An unidentified African-American woman stands with three white adults while holding a white child. Behind them, the house built in Stantonsburg about 1860 by James B. Peacock and later owned by Jonathan Applewhite, John L. Yelverton, and Yelverton’s descendants. The photo is undated, but was taken before 1914, when an enormous portico was added to the front of the house.

Though this photo was taken well after slavery, enslaved people lived and worked in this house. Peacock reported four enslaved people in the 1860 federal slave schedule — an 18 year-old woman and three girls aged 10, 3, and 1. His mother, Sarah Peacock, who lived with him, reported another eight enslaved people — men and boys aged 60, 52, 23, 4, and 2, and women and girls aged 50, 19, and one month. Per the population schedule, the Peacock household also included free people of color, Eliza Hall, 45, and her children William, 15, Patrick, 14, Margaret, 13, Lou, 12, and Balum, 11, whose father was James B. Woodard. 

Photo courtesy of Stantonsburg Historical Society’s A History of Stantonsburg Circa 1780 to 1980 (1981).