Administrative Information

Access Restrictions

There are no restrictions.

Use Restrictions

See the University of Virginia Library’s use policy.

Preferred Citation

Papers of the Madden Family, Accession #4120, Special Collections Dept., University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va.

Acquisition Information

This collection was deposited on 1953 Jan 6.

Scope and Content Information

This microfilm collection (M-589), 1760-1874, ca. 396 items, consists of documents discovered by T. O. [Thomas Obed] Madden, Jr., in his great-great-grandmother's (Sarah Madden) trunk in 1949 concerning this Virginia free black family ("Free Negro"). Many are reproduced, cited or described in T. O. Madden, Jr., We Were Always Free: The Maddens of Culpeper County, Virginia (New York: Norton, 1992). Researchers should consult this book while using the collection. Initially placed on deposit for safekeeping and historical reference in the Library by Mr. T. O. Madden, Jr., Elkwood, Culpeper County, Virginia, on January 6, 1953, the collection was returned to him on March 13, 1953 after its microfilming. However, ten items (four originals and six negative photostatic copies) remain in the control folder. Microfilm and control folder listings are appended at the end of this guide.

Most of the collection pertains to Willis Madden (1799-1879) of Culpeper County, son of Sarah Madden (1758-1824), the illegitimate mulatto daughter of Mary Madden, an unmarried Irish woman of St. George's Parish, Spotsylvania County. Sarah became an indentured servant in the household of George Fraser, a merchant Scot who resided in Spotsylvania County, from 1760 to his death in 1765, the household of James Madison, Sr. (father of the president  ), Montpelier, Orange County, 1767 to 1783, and Francis Madison (brother of the president ), Culpeper County, 1783 to 1789. Her son Willis (tenth of Sarah's thirteen children) later became the patriarch of one of Virginia's most prosperous antebellum free black families. In 1823 he began securing written references from his white neighbors and by 1835 had purchased nearly ninety acres upon which he built a home, tavern, and a general store. Over the next thirty years he became a moderately prosperous tavern keeper and farmer. Madden's Tavern was placed on the Virginia Landmarks Register and on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984 [Madden, We Were Always Free ; Calder Loth, Virginia Landmarks of Black History (Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia, 1995), 111-113].

Items of interest include: an April 17, 1760 apprenticeship indenture for Sarah Madden's indentured servitude to George Fraser for thirty-one years; genealogical information (chiefly birth lists); a June 12, 1823 letter of Culpeper County justice George Fitzhugh to Captain Thomas Humphries attesting to the Madden family's good character and advising them against having any contact with slaves; certificates of freedom for Willis Madden and his wife Katherine "Kitty" Clark Madden (September 23, 1822 and September 19, 1826); a deed, October 13, 1835, by which Martin and Mary Slaughter sell Willis Madden eighty-seven acres of land in Culpeper County; correspondence (primarily of Sarah and Willis Madden). Assorted financial and legal papers include personal receipts, promissory notes, state and county tax receipts, store accounts, Sarah Madden's account book (ca. 1797-ca. 1799) of her work as a laundress and seamstress; Mariah Madden (daughter of Willis) items, and Willis Madden's Civil War damage claims (1871-1873). A few items pertain to the Clark family, in-laws of the Maddens.