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In August of 1758, in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, a poor Irish immigrant named Mary Madden bore a child, Sarah Madden, whose father was said to be a slave and the property of Colonel James Madison, father of the future president of the United States. This daughter, though born to a free mulatto, became indentured to the Madisons. There she worked as a seamstress to pay off the fine of her birth until she was thirty-one years old. Sarah Madden bore ten children; when the term of her indenture
was over, she and her youngest son, Willis, struck out for themselves—Sarah
as a seamstress, laundress, and later, with Willis, a dairy farmer
and tavern keeper. These documents came to light in 1949 when T. O. Madden Jr. discovered a hidebound trunk originally belonging to his great-grandfather Willis. Stored in the trunk were papers dating back to the mid-eighteenth century, freedom papers, papers of indenture, deeds of land, Sarah Madden’s laundry and seamstress record books, letters, traveling passes. The trunk even held a full set of business records from the nineteenth century when Madden’s Tavern flourished as a center of activity in Orange County and as a rest stop on the road to Fredericksburg. From that day forward, T. O. Madden deeply researched his family, using census reports, other official sources, family, and friends. All have led to his ably reconstructed family history, and to his own remarkable story. We Were Always Free is a unique and very American family saga. T. O. Madden, Jr. was born in 1903 on the Maddenville farm in Culpeper County, Virginia, where he continued to live until shortly before his death in 2000. Ann L. Miller is historian for the Virginia Transportation Research Council and a consultant historian to Montpelier, the former home of President James Madison in Orange County, Virginia. |
The University of
Virginia Press