Henry Brown was born about 1815 in Louisa County at a plantation known as “The Hermitage,†located about two miles from Cuckoo (shown in this photo as it appears in 2011). His master, John Barret, was a Revolutionary war veteran and a former…
John Mercer Langston was born on December 14, 1829 to a freed slave, Lucy Langston, and a white man of “extreme old age," Ralph Quarles. At the time of Langston's birth, Virginia law specified that all children would be born into a “free or bond…