We Were Always Free: The Maddens Of Culpeper County, Virginia, A 200-year Family History

by T.O. Madden, Ann L. Miller

In August of 1758, in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, a poor Irish immigrant named Mary Madden bore a child, Sarah Madden, whose father was said to be a slave and the property of Colonel James Madison, father of the future president of the United States. This daughter, though born to a free mulatto, became indentured to the Madisons. There she worked as a seamstress to pay off the fine of her birth until she was thirty-one years old.

Sarah Madden bore ten children; when the term of her indenture was over, she and her youngest son, Willis, struck out for themselves--Sarah as a seamstress, laundress, and later, with Willis, a dairy farmer and tavern keeper.

Spanning two hundred years of American history, "We Were Always Free" tells its story with remarkable completeness. we can thank Sarah Madden and her descendants for keeping their family narrative alive--and for saving hundreds of important documents detailing their freedom, hardship, and daily work.

These documents came to light in 1949 when T. O. Madden Jr. discovered a hidebound trunk originally belonging to his great-grandfather Willis. Stored in the trunk were papers dating back to the mid-eighteenth century, freedom papers, papers of indenture, deeds of land, Sarah Madden's laundry and seamstress record books, letters, traveling passes. The trunk even held a full set of business records from the nineteenth century when Madden's Tavern flourished as a center of activity in Orange County and as a rest stop on the road to Fredericksburg.

From that day forward, T. O. Madden deeply researched his family, using census reports, other official sources, family, and friends. All have led to his ably reconstructed family history, and to his own remarkable story.

"We Were Always Free" is a unique and very American family saga.

Genres: Nonfiction, History

218 pages, Paperback

First published June 17, 1992

Reviews

[Autumn · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a kid I had a hard time getting into history, but that has long changed. Learning about a family's story, and a quite unique story at that, through generations was really intriguing. I found the author to be very informative and organized in his writings on several members of his family. It was nice that he shared images photographs of documents, heirloom household items, and of family members themselves. The author was also very unbiased in his writings, giving only the facts of his family history and attaching none of his emotions to these accounts, which I found to be very nice but also somewhat shocking. I would've understood if Madden was more vocal on the racism that persisted throughout the family's different lives and how it shaped them. His writing, however, does a great job of covering these subjects and experiences, and Madden makes the book very approachable and digestible.

[Betsy Starks · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a genealogical history of a free Negro family in Virginia and us informative of the times and how the free Blacks lived before, during snd after the Civil War. A goid example for someone writing her own genealogical family history.

[Cris Crawford · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well written and fascinating. Willis Madden's story of his tavern, from its unlicensed founding to its rise in the 1830s and 1840s to its devastation during the Civil War is both amazing and tragic, and T. O. Madden's life story in the last chapter is awesome too.

[Shannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good reference work