Fall Hill Plantation, Spotsylvania County, Virginia

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OVERVIEW

Fall Hill was home to generations of Black people enslaved by the Thornton family near Fredericksburg, Virginia. The plantation stood on high ground overlooking the Rappahannock River, on land that had been part of an approximately 8,000-acre tract patented by Francis Thornton I around 1720. The Thornton family also operated a grist mill near the river and maintained another plantation, known as The Falls, below Fall Hill. For the Black people who lived there, the surrounding landscape was a place of work, family life, and community. Their labor maintained agricultural land, domestic spaces, buildings, and other operations associated with the Thornton properties near the Rappahannock. Their social world would also have extended beyond the plantation through family, work, religious, and community connections with other Black people in and around Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania County.

By the early nineteenth century, federal census records provide glimpses of the Black community living under slavery at Fall Hill. Sixteen enslaved people were recorded under Francis Thornton V in 1810, five in 1820, and ten in 1830. These changing numbers likely reflect births and deaths as well as the movement of people through inheritance, sale, marriage, or transfers among Thornton family properties.

One possible member of this community was Mark Thornton, a Black man born in Virginia around 1772. Family research contributed to Sankofagen identifies Mark as having been enslaved first at Fall Hill and later at Thornhill Plantation in Greene County, Alabama. Mark’s life could have overlapped with several generations of the Thornton family’s occupation of Fall Hill and with the construction of the surviving plantation house in 1779. By 1870, nearly a century later, Mark was living as a free man in Sumter County, Alabama.

Another possible connection is Moses Thornton, born in Virginia around 1810. After emancipation, Moses also lived in Sumter County, Alabama, where he appears in the 1870 census with his wife Betsey. Mark lived immediately nearby. Moses was later recorded with his wife Patsy, and son Willis Thornton, born in Virginia around 1836. The proximity of Mark and Moses after emancipation, their shared Virginia origins, and their connections to the Thornton surname suggest their possible relationship to one another and to the Black community at Fall Hill. James Innes Thornton, a son of Francis Thornton V and Sally Innes Thornton, was born at Fall Hill around 1800 and later migrated to Greene County, Alabama, where he established Thornhill Plantation. By 1840, 56 Black people were enslaved under his name there, and that population increased to 97 in 1850 and 156 by 1860. Fall Hill provides a possible starting point for understanding the forced migration of Black Thornton families from Virginia into the Deep South.

Quick Stats:

  • 10 enslaved in 1830
  • 5 enslaved in 1820
  • 16 enslaved in 1810
  • Location: Fredericksburg, Spotsylvania County, Virginia; Rappahannock River

ENSLAVED PERSONS

U.S. Federal Slave Schedule Abstracts

  • 1830: Jurisdiction – Spotsylvania Co., VA; Persons recorded – Francis Thornton (Thomton) (enslaver), 10 enslaved
  • 1820: Jurisdiction – Spotsylvania Co., VA; Persons recorded – Francis Thornton (Thomton) (enslaver), 5 enslaved
  • 1810: Jurisdiction – Spotsylvania Co., VA; Persons recorded – Francis Thornton (enslaver), 16 enslaved

ENSLAVERS

  • Francis Thornton V (b.1767-d.1836) – owner
  • John Roberts Taylor (b.?-d.?) – owner; Francis Thornton V died in 1836 without a will. His estate remained unsettled for nine years, and historical accounts state that Fall Hill continued to be maintained by enslaved people during this period. The property was eventually deeded in 1845 to John Roberts Taylor, who had married Thornton’s granddaughter

Enslaver Families

Thornton family: Francis Thornton V (b.1767-d.1836); Sarah “Sally” Innes Thornton – wife of F. Thornton; Elizabeth Anne Thornton (1793) – daughter 0f F. and S.I. Thornton; Francis Thornton VI (b.1796) – son of F. and S.I. Thornton; Harry Innes Thornton (b.1797) – son of F. and S.I. Thornton; Sally Innes Thornton (b.1799) – daughter of F. and S.I. Thornton; Catherine Thornton (b.1804) – daughter of F. and S.I. Thornton; Butler Brayne Thornton (b.1805) – son of F. and S.I. Thornton; Robert Calloway Thornton – son of F. and S.I. Thornton

Thornton family: James Innes Thornton – owner of Thornhill Plantation (Greene Co., AL), son of F. and S.I. Thornton

RESEARCH TO-DO

  • Identify Black people named in the 1836-1845 estate records of Francis Thornton V and compare them with the Mark, Moses, Patsy/Betsey, Willis, and Beverly Thornton family cluster documented in post-emancipation Alabama

SOURCES

 

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