"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"
Historical
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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This is a moument placed in the Mount Vernon Slave Cemetery titled "Life Unfinished". The slave cemetery is considered sacred ground for the slaves and freed blacks who worked at the...
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Article on the dedication of the slave cemetery at the Mount Vernon Plantation.
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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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Major George Ford was born in the room above the spinning room on the Mount Vernon Plantation.
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This is a plaque that was placed at the entry of the Mount Vernon Slave cemtery for slave burial area. It mentions West Ford: West Ford (1784-1863), a freed slave who was hird by the...
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This is a two-page list of slaves owned by John Augustine, the master of Venus. The document is dated March 1783. Venus was a housemaid on the Bushfield Plantation and her mother, Jenny,...
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Venus and her mother (Jenny) names appear below. MLV put in the writing next to the names. Data from the MVLA.
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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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.thumbnail.jpg "Cover, Harper's Weekly")
Cover drawing from Harper's Weekly, 1884
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Newspaper article about West Ford from the Fairfax Chronicles, 1986, by Donald Sweig.
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News paper article from the Pittsburgh Courier Newspaper describing West Ford as the Negro son of George Washington, 1940.
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A wreath dedicated to West Ford at the slave cemetery at Mount Vernon. From LABH collection.
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Meeting of the reading of Abraham Lincoln's will with Major George Ford. Ford was the treasurer of the Lincoln Exposition in Chicago.
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