In the Media
The story of Robert Carter III’s Deed of Gift and the Nomini Hall estate’s enslaved community has received growing attention:
CNN (September 2021): Coverage of the 230th anniversary of the Deed of Gift, reporting by Eliott McLaughlin. The article highlighted that Carter “championed liberty” in a way the Founding Fathers refused to, and featured the Nomini Hall Slave Legacy Project’s research.
Encyclopedia Virginia: The Virginia Humanities encyclopedia entry on Robert Carter III’s Deed of Gift cites the Nomini Hall Slave Legacy Project and uses images credited to our research.
The Long Shadow: The Long Shadow is an award-winning PBS documentary about today’s white privilege and white supremacy in the context of the history of the United States. Nomini Hall Slave Legacy Project is featured.
WWBT12 Richmond (February 2022): Nomini Hall Slave Legacy is mentioned in the feature article ‘He had a heart for mankind’: Virginia’s Robert Carter III and his “Deed of Gift” freed more than 500 enslaved people
Academic Research
Journal of Slavery and Data Preservation (2024): Andrew Levy of Butler University published a peer-reviewed data article documenting the Deed of Gift for the Enslaved.org platform. The dataset, now hosted on Harvard Dataverse, makes the names and data from the Deed accessible to scholars and descendants.
Key Scholarly Works:
- Andrew Levy, The First Emancipator: The Forgotten Story of Robert Carter, the Founding Father Who Freed His Slaves (2005)
- John Randolph Barden’s research on Carter’s interactions with the enslaved community
- Christ Church (Lancaster County) historical research and archives
Primary Source Repositories
Researchers and descendants can find original documents at:
- Northumberland County Courthouse (where the Deed was filed)
- Stewart Bell Jr. Archives, Handley Regional Library (Winchester, VA): Freedom certificates for Frederick County manumissions
- Library of Virginia (Richmond): County court records, land records
- Virginia Museum of History and Culture
- Harvard Dataverse (digital dataset of the Deed)
Presentations and Speaking
To be added