In 1759, William Preston purchased sixteen enslaved Africans brought to America aboard the True Blue, an English slave ship. Over the next century, the Preston family enslaved more than two hundred individuals and used their labor to establish and operate Smithfield Plantation in Blacksburg, Virginia. Daniel Thorp uncovers the stories of the men and women who were enslaved at Smithfield, one of the first plantations west of the Blue Ridge Mountains, between its establishment in 1774 and the abolition of slavery there in 1865 and offers powerful biographies of their descendants after emancipation. In the True Blue's Wake is the first book to chronicle the lives of the enslaved families whose labor was crucial to the success of the Prestons, a family that played a central role in the European settlement of southwestern Virginia and produced dozens of state legislators, three governors, ten members of Congress, two cabinet members, and a vice president of the United States. Drawing on records from Smithfield, the Preston family, and the surrounding community, as well as from the Freedmen's Bureau, federal censuses, military records, newspapers, and oral histories, Thorp tracks the identities and experiences of the enslaved. He then traces the diverse paths and accomplishments of those families as they moved throughout the United States after 1865. A model of public history, In the True Blue's Wake is an illuminating examination of an enslaved community in a region often ignored by historians of slavery in the United States yet representative of a broad swath of pivotal American history.
Daniel B. Thorp is Associate Professor of History at Virginia Tech and author of Facing Freedom: An African American Community in Virginia from Reconstruction to Jim Crow (Virginia).
A story of triumph and a celebration of the Black lives connected to the Preston holdings, emphasizing their humanity, strength, and creativity in the face of challenges. . . Thorp's work will be of immense use to historians of Virginia and the region, and to Black genealogists. . . The author is to be commended on the dedication to providing these resources, and the press similarly applauded for making room for this end matter despite what it may have added to the production cost. This supplemental material is not only valuable for the utility it adds to the book; it makes a powerful statement by asserting the humanity of people who appear only in glimpses in the historical record.-- "Journal of Southern History" In the True Blue's Wake is an ambitious undertaking, stunningly achieved. To attempt to tell the story of one Southern plantation's enslaved population would be a daunting task in itself. Trying to follow them down through succeeding generations to the present day would discourage all but the most committed scholars, but Daniel Thorp has done it. His research is beyond impressive, and his use of it has put living flesh on the bare bones the archives have to offer. This wholly original study leaves us with a portrait of the patience, determination, and frequent heroism, it took for those Black Virginians at Smithfield, and their descendants, to survive and leave slavery in the wake of their own march to freedom. --William C. Davis, author of The Cause Lost: Myths and Realities of the Confederacy Written with great empathy, Thorp's powerful narrative connects the fascinating story of an enslaved community with the pioneering movements of freedpeople and their descendants. --Warren Milteer, Jr., University of North Carolina, Greensboro, author of Beyond Slavery's Shadow: Free People of Color in the South
