The House Girl (17 page)
Authors: Tara Conklin
The woman who answered Lina’s call was a full-time genealogist, she said, and happy to speak with Lina about her search.
“I have some recently discovered information about a … family member,” Lina improvised, “who was a slave on a tobacco farm in southern Virginia, but no one knows what happened to her after the year 1852. I’m trying to confirm the family connection, track from here to there. But I’m working under a tight time frame.”
Any results would take six to eight weeks, perhaps longer, the woman said. The only faster option was for Lina to conduct the research herself. Lina could check the private papers of the farm where her ancestor was enslaved. Slave owners often kept detailed records of their holdings, which might indicate if the woman died, was sold, or ran away. If she had survived the Civil War, she might turn up in national census records, although African Americans were not listed by name until the 1870 census, and even that was problematic because freed slaves often took on new surnames.
“Farm records can be very hard to find,” the woman explained. “They’re scattered across the state in local historical societies, community centers, that kind of thing, or at the old plantation houses themselves. That’s why any search takes such considerable time.”
Lina was silent. Six to eight weeks. Scattered across the state of Virginia.
“What county did you say again?” the woman asked.
“Charlotte, in southern Virginia.”
“And you say she disappeared in 1852?”
“Yes. We have a photo dated 1852 that shows her on the farm, but nothing after that date.”
“Well, there was a very active Underground Railroad station around that time in the town of Lynnhurst, in Charlotte County. The Rounds farm, a white family, which was unusual. Most of those active on the Railroad were free blacks, and most of the ones we know about were farther north. But there’s some good documentation on the Roundses. It’s very possible that your ancestor used the Railroad to escape.”
The woman paused on the line. Lina heard taps on a keyboard, the rustling of some papers.
“There are some relevant documents in the archives of the Virginia Historical Society,” the woman continued. “Though it looks like there’s not a lot available online. The Historical Society is in Richmond. You might want to head down there to see what you can find.”
The Rounds family. Lina asked for their names: Horace Rounds; his wife, Evie; their daughters, Kate and Dorothea; and a son, Samuel. Horace was a carpenter and the town’s informal undertaker, the woman told her, when undertaking was still a new profession. Not a wealthy family, though educated, even the daughters, who were taught at home.
For the next 4.8 billable hours, Lina searched online for Horace Rounds. The information she uncovered seemed promising but inconclusive. An estimated thirty-two fugitives passed through the Rounds farm in 1846, over fifty in 1847, and eighty-three in 1848. Passage of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, with its harsh new penalties for aiding fugitives, forced many conductors to increase the secrecy of their activities, one website said, and figures after that date were impossible to verify. Lina found nothing more on the family’s activities for 1849 and beyond, although the eldest daughter, Kate Rounds Sterrett, kept popping up on websites dedicated to the suffrage and abolitionist movements of the late nineteenth century.
The Rounds farm was located just twelve miles from Bell Creek.
Next, Lina brought up the website for the Virginia Historical Society. She scanned the index of online documents and, amid a list of newspaper articles and abolitionist speeches, she found something that made her stop: “Rounds, Dorothea: Correspondence 1848.” Dorothea Rounds, the youngest daughter.
Lina opened the link, and a fuzzy scan materialized on her screen. A letter, the handwriting small and precise. Narrowing her eyes to focus, Lina began to read.
April 9, 1848
My Dearest Darling Kate,
The wedding flowers have only just begun to wilt & here I sit down to write. How I miss you already! The house is not the same. I have found myself in these last few days arriving at the door to our room, half dreaming that I will push it open to find you there, in your familiar pose, seated at your desk looking over the apple trees, pen in hand. I hope you continue your writing in your new home. Is Gareth an avid reader? Does he bite his lip & cluck his tongue, as I do, over your mistakes in spelling?
And how do you find New York? Are the streets as wide as we saw in the picture book? Do all the women wear their hair in curls & smoke in public company?
And tell me about your house! Where am I to sleep when I come to visit you? I am bursting with questions & cursing the post that will take so many weeks to bring me your reply
.
