Claiborne

Claiborne lived at Sherwood Forest during the Civil War and cultivated his own crops on the land during this period. When Julia Gardiner Tyler escaped to New York, Union forces placed a group of enslaved men including Claiborne, Randall, and Burwell, Jr. in charge of the plantation. Julia’s neighbor, William Clopton, described Claiborne in 1864:

“…the place [was] put in possession of Old Claiborne and Burwell by Wild with directions that what is there they are not to allow anyone to have. They have bedsteads and have taken the carts wagons cows and everything and huddled them around them at the quarters…The negroes have eaten all the sheep that were left and the hogs and are now going on upon the neighbor's stock…” [1]

According to Clopton’s letter, Claiborne and other formerly enslaved people took back the livestock they had likely raised along with the furniture they had likely built while enslaved by the Tylers. In the same letter, Clopton also commented that “Old Claiborne is younger and brisker than a boy.” [1] Claiborne’s physical ability appears to surprise Clopton, indicating that Claiborne may have feigned illness or ailment in order to resist a lifetime of enslavement in which he would have been forced by the Tylers to work until he could no longer perform physical labor.

[1] William Clopton to Julia Gardiner Tyler, 2 Aug. 1864, Transcripts of Tyler Family Papers, Sherwood Forest Plantation Foundation, Charles City County, Virginia.