Preservation Pitch Spotlight: Jobie Hill’s Slave House Database Project

(Left to right) Leighton Powell, Scenic Virginia; Jobie Hill and Preservation Virginia CEO Elizabeth Kostelny

Slave dwellings exist throughout Virginia that tell stories of a difficult time in history that should never be forgotten. Our 2015 Preservation Pitch winner, Jobie Hill, has been doing great work with her Slave House Database Project to document and interpret these spaces.

Hill, a historic preservation architect, started her independent project in 2012 to, “ensure that slave houses, irreplaceable pieces of history, are not lost forever.”

The database serves as a repository for information and data pertinent to all the known slave houses in the United States. At the time of her Preservation Pitch win, she had gathered more than 26,000 images and ex-slave narratives related to slave houses. In describing the Slave House Database, Hill says:

The documentation [of slave houses] is the visual representation of the spaces; and the interpretations are descriptions of the spaces from the actual inhabitants who lived and worked there during slavery. The narratives recorded from former slaves breathe life into the two-dimensional drawings and photographs of slave houses.

After having surveyed slave dwellings in various other states, Hill set her focus on documenting slave dwellings in Virginia for her Preservation Pitch project. She aimed to locate and resurvey at least 30 slave houses documented by the Historic American Buildings Survey program. Her goal was to identify which houses still exist, document the current conditions of the structures and record architectural information missing from the original survey.

Hill ended up surveying 37 slave houses in Virginia with the help of the $2,000 grant she received from her Preservation Pitch win. In total, she has surveyed 117 dwellings in Virginia over the past four years, with some located in Campbell and Pittsylvania Counties.

Overall, she believes that the relationship between the historical record of slave houses and stories of the inhabitants are crucial to the understanding and interpretation of the lives and settings of enslaved people. She states that through this relationship, “the plantation landscape is revealed not through the eyes of the master but through the perspective of those who were in his charge.”

The deadline for entering this year’s Preservation Pitch competition has been extended to Friday, September 8. If you have a historic preservation project that you would like to pitch, visit Eventbrite for submission details and to register. 

Louisa County Historical Society Intersecting Historic Preservation with Technology

Each year, we provide an opportunity for community members statewide to compete for $2,000 in seed money for a historic preservation project through our Preservation Pitch program. Three finalists are chosen to present their pitches during a reception at our annual Virginia Preservation Conference. The winners are selected by the audience. Last year, we welcomed Louisa County Historical Society into the winner’s circle for their project to document African American and slave-related burial grounds throughout the state.

Inspired by the inclusion of African American cemeteries on our 2016 Most Endangered Historic Places list, Louisa County Historical Society stated that they, “wanted to be a part of the effort to record and help preserve these sacred sites.”

Their project is two-fold, consisting of technology and community components. For the technology component, they have developed an easy-to-use application with ArcGIS – a platform that enables developers to build custom web and mobile applications that incorporate maps and data. The app utilizes a GeoForm template that allows the locations of burials to be automatically captured while recording data about individual sites and uploading photos.

The advantage of using the GeoForm template is that is can be shared and replicated across the state. After users record data collected in Louisa County about African American burial sites, it is immediately made available online. This data can then be joined, layered and analyzed with any other GIS data (such as the data maintained by the Virginia Department of Historic Resources) thanks to the ArcGIS Open Data solution.

The community component involves cultivating local support through four training events in Louisa County that will help people learn how to use the app. These events will also serve the purpose of educating the public about the importance of identifying and preserving African American burial sites as well as the applicable sections of the Code of Virginia that help protect them.

Ultimately, Louisa County Historical Society hopes that their project will provide a platform for older generations to share their knowledge with younger generations and that both can record burial sites that honor the past together.

“We believe engaging people across the Commonwealth in this effort will stir curiosity to learn about all members of our historic communities. Curiosity leads to investigation, which can change our understanding of history,” said Elaine Taylor, Executive Director, Louisa County Historical Society, during her presentation.

Louisa County Historical Society’s Preservation Pitch submission is an excellent blueprint for the types of historic preservation projects that should be receiving support on local and state levels.

Is there a historic preservation project that could use $2,000 in seed money in your community? If so, submissions for the 2017 Preservation Pitch program are due no later than August 25. Visit Eventbrite to register and learn how you can submit your pitch. Good luck!