I should tell you about Mother & Father. They are both well, although each sad in their quiet way to have you gone. At mealtimes Mother looks to your empty chair with such concentration, as though hoping to conjure you out of air. Pastor Shaw’s friendship with Father continues & I am grateful that Father has an abiding influence, a spiritual advisor & confidant. Father visits with him often & many nights the Pastor is at our table. You know already my views on the Presbyterian teachings, but Father’s faith supported him in our family’s darkest time, where mine failed, & I am grateful that Father continues to find solace there. Indeed I wish that I were so fortunate. The heaviness still remains in me, Kate, even two years now already gone. I think of Percy every day
.
Father of course is busy with his undertaking. I wish that I could assist him but he is adamant that it is not work for women. Yesterday there was a young boy come to the house whose mother had passed on. His father had been gone in town 3 days & not yet back. The boy had nowhere to turn. Only 7 years in age, still in short pants, he’d used up all the eggs & flour & butter to be found at home, all the while his poor Ma laid upstairs
.
Mother took the poor boy inside—what else could she do?—and gave him oatcakes & milk. He spoke not a word but cried as he ate. This is such the trouble with Father’s work, why I both admire him for it & despise the toil it brings us, especially to Mother, every day. Why could he not have kept on with the carpentering alone, as before? I know that he aids those suffering at their time of greatest need & he has spoken so often of the satisfaction deriving from his efforts, but I cannot help but imagine someday this will all come to be too much, that we will not survive ourselves the constant exposure to death & tears & hardship
.
I am sorry to end on such a dismal note. Next letter I promise will be full of laughter
.
Your most loving sister,
Dorothea
April 10, 1848
Dearest Kate,
I don’t suppose you have received yet my last letter & already I am sending you another, testimony to how greatly you are missed. I feel also that I should dispel from your mind the words with which I left off in my last—please forgive the dreary tone. The boy (his name is Samuel) had just come to the house & his soft white cheeks & dark curls put me in mind of our own dear brother. I think Mother too could not but look at him & see our Percy. The similarities lie not just in their height & boyish ways but genuinely in other aspects as well: his nose, upturned like an elf’s, and his voice, a high little pipsqueak, trilling forth like a waterfall. He is staying with us still, Samuel, sleeping in the extra room downstairs. Mother has moved the sewing things & the extra armchair into the front room, & made up a bed of sorts from various cushions laid on the floor. Samuel is comfortable enough, so he says, & he eats well
.
There has been much talk of the escape of a field hand from the Price farm & the search that ensued. Even with Widow Price 20 miles off, still we were visited by the Patrollers, asking questions & looking round the barn. Father volunteered to join the patrol but there were sufficient townsfolk already engaged. In truth I was glad Father did not search. In recent weeks the coffles have gone past with such regularity, it must strain even the hardest heart to see the chained Negroes shuffle along these long dusty roads
.
Justin Broadmoor has stopped his calling. I am perplexed but not distraught. His dark hair grew so coarsely from his head, putting me to mind of a hedgehog, & his voice rang out so loudly—do you remember how our heads would ache after his visits? Mother says he is a fine boy & would have made a good husband, but surely my voice would have soon grown hoarse from trying to make myself heard above his shouts. Mother says now that I am 17, I must turn my attention to such matters, but I find it so tiresome
.
Do you recall Jack Harper? I saw him yesterday in town & he sends his regards to you. I had not seen him since he & his brother Caleb left school. His appearance is quite altered, though pleasingly so—scarcely did I recognize him
.
I hear Father calling for me so I will end this letter forthwith. I hope you are well, & my love to you & to Gareth,
Your sister,
Dot
** Further documents related to the Rounds family, the Underground Railroad, and Lynnhurst, Virginia, are available at the Virginia Historical Society, Richmond. Call or e-mail for an appointment.**
Lina felt her pulse race, her foot tapped out an excited staccato beneath her desk, and part of it was due to the buckets of caffeine she’d consumed that morning and part of it was due to those faint spidery words still glowing on her screen:
An escaped field hand,
Dorothea Rounds had written in 1848. If she wrote of the family’s later involvement in the Railroad, she might have recorded information about Josephine Bell. Or perhaps her father, Horace Rounds, had maintained his own records?
