcher and his descendants. Elijah Fletcher was born in 1789 in Ludlow, Vermont. In 1810 he traveled to Virginia to teach at New Glasgow Academy, about six miles north of Amherst, yet he soon left teaching to farm in Lynchburg. Over the next two decades Fletcher became a prosperous businessman, newspaper publisher, and mayor of Lynchburg. In 1830 he purchased several thousand acres south of Amherst near his wife Maria Crawford’s family home, making him one of Amherst County’s largest landowners. Maria deemed this land “Sweet Briar Plantation.”

Though in an 1813 letter Fletcher condemned slavery as “a curse on any country,” by 1846 he was one of the county’s ten major slaveholders with between 80 and 100 slaves at Sweet Briar. Fletcher recorded sixty-seven members of this slave population in his 1852 will. Upon his death in 1858, Fletcher’s slaves were divided among three of his children. His daughter Indiana inherited Sweet Briar Plantation.

Following emancipation in 1865, several freed Sweet Briar slaves settled near the plantation, continuing to work for the Fletcher family as paid laborers. For example, Martha Penn Taylor moved to Coolwell and worked as a nursemaid for Indiana’s daughter, Daisy. Martha had come to Sweet Briar in 1864 when Fletcher granted her written request to be purchased and thereby reunite with her sister, a slave already on the plantation. Indiana Fletcher outlived both her daughter Daisy, who died tragically at 16, and her husband James Henry Williams. When she died in 1900 she willed the Sweet Briar land and a $40,000 sum to found a college for women.

Several cemeteries containing graves of African-Americans have been located on Sweet Briar property, the largest of which is Sweet Briar Burial Ground. This slave cemetery contains over sixty gravestones and nineteen unmarked depressions. The gravestones are distributed across a wide area yet appear to be arranged in clusters, perhaps denoting family groupings. A recently dedicated memorial on the site reads: “Sacred resting place of unknown founders who labored to build what has become Sweet Briar College. We are in their debt.” Ongoing research at this and other burial sites on Sweet Briar land attempts to preserve and protect the African-American history there and to gain a better understanding of slave mortuary rituals and cultural traditions. Archaeologists have discovered many artifacts from slave life on the land, and an original slave cabin still stands on Sweet Briar’s campus.

Physical Description:

Sweet Briar College is located on 3,250 acres of hills and meadows with main campus buildings mostly clustered in the center. The former plantation land offers a rich research area for exploring slave history. Sweet Briar Burial Ground is located on a natural hill above Lower Lake. A walking path leads from Upper Lake to the cemetery, and the walk from the campus bookstore takes 15-25 minutes. The Slave Cabin is located a short walk from the bookstore, adjacent to the former plantation house.