Author: Mackenzie Brooks

Qualified Colored Electors for Rockbridge County, 1867

Black men in Virginia voted for the first time in October 1867.  The purpose of the election was to determine if a state constitutional convention should be held, and if so, to select the delegates.  The convention first met in December 1867, and the delegates would draft the new post-Civil War constitution in Virginia, that would remain in effect until 1902.  The broader context for that election is explained on the Library of Virginia’s Virginia Memory website:

“In the spring of 1867, Congress passed the Act to Provide for the More Efficient Government of the Rebel States, often called the First Reconstruction Act. It required the former Confederate states to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment before their representatives and senators could be seated in Congress. It also required the states to hold conventions, in which African Americans were eligible to serve, and to write new state constitutions. In Virginia, African Americans, former Unionists, and men who had settled in Virginia during and after the war organized to prepare for the election. Officers of the U.S. Army oversaw the registration of voters.  On October 22, 1867, African American men voted in Virginia for the first time. The army officers who conducted the election recorded the votes of white and black men on separate lists and in some or all of the counties and cities required voters to place their ballots in separate ballot boxes.”

The Library of Virginia has digitized images of the hand-written rosters chronicling the 952 black men in Rockbridge County who voted.  The list is organized by the county’s seven districts at the time, with Lexington as the 1^st District.  The boundaries for the districts are set out in a color-coded 1860s Rockbridge Map made by Colonel William Gilham of VMI; it can be accessed at the Library of Congress website HERE. 

To see the scans, click HERE and search “Rockbridge Electors.”

Scans of 1867 Rosters of Rockbridge’s “Colored Electors” (Search Box: “Rockbridge Electors”)

Because the images are difficult to read, divided in seven separate documents, and not searchable as scans, you can access the names in an Excel spread sheet transcribed HERE.

The names are set out in alphabetical order, and you can also use the search function to locate last or first names, locate by district, identify those voters who were free men before the Civil War, and those who appear in the 1870 Census.  While most of these first-time electors had been previously enslaved, and emancipated during or after the War, at least 59 men listed as free blacks in the 1860 Census appear here (of over 1,000 registered black voters  in Rockbridge, approximately 91% cast their ballots on Oct.22, 1867).

EXCEL Database of 1867 Rosters of Rockbridge’s “Colored Electors”

The Rockbridge Historical Society is working with a group of local historians and genealogists to develop additional online resources in this area. In their more comprehensive reach, and more accessible digital formats, they will allow researchers, students, family descendants, and the public at to more fully and flexibly explore the range and specific identities of African-American lives in Rockbridge, in this era.  These web-based archives will include a comprehensive database of free black men and women before 1860. And by complement: a multi-tiered spreadsheet that provides a systematic, county-wide inventory of people enslaved in Rockbridge, mapped to locations of ownership, and individually searchable: whether by first name, surname, or anonymously recorded.

The RHS website at RockbridgeHistory.org has also established a broader portal for ‘Local Black Histories,’ with articles that feature profiles and photographs of some of these electors: such as Lilburn Downing, James Humbles, Wilson Pleasants, William Washington. 

People with additional biographical information, particularly descendants, are encouraged to contact RHS@RockbridgeHistory.org, to help refine these valuable local history resources over time.