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In the slave culture of Colonial Virginia, some free blacks carved out lives of limited liberty. Matthew Ashby, born in York County in 1727, was among them.
 Arthur K. Johnson, Jr. as Matthew Ashby |
Records of Ashby's life are sketchy. His father was black, his mother, Mary Ashby, was a white servant. Under laws of the day, a biracial child was likely bound out to work for a family until he was 16, then worked on a plantation until he was 31, when he became free.
But the freedom was limited. A law established four years before Matthew Ashby's birth forbade free Negroes to hold meetings or visit with slaves. Colonial authorities feared that free Negroes would influence or demoralize slaves. In 1756, Virginia was home to 120,000 blacks, fewer than 3,000 of them free. Blacks constituted 41 percent of Virginia's total population of 293,000.
 (800) 447-8679 www.history.org Black Laws of Virginia June Purcell Guild |
Free blacks were denied voting privileges and weren't allowed to possess weapons. They could not travel without passes, were subject to special jurisdiction in the courts and in most colonies did not have the right to trial by jury.
Many white businessmen refused to hire blacks.
How then was Ashby, described as not literate, able to work in and around Williamsburg? How did he protect himself and prosper under laws designed to suppress African-Americans, both free and enslaved?
Historians agree that Ashby fared better than most free blacks. He was a messenger who carried diplomatic papers for Governor Norborne Berkeley, Baron de Botetourt to the western regions of Virginia. Ashby also capitalized on his carpentry skills. 
"From what we know, he was able to earn a living, maintain a family without being harassed," said Robert C. Watson, assistant professor of history and political science at Hampton University. "Because he lived in the capital [Williamsburg] as opposed to someone who lived in a rural area, and because people knew him enabled him to move around with more ease."
Arthur K. Johnson Jr. , who portrays Ashby in Colonial Williamsburg programs, says, "I try to impress upon visitors that this was a man who was a jack-of-all-trades. He was a guy who knew how to smile, grin and take care of situations."
Johnson said Ashby did something not uncommon for free blacks during Colonialism. In 1769, he purchased his enslaved wife, Ann, and their two children, John and Mary, from Samuel Spurr for 150 pounds. Though he owned Ann, Ashby could not simply declare her a free black under Virginia law. So that same year he successfully petitioned authorities to set his wife and children free.
Matthew Ashby |
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1727 1739 1740s |
1765 1769 1771 |
Where formal education may have eluded Ashby, it was provided to his children. Both children attended the Bray School, established in Williamsburg in 1760 for African-American children.
Ashby apparently ignored laws forbidding free blacks to associate with slaves. An ad for a runaway slave in the Nov. 27, 1769, Virginia Gazette reads: "forewarns all persons that Sam (slave) pretends to lay claim to freedom, and is now harbored at one Matthew Ashby's."
In 1771, less than two years after freeing his wife and children, and five years before the Declaration of Independence was signed, Matthew Ashby died. Ashby's estate listed four horses, four cows, furniture, candle-making equipment, a teaboard, a silver watch and books. Nine months after Matthew died, Ann Ashby married another free black, George Jones.
Sources: Slaves Without Masters by Ira Berlin; The Shaping of Black America, by Lerone Bennett Jr.; Roll, Jordan, Roll, The World The Slaves Made by Eugene D. Genovese; Articles on American Slavery, Free Blacks in a Slave Society by Paul Finkelman; A Biographical History of Blacks in America Since 1528 by Dr. Edgar Toppin
PHOTOGRAPHY BY BOB BROWN; DESIGNED BY MARTIN RHODES/TIMES-DISPATCH
