SBC Slave Cabin

              Before I arrived at Sweet Briar as a student, I did not know anything about the slave cabin on campus. Even though I went to school five minutes down the road, we never learned about the history that was so close. I have read a bit about the pre-Civil War era, but I did not think that there would have been a slave cabin still on campus.

            My first thoughts upon hearing about the cabin were that this was a real piece of not only the college’s history, but of Virginia’s. Even though I had a relative fighting in the eighth Alabama infantry (which was figured out by my grandfather) on the side of the Confederacy, I agree with the Northern idea to free those who were enslaved. I try to imagine myself during this time period, living in Virginia, and how I would feel seeing people being taken advantage of by their “masters.”

            I question how those who lived in this cabin survived during the heat of summer and the chill of winter. Since eight to ten people lived in the one-room cabin all together, I also question how anyone had space to move around. Also, once Sterling Jones Sr. moved into the cabin, I would like to know how he fit his twenty-one-person family into such a small space. Also, what was each family member’s job to keep up the home?

            The President’s House was once the Big House on the plantation. Today, there is still a section of the house that has been changed into a museum of its history; it serves a dual purpose on Sweet Briar’s Campus. During the cabin’s history, it was a slave cabin, an employee’s home, a chapel, the alumnae house, and a farm tool museum. Just like with the President’s House, the slave cabin should also feature a piece from all of its history. Since the cabin is not very big at all, the most efficient way would be to set up a variety of pictures from each time period. Students and others could walk around the inside of the cabin and “relive” each usage of the cabin.  This would allow for the cabin to be more like museum of its whole history instead of only focusing on one specific time and neglecting the others.