Husband of Judy. Father of Mollie, Lucy, Nash, Tucker, Maxwell, Lavinia, Martha Ann, Agnes, Ardelia, Charles, Robert, and Marshall. Son of Anthony and Lavinia Ann. Born 1837. Died date unknown.
A few months ago, all I could have said about Oliver was that I knew he lived here at Bremo as a child. I had his name on an inventory list and that was all.
Now, I know that he fathered 12 children with his wife Judy. That he was the grandfather of Eugene Creasy, who today lives just over a ways, on Mountain Hill Road. That he is the great-grandfather of my friend Joe Creasy, who treats me to dinner when we meet to talk about this book.
I know that Oliver is descended from three of the most prominent families here—the Creasys, the Skipwiths, and the Nicholases. His paternal grandfather, Ben Creasy, was the carpenter here, and his maternal grandfather, Jesse Nicholas, the shoemaker. His maternal grandmother was Lucy Nicholas, the nurse to the owner’s children. I only wish I knew what his paternal grandmother, Judy, did here. Okay. I wish more than that—I wish to know Oliver and his family as people. But that is an impossible wish.
Oliver’s uncles traveled the world. His uncle George moved to Alabama, where he was overseer on the owner’s plantations there for a bit, and his uncle Peyton was given his freedom and then passage to Liberia, where he helped found the new country at the behest of the ACS.
I know Oliver’s people. Yet, I still don’t know Oliver. He is, perhaps, the linchpin of this story—the person who draws all the themes of this book together, and yet, even the most important slave is, by history’s comparison, not very important at all as a person. Not to most people.
What I wouldn’t give to have just one story about Oliver, one tale about him as a kid climbing one of the massive white oaks and then having to call his father, Anthony, to get him down as the sun set on the plantation or about how he carved amazing animals out of scavenged wood. Maybe Oliver was the man who hid the owner’s horses in a quarry during the Civil War, the one Bremo slave who made it into a newspaper article, albeit not until the 1920s. Maybe. All I have is maybe.
I know that Oliver lived in Scottsville, just up the James River, in 1870. I know that Judy was still living then and that several of his children—Mollie, Lucy, Nash, William, Maxwell, and Lavinia—had already been born by that point. I know that Anthony and Lavinia Ann lived next door. On this census, Oliver, Judy, and all their children are listed as mulatto, a designation that could mean that Oliver had both white and black ancestors or could simply mean that the census taker thought him fair enough to have white blood, as erroneous as that kind of indicator can be. Nothing in the records clarifies this designation.
Ten years later, in 1880, Oliver and Judy are back in Fork Union, the district where Bremo is located, with Nash, Tucker, Maxwell, Martha Ann, Agnes, Charles, Robert, and a now-married Mollie (Bates is her new surname). Here, Oliver is listed as mulatto but Judy and all the children are “black.” The malleability of these definitions less than two decades after emancipation both follows the laws set forth in slavery and prophesies the way that attributions of skin color and racial identity would linger long over our country.
This is where my knowledge of Oliver ends: a reference on one slave inventory where he is listed as “under 10 years of age” and a slew of census records that tell me about his people but so very little about him.
Perhaps as time passes, as I read more documents, as people continue to seek out their ancestors, as we continue to value the stories of the nearly forgotten people, I will learn more about Oliver.
Until then, though, this is all there is. Oliver Creasy—born 1837. Died—date unknown.