Both these items were sent to us courtesy of Jeannette Maxey ([email protected]). Linne BOOK Powell, Ruth Burr, 1911-: Burr-Bowles genealogy / compiled by Ruth Burr Powell. Baltimore (MD) : Gateway Press, 1995. WEBSITE <http://www.hallowedground.org/component/option,com_jthg/theme,region/task,view/county,Albemarle/Itemid,1/id,150/>http://www.hallowedground.org/component/option,com_jthg/theme,region/task,view/county,Albemarle/Itemid,1/id,150/ Free State Community Headstone from the Bowles family cemetery Free State was one of the earliest free black communities in the state of Virginia. In 1788, Amy Bowles Farrow, a free woman of color, purchased 224 acres of Albemarle County land from William Johnson, a Quaker. Her son Zachariah Bowles-born free because his mother was free-inherited it at her death. He sometimes worked at Monticello, and it seems he married Critta Hemings, an enslaved woman there and the sister of Sally Hemings. Emancipated in 1827 after Thomas Jefferson's death, she joined her husband and lived out her life in Free State. By 1833 fifteen people in four households lived there. The community grew during the 19th century but little evidence of it survived into the 21st. In 2007, when the land was planned for a development named Belvedere for a manor house nearby, Rivanna Archaeological Services documented the community. Further archaeological studies are planned, and two historic cemeteries will be preserved. The largest, the Bowles family cemetery, contains about 60 graves. Only one of several gravestones is legible, that of Mary Bowles who died in 1882. Across the road, the Brown family cemetery will also be preserved. Resources * Albemarle County Press Release, May 1, 2007. "New Discoveries at Free State Reveal More History of Free Blacks in Albemarle County." * African-American Cemeteries of Albemarle and Amherst Counties. "Bowles Family Cemetery."