Professor Emeritus of Historic Preservation Douglas Sanford
Professor Emeritus of Historic Preservation Douglas Sanford provided comments for an article in The Virginia Gazette entitled, “Could there have been homes for enslaved people on William & Mary’s campus?”
One part of the case comes from help I sought from an expert on how enslaved people were housed, Douglas Sanford, professor emeritus of historic preservation at the University of Mary Washington. I had thought the larger structures might have been occupied by the enslaved, but Professor Sanford wrote me that “we do see plantations with ‘streets’ and ‘rows’ of aligned outbuildings and slave quarters, but usually the slave quarters are smaller structures, similar to the small, one-story buildings seen in the Graham drawing. Right now, I cannot think of an example, whether existing or documented historically, with multiple two-story buildings.” Read more.