Franklin and Armfield Office

The Franklin and Armfield Office, which houses the Freedom House Museum, is a historic commercial building in Alexandria, Virginia (until 1846, the District of Columbia). Built c. 1810–1820, it was first used as a private residence before being converted to the offices of the largest slave trading firm in the United States, started in 1828 by Isaac Franklin and John Armfield. "As many as [a] million people are thought to have passed through between 1828 and 1861, on their way to bondage in Mississippi and Louisiana".[4] Another source, using ship manifests (lists of slaves) in the National Archives, gives the number as "at least 5,000".[5]

Franklin and Armfield Office
Freedom House in 2022
Franklin and Armfield Office is located in Alexandria Historical District
Franklin and Armfield Office
Franklin and Armfield Office is located in Northern Virginia
Franklin and Armfield Office
Franklin and Armfield Office is located in Virginia
Franklin and Armfield Office
Franklin and Armfield Office is located in the United States
Franklin and Armfield Office
Location1315 Duke Street,
Alexandria, Virginia
Coordinates38°48′14″N 77°3′17″W
Area27 acres (11 ha)
Built1810 (1810)
ArchitectRobert Young
Architectural styleFederal
NRHP reference No.78003146
VLR No.100-0105
Significant dates
Added to NRHPJune 2, 1978[1]
Designated NHLJune 2, 1978[2]
Designated VLROctober 16, 1979[3]

The former Franklin & Armfield Office building is located just west of Alexandria's Old Town, on the north side of Duke Street between South West and South Payne streets. It is a three-story brick building, topped by a mansard roof and resting on a brick foundation. Its front facade is laid in Flemish bond, while the sides and rear are laid in common bond. It has Federal-period styling, with windows and the entrance door set in segmented, arch openings, with gabled dormers at the roof level.[6]

The building was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1978, and has also been designated a Virginia Historic Landmark. The building was formerly owned by the Northern Virginia Urban League which operated it as a museum, with exhibits about the slave trading firm and the life of a slave.[7][8]

The City of Alexandria purchased the building in March of 2020 and reopened it as a museum in June of 2022.[9]

History

The building was constructed as a residence in the 1810s by Robert Young, a brigadier general in the District of Columbia Militia. Due to financial reverses, Young was soon afterward forced to sell the house.

Franklin & Armfield

The building was purchased in 1828 by Isaac Franklin and his intimate friend and nephew-by-marriage John Armfield, who established it as their Washington-area office, and the residence of Armfield.[10]

The Franklin and Armfield house with its neighboring slave pens in 1836.
Cash in Market.

The subscribers having leased for a term of years the large three story brick house on Duke Street, in the town of Alexandria, D.C. formerly occupied by Gen. Young, we wish to purchase one hundred and fifty likely young negroes of both sexes, between the ages of 8 and 25 years. Persons who wish to sell will do well to give us a call, as we are determined to give more than any other purchasers that are in market, or that may hereafter come into market.

Any letters addressed to the subscribers through the Post Office at Alexandria, will be promptly attended to. For information, enquire at the above described house, as we can at all times be found there.

FRANKLIN & ARMFIELD

— advertisement in the Alexandria Phoenix Gazette, May 17, 1828[5]

The property then extended further east, and they added structures for holding and trading in slaves. They also provided, for 25¢ a day, housing in their jail for slaveowners visiting Washington.[11]: 292  The two-story extension to the rear of this house was part of the slave-holding facilities, which included high walls, and interior chambers that featured prison-like grated doors and windows.

Circa 1833–34, Franklin & Armfield had trading agents in at least five cities:[12][13]

  • R. C. Ballard & Co., Richmond, Va.
  • J. M. Saunders & Co., Warrenton, Va.
  • George Kephart & Co., Fredericktown, Md.
  • James F. Purvis & Co., Baltimore
  • Thomas M. Jones, Easton, Eastern Shore, Md.
  • John Ware, Port Tobacco, Md.
  • William Hooper, Annapolis, Maryland
  • A. Grimm, Fredericksburg, Virginia.

Franklin left the business, starting in 1835, and Armfield sold the property to another slave trader in 1836.

Franklin and Armfield sold more enslaved people, separated more families, and made more money from the trade than almost anyone else in the United States. They amassed a fortune equalling billions in today's dollars (2021) and were two of the nation's richest men. Franklin sold slaves from an office in Natchez, Mississippi, with branch offices in New Orleans, St. Francisville, and Vidalia, Louisiana. His nephew Armfield handled the supply, sending agents door-to-door in Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware looking for enslaved people their owners might like to sell, and arranging transportation.[14][15]

Maryland and Virginia had surpluses of slaves and spoke of slaves as an export, like livestock. As portrayed in Uncle Tom's Cabin, there was a vast, internal forced migration of enslaved people from the Upper South to the Lower South, and Franklin and Armfield were central to that business. "In surviving correspondence, they actually brag about raping enslaved people who they’ve been processing through the firm."[14]

Price, Birch and Co.
"Price Birch & Co Dealers in Slaves", Alexandria, Virginia, 1862

From 1858, the building was occupied by Price, Birch & Co. an American slave trading company founded in 1858 by George Kephart, William Birch, J. C. Cook, and C. M. Price.[11]: 29 [16][17]

Price, Birch & Co. ceased business in 1861.[18][19] Arriving at the Duke street office of the company on May 14, 1861, the Union Army discovered that "The firm had fled, and taken with them all but one of the humans that they sold as slaves — an old man, chained to the middle of the floor by the leg."[20][21] Union forces then took possession of the building until February 2, 1866, using it as a military prison.[6][22][23] Late in the war, it was used as L'Ouverture Hospital for black soldiers, and as housing for contrabands.[11]: 293 

Use after the Civil War

After the war, the building's outlying slave pens, of which there are photographs,[17] were torn down. The bricks may have been reused in the construction of the adjacent townhouses.[6] After serving a variety of other uses, the main building is now used for Freedom House Museum, with exhibits devoted to the slave trade. The second floor houses the offices of the Northern Virginia Urban League.

