"I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids--and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me."
- Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man"
West Ford and Priscella Bell
A drawing of West Ford around 73 years old by journalist/artist Benson Lossing at the Mount Vernon Plantation in 1859 from the Harper's New Monthly Magazine. In Lossing...
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This is a drawing from an unnamed source of an older West Ford from the Ford Archives. Ford again signed his name at the bottom of the sketch. West Ford's name is more than a signature; he...
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Venus was a handmaid on the Bushfield Plantation. Bushfield was owed by John Augustine Washington, a brother of George Washington. As a child, Venus' mother, Jenny, was the...
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William Ford was the son of West Ford and Priscella Bell. William was born abt 1813-1814 on the Mount Vernon Plantation and died in 1874. He married Henrietta Bruce on September 3rd, 1840....
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A painting of George Washington around the age of 60. In the Ford oral history, the father of the country was also the father of West Ford and a slave named Venus. For almost 56 years,...
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A painting of a young George Washington around 25 years of age. The world into which George Washington was born in 1732 was a comfortable one and wholly dependent on the "peculiar...
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_0_0.thumbnail.jpg "West Ford, young")
A drawing was commissioned by the Washington family on West Ford's 21st birthday and emancipation from slavery around 1805. West was born around 1785 or 1786 to Venus, his mother, on the...
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Photo of the Mount Vernon Plantation when West Ford was a caretaker there. (Photo courtesy of MVLA). Pamela Cunningham founded the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association of the Union and wanted...
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*West Ford was willed 160 acres of land adjoining Mount Vernon in 1829, making him the richest black man in Virgina at that time. He later sold his land and purchased...
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Article stating that West Ford was known as the Negro son of George Washington.
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Newspaper article about West Ford from the Fairfax Chronicles, 1986, by Donald Sweig.
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Photo of Linda at the old tomb of George Washington on the Mount Vernon plantation. There are two family tombs located at Mount Vernon. The "old tomb" was the original family crypt,...
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A wreath dedicated to West Ford at the slave cemetery at Mount Vernon. From LABH collection.
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This page lists the names and other information about the Mount Vernon burial grounds of the enslaved servants. The Ford family's oral history states that West Ford was placed in the old...
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This page of burial records comes from 1929 minutes p. 46 about the graveyard which was used by General Washington for his enslaved at Mount Vernon. It delves into how the markers were worn and...
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Entry from Mount Vernon records on slave burials that George Ford visited the plantation in 1929 when two workers were placing the memorial tablet. The workers stated that Ford told them...
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This is a continuing entry from page 3. It states that George Ford told the two workers at the slave cemetery where the tablet was laid that the burying ground used to have a rail fence around...
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Book cover of the book by J. A. Rogers, The Five Negro Presidents. The book also shares information on West Ford, son of George Washington on page 5. (Research by Angela Allen...
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Description of the book cover, The Five Negro Presidents, by J. A. Rogers (research by Angela Allen Henry).
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_0.thumbnail.jpg "West Ford, 21 years of age")
This is a pencil sketched drawing of a young West Ford (artist unknown). West Ford was born abt. 1784-1787, on the Bushfield Plantation in Westmoreland County, Virginia. His mother, Venus,...
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