Author Archives: Mary Chobanian

Louis Hughes Found Freedom and Family

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An undated portrait of Louis Hughes found in his autobiography. (By Mary Chobanian, Dickinson College, Class of 2012) Louis Hughes was born in 1832 to a white plantation owner and black slave in Charlottesville, Virginia. His autobiography entitled Thirty Years a Slave: … Continue reading

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Young Planter Witnesses Black Freedom

(By Mary Chobanian, Dickinson College, Class of 2012) Thomas Almond Ashby describes his experience at the moment of slave emancipation in his memoir, The Valley Campaigns.  While living on his family’s plantation in Front Royal, Virginia, at age seventeen, Ashby witnessed his … Continue reading

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