NOVA Parks News

By Paul Gilbert, NOVA Parks Executive Director

Northern Virginia is rich in history, and many of us have visited the best-known sites and feel like we know something about the main stories of the American Revolution and Civil War, but there is so much more just beneath the surface.

Recently an amazing story was discovered at Bull Run Regional Park in Centreville. More than seventy years before the Emancipation Proclamation, over five hundred enslaved people were set free and allowed to own land. Robert Carter III was one of the richest people in America when he had a religious awakening that led him to emancipate his enslaved workers in the 1790s. While the direct descendants of those he freed continued to remember this, few others knew these stories. New evidence of this remarkable time has been found at Bull Run Regional Park. And on Juneteenth 2022, these stories were shared, celebrated and memorialized at the park.

Starting in the 1770s, Robert Carter III adopted the Baptist faith and began building churches. The first was the Bull Run Meeting House, which was open to both black and white people. While predominantly used by the enslaved residents of the area, Carter buried his son in an unmarked grave next to the Bull Run church.

In the same time period, Carter publicly acknowledged that his enslaved business agent, Billy, was his half-brother. A combination of his relationship with his half-brother Billy, who he viewed as his most trusted advisor, and his religious convictions made it increasingly difficult for him to justify slavery. Carter said, “Whereas I have for some time past been convinced that to retain them in Slavery is contrary to the true principles of Religion and Justice and that therefore it was my duty to manumit [free] them.” Carter then emancipated all of his enslaved workers over a period of a few years, starting with the oldest.

This act of kindness created ripples through time. Ninety years after the Bull Run emancipation, a descendant of those emancipated, Alfred Harris, was also in a position to change history for the better. Harris had grown up at what is today Bull Run Regional Park in the ‘freeman community’ that had thrived after Carter’s action. After the Civil War, Alfred Harris earned a law degree from Howard University, served on the Alexandria City Council, and was then elected to the Virginia House of Delegates representing the Petersburg area. Delegate Harris championed the bill that created the first Historically Black College or University (HBCU) in Virginia. This became Virginia State University. Harris wanted the University open to all people, regardless of race, just as Carter had done with the church. But due to segregation laws, it was initially only open to non-white students.

The positive ripples through time continued when Dr. Gladys West, who graduated from Virginia State University with degrees in mathematics, went on to play a critical role in the invention of GPS navigation. Would West have had her opportunities without Harris, and would Harris have had his opportunities without Carter?

NOVA Parks historian Paul McCray discovered these and other related stories when he started researching a site in the woods that was known as the Harris family cemetery. Little was known about this site. Old maps confirmed that this was the site of the old Bull Run Church, although no structure remains. Ground penetrating radar found over 90 graves, most of them unmarked. The size of this cemetery sheds light on the size of the community that used this church during the roughly fifty years it was active.

The Juneteenth event on June 18, 2022, where these stories were unveiled, was a partnership between the Fairfax Branch of the NAACP and NOVA Parks. The NAACP’s Youth Council played a central role in leading the program. Karen Champblin, President of the Fairfax Branch of the NAACP, remarked, “It is historical narratives such as this, and many more untold stories, that must be shared to highlight the contributions from the black community, and all communities, that helped shape Virginia today. The Fairfax County NAACP values our partnership with NOVA Parks and appreciates their research into this important and unknown local history.”

In the process of these discoveries from over 200 years ago, NOVA Parks re-discovered that the Harris family donated the land that is now the site of Atlantis Waterpark in 1963. It is next to the waterpark, which is enjoyed by over 50,000 people a year, on the land generously donated by the Harris family, where you will now find interpretive signs that tell some of these stories. And from this point, you can follow the trail to the historic cemetery that stands as a monument to a free community from over 200 years ago.

What was just an open grassy area in the woods a year ago now that tells a compelling story of liberty, justice, education, and progress that helps us understand our region and our history.