In 2005, the Virginia Department of Historic Resources erected the following marker in front of the building:

Franklin and Armfield
Slave Office (1315 Duke Street)

Isaac Franklin and John Armfield leased this brick building with access to the wharves and docks in 1828 as a holding pen for enslaved people being shipped from northern Virginia to Louisiana. They purchased the building and three lots in 1832. From this location Armfield bought bondspeople at low prices and shipped them south to his partner Franklin, in Natchez, Mississippi, and New Orleans, Louisiana, to be sold at higher prices. By the 1830s they often sold 1,000 people annually, operating as one of the largest slave-trading companies in the United States until 1836. Slave traders continually owned the property until 1861.[24]

Freedom House Museum

The Northern Virginia Urban League purchased the building in the 1990s and installed an exhibit in the basement. The rest of the building was used for offices and classroom space.[25]

The Office of Historic Alexandria partnered with the Northern Virginia Urban League in February of 2018 in an effort to maintain and interpret the building. The Urban League received $50,000 from the National Trust for Historic Preservation's African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund that same year.[25]

The City of Alexandria purchased the building from the Urban League in March of 2020.[26][9]

The Freedom House Museum reopened in June of 2022. It houses three exhibits that tell the story of the Black experience in Alexandria and the United States.[27]

See also

References
  1. "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. April 15, 2008.
  2. "Franklin & Armfield Office". National Historic Landmark summary listing. National Park Service. Archived from the original on December 31, 2007. Retrieved June 26, 2008.
  3. "Virginia Landmarks Register". Virginia Department of Historic Resources. Retrieved May 12, 2013.
  4. Sullivan, Patricia (February 14, 2018). "Alexandria council loans $63,000 to stabilize slave-trading museum". The Washington Post. Retrieved February 14, 2018.
  5. Sweig, Donald (October 2014). "Alexandria to New Orleans: The Human Tragedy of the Interstate Slave Trade" (PDF). Alexandria Gazette-Packet. Retrieved February 13, 2018.
  6. "NHL nomination for Franklin and Armfield Office". National Park Service. Retrieved January 26, 2016.
  7. "Freedom House Museum". The Smithsonian Associates. Retrieved October 5, 2015.
  8. "Alexandria museum of slave trade damaged by winter storms". The Washington Post. March 4, 2015. Retrieved October 5, 2015.
  9. "Once a notorious slave pen, it is now a museum on slavery — and freedom". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved February 10, 2023.
  10. Gudmestad, Robert H. (Fall 2003). "The Troubled Legacy of Isaac Franklin: The Enterprise of Slave Trading". Tennessee Historical Quarterly. 62 (3): 193–217. JSTOR 42627764.
  11. Loewen, James W. (1999). Lies Across America. What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong. The New Press. ISBN 1565843444.
  12. Bancroft, Frederic (2023) [1931, 1996]. Slave Trading in the Old South (Original publisher: J. H. Fürst Co., Baltimore). Southern Classics Series. Introduction by Michael Tadman (Reprint ed.). Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press. p. 59. ISBN 978-1-64336-427-8. LCCN 95020493. OCLC 1153619151.
  13. Skolnik, Benjamin A. (January 2021). 1315 Duke Street – Building and Property History (PDF) (Report). Office of Historic Alexandria - City of Alexandria, Virginia. pp. 28–29
  14. Natanson, Hannah (September 14, 2019). "They were once America's cruelest, richest slave traders. Why does no one know their names?". Washington Post.
  15. Ball, Edward (November 2015). "Retracing Slavery's Trail of Tears". Smithsonian Magazine.
  16. "Andrew Joseph Russell | Slave Pen, Alexandria, Virginia".
  17. My Genealogy Hound. "Alexandria, Virginia, Price and Birch, Armsfield and Franklin, Slave Pen, Historic Photos". Retrieved February 12, 2018.
  18. "Out of the Attic: Notorious local slave dealer had hand in Solomon Northup's kidnapping | Alexandria Times | Alexandria, VA". November 7, 2013.
  19. "Franklin and Armfield Office (U.S. National Park Service)".
  20. Conway, Moncure Daniel (1865). Testimonies Concerning Slavery. London: Chapman and Hill. p. 22.
  21. "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on April 14, 2020. Retrieved September 15, 2019.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  22. Friedman, Saul S. (2000). Jews and the American Slave Trade. Transaction Publishers. ISBN 9781412826938.
  23. "Congressional series of United States public documents". 1870.
  24. http://www.markerhistory.com/Images/Low%20Res%20A%20Shots/e-131%20franklin%20and%20armfield%20slave%20office%20(1315%20duke%20street).jpg
  25. "How A Once-Notorious Site of Enslavement Became a Bastion of Black History in Alexandria, Virginia | National Trust for Historic Preservation". savingplaces.org. Retrieved February 10, 2023.
  26. Scott, Chadd. "Reopened Freedom House Museum Focal Point For Exploring Alexandria, Virginia's Rich Black History". Forbes. Retrieved February 10, 2023.
  27. "Journey to Freedom". www.connectionnewspapers.com. Retrieved February 10, 2023.

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