L
INA RODE AN EMPTY ELEVATOR
up to Dan’s office. In the reflection of the polished steel door, she rehearsed her words and pitch. A two-day trip to Richmond would advance the search for a lead plaintiff quickly and efficiently. Travel costs were minimal. A Josephine Bell descendant would have a fantastic backstory.
“I have an idea about a lead plaintiff, the perfect plaintiff, with a very compelling backstory,” she said, standing in the open doorway of Dan’s office. “But I need to do some additional research, and I need to do it in Virginia. The Virginia Historical Society in Richmond. Maybe some of the old plantation houses too.”
Dan looked up from his desk. He gripped a pen in one hand; a pile of papers, red ink scrawled along the margins, rested on the desk before him. He wore a suit but no tie, and his collar buttons were open. The skin at his neck glowed white as paste. As Lina advanced into the room, she smelled stale coffee and just a hint of sweat.
“You know, I didn’t ask you to find the
perfect
plaintiff. I asked you to find a few potential lead plaintiffs, some folks that fit our needs for the lawsuit.”
“I understand,” Lina continued, the caffeine excitement still coursing in her. Surely Dan could be convinced to feel it too. “But this particular angle is powerful. I’ve been researching a woman named Josephine Bell, an African American artist enslaved in Virginia in the mid-nineteenth century. She disappeared in 1852, and it seems likely she escaped using the Underground Railroad.” Lina paused, waiting for some sign of Dan’s interest in her brilliant idea, but his face remained an inscrutable blank. From beneath the desk came the unmistakably agitated
tap tap tap
of Dan’s foot. Lina hurried along. “And even if I don’t find anything on Josephine Bell’s descendants, the state archives will lead me to a plaintiff. An incredible plaintiff, someone descended from a runaway, one who used the Underground Railroad and made it to freedom. Picking oneself up from the dust …” Her voice trailed off.
“Lina, do you actually have someone in mind, I mean someone alive now?” Dan’s voice was razor sharp.
“Not exactly. But—”
“It sounds ridiculous. Sending you to Virginia. You can do the research here in New York.”
“Dan, I—”
“We don’t want to waste Mr. Dresser’s good money on some wild-goose chase.”
“But I would—”
“Why don’t you put your head down and start
thinking
.” Dan reached out an arm and checked his watch. “I have a lot of work to get through tonight.” He picked up his pen and resumed reading. With a frown, he marked a straight line across the page.
Dan had never spoken to her like this before; to others, yes, but never to her. His words evoked in Lina a combination of indignation and shame. Gone was her excited buzz, and in its place a creeping nausea. Lina stood there in front of him, motionless, waiting for him to raise his eyes again so she could—what? Defend herself? Argue with him? No, she couldn’t. Those kinds of exchanges didn’t happen at Clifton, at least not between a partner and a first-year associate. She marveled at Dan’s poise, the unapologetic exercise of his presumed right to be an ass.
“Okay, Dan. I understand,” Lina said, hating the surrender in her voice. She turned and left the room, closing the door behind her with a soft click like the sound of teeth. The carpeted hallway stretched long and silent before and behind her, empty but for a man perched atop a ladder, his upper torso installed within a dark gap in the ceiling tiles. He wore a blue jumpsuit that bagged at the knees and heavy work boots of yellow, new-looking leather, and his waist twisted, his heels lifted, as though occupied by some laborious task within the ceiling innards. Lina edged around the ladder, resisting the urge to call up to him, and then continued along her way to the gleaming elevator bank with all its pinball buttons. Somewhere a door slammed, a woman coughed. Lina pushed the down button. She waited. All around her, the walls breathed with the hush of work, the muffled tap of keyboards, the murmurings of secret conference. The deafening noise and mysterious purpose of gray carpets and beige walls.
