In the summer of 1826, Nelly and her two daughters Harriet and Juno took advantage of a rare opportunity. While their enslavers, Notley Williams and his wife were away visiting a neighbor, Nelly dressed in her finest clothing, gathered her daughters by the hands and started walking. When the neighbors questioned them about where they were headed, they had an easy answer: it was Sunday, a typical day for visiting relations nearby.
When Williams returned to his farm, Nelly and her children were gone. The enslaver quickly put two and two together: they weren’t coming back. He checked their clothing trunks—they were empty. Williams had recently suffered an accident making him blind in one eye. The man could barely see. Nelly had found the most opportune moment to save her daughters and flee enslavement.
Williams was intent on finding his enslaved property. He placed advertisements for their capture in newspapers in Winchester, Virginia and Hagerstown, Maryland. He also “had a number of hand bills printed, set up, and sent in different directions.” Once he predicted their course, he sent the hand bills towards Leesburg, anticipating that people there might run into the fugitives.
Williams documented Currell’s route traveling towards Cumberland, Maryland and ending at Harper’s Ferry.
Williams documented Currell’s second route which led him towards Washington D.C.
Because Williams was incapacitated due to his eye, he sent his brother-in-law John Currell in pursuit of Nelly, Harriet, and Juno. Currell traveled towards “Cumberland, and down the Potomac on the Maryland side and enquiring at the several ferries and other places until he reached Harper’s Ferry, crossing there and returning home, getting no intelligence of them.” Currell then tried a different route: he crossed the Potomac and traveled towards Washington D.C. and placed more advertisements in the National Intelligencer. He still didn’t find them.
In spite of the resources Williams deployed to capture Nelly, Harriet, and Juno, there’s no indication that they were captured or imprisoned for self-emancipating. There’s also no indication that they made it to safety. Williams’ letter provides great clues as to where to search for newspaper advertisements posting rewards for capture for Nelly and her daughters. Yet I struggled to find any advertisement that was digitized and available online. I was able to determine that several newspapers from Hagerstown, Northern Virginia, in addition to the National Intelligencer do in fact still survive, but the issues within the 1826-1827 timeframe have not yet been digitized. It’s a good reminder that so much of the information we still seek is not yet available digitally. (Author’s Note: I continued to search analog records and found a reward posted for Nelly, Harriet, and Juno in July 1826. Stay tuned for next month’s post which will share what I found).
The colored routes on this 1817 map attempt to document possible routes John Currell took in pursuit of Nelly, Harriet, and Juno. The blue line indicates a possible first route Currell took heading towards Cumberland, Maryland and concluding near Harper’s Ferry. The orange line represents a possible second route ending in Washington D.C.
Likewise, this story of Nelly, Harriet, and Juno is also not online. That’s why I chose to write about it this February. Since 2013, Virginia Untold staff and volunteers have been working towards greater accessibility by putting records related to Black Virginians online. We started this initiative by digitizing records from our “Free and Enslaved” collections, but we didn’t capture everything in those first few years. So, in 2025, we’re circling back to collect and digitize the records from these collections that aren’t yet available digitally.
“Free Negro and Slave Records” collection from Frederick County in our 4th floor stacks. The letter describing Nelly’s escape is sitting in a “miscellaneous” labeled folder in one of these boxes.
In addition to small digitization efforts, our primary goals for Virginia Untold in 2025 include increasing awareness and showcasing the work to new audiences. While this is a story about Nelly, Harriet, and Juno, it’s not their story; we’re missing the voices of our main actors. What would they have said about their journey if given the chance? And how do we continue to promote the use of these records in the absence of their perspective? Well, our Virginia Humanities Fellow, Tev’n Powers has been giving us some ideas. Powers is using data collected from the “Runaway Slave” Records in Virginia Untold to produce data visualizations as a part of a digital storytelling project, Fugitive Data Portraits.
While the data visualizations will provide powerful starting points, Powers will include personal narratives and testimonies from those who fled slavery and situate their experiences within the larger context of slavery in antebellum Virginia. It’s time for these stories to take center stage showing us what it truly cost to risk self-emancipation. Stay tuned for more updates from Powers and Virginia Untold.
