This historic structure is located to the NE of the Belmont mansion house.
During my visit, a Belmont guide told me that this structure had at one time been occupied by an elderly African American woman who had worked for the Melchers.
My questions are:
1. Who was the elderly African American woman?
2. Where was she from?
3. Had she ever been enslaved? (or was she the descendant of a slave?)
4. What were her (or her family's) ties to Belmont and the surrounding community, if any?
5. This was a tenant house, but was it previously a slave quarter?
6. Were there more like this at that location or was this the only one? (My quarters to community theory.)
7. What is Belmont going to do with it?
This may be a fantastic opportunity to interpret historic African American lifeways.
Looking SW, one can almost see the Belmont mansion house from the structure:
Maddy McCoy
Fairfax County, Virginia
Slavery Inventory Database
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