Everlean Thompson was only a little girl when she and her family were forced to leave their home when the government took their land.

That was more than 100 years ago.

Today, at 107, Thompson is the only known remaining member of the Reservation, a community of free Black people and emancipated slaves during the late 1800s and early 1900s. Also known as Charles Corner, the community of oystermen and farmers lived along the banks of the York River. It had its own schools and churches and the Cheesecake cemetery, a nod to the area’s original Native residents, the Kiskiak tribe.

Today, descendants of the Reservation are working to keep the story of the community, and its displacement, alive. One descendent, Mary Lassiter of Williamsburg, wants more people to know about the history of her family and the pain they endured.

“I just want them to know that it happened, that things like that should not happen,” Lassiter said. “And when they do, you have to tell about it.”

Thompson was born at the Reservation on Feb. 4, 1919. The previous August, President Woodrow Wilson had issued an executive order to take the community’s 11,433 acres to build a Navy mine depot.

As the years went on, the order meant the displacement of 600 to 800 families to make way for what is now Naval Weapons Station Yorktown. Thompson was about 4 when her family left.

She remembers her mother, Margaret Lee, driving the family on a horse-drawn wagon after her father and grandfather had to tear their house down. With lumber from their original house loaded on the wagon, the family moved to Penniman Road to rebuild. The government only gave them $200 in compensation to build a new house, she said.

“But that wasn’t no money for them to put up a house,” Thompson said.

The community was given 30 days to move, according to Lassiter’s research. Residents, including Thompson’s grandfather, signed a prayer petition asking the government to give them more time. Reservation residents ended up in areas across Williamsburg, in James City County’s Grove community and in parts of York County.

From Indigenous beginnings

Prior to being known as the Reservation, the area was originally home to the Indigenous Kiskiak tribe. According to the Local Black Histories Project, a research partnership among William & Mary, the Village Initiative and the Williamsburg-James City County School Division, the Indigenous community lived in the area for at least 4,500 years between the 1200s and 1500s. There, they lived in the town of Kiskiak, where they built crops and harvested oysters and fish from the York River.

In the 16th century, the Powhatan tribe tried to incorporate the Kiskiak people under its rule by way of violence. The British also colonized Jamestown, which resulted in the Kiskiaks and colonizers having violent interactions.

Ultimately, this led to colonists burning down Kiskiak homes and stealing their food, forcing the tribe to move further north. Following the British colonization of the Virginia Peninsula, the Atlantic slave trade grew immensely within the area. Despite this, a population of Black freedmen also grew around the 1790s, forming a community where the tribe originally resided.

The Reservation was born

Despite her short time on the Reservation, Thompson remembers some of her family who lived in the once-thriving community. Her grandfather, born James Edward “Eddie” Lee in 1869, worked there as an oysterman and fisherman. Along with being smart and hardworking, he had strong writing abilities despite not receiving an education. Edward Lee and his brothers would work five days a week in the river to retrieve their oysters, Thompson recalls.

With his wife Nancy Casey Lee, Edward Lee had three children: Fannie, Margaret and Floyd. Margaret was a church usher, and she and Aunt Fannie were both great cooks, Thompson said. Her Uncle Floyd was remembered for his love of music by playing the banjo, having his own band and singing gospel songs.

“He said, ‘If you come in here and can’t sing, don’t worry. When you leave, you’ll be singing,’” Thompson recalls with a laugh.

The ties run deeper through Edward Lee’s father James Monroe Lee, who also lived in the Reservation. Monroe Lee was born into slavery — possibly at the Tinsley Farm Plantation — in 1840. His older brother David escaped slavery to live in Massachusetts where he joined the Union forces. Monroe Lee was forced to fight in the Confederacy and fought against his brother during the Civil War. One year before the Emancipation Proclamation, the Union took control of Yorktown and the lower Peninsula, freeing enslaved Black people.

After being seized by the Union, it is estimated that around 70,000 enslaved people fled to the Peninsula area. Three abandoned plantations, Tinsley Farm, Bellfield and Indian Fields, became the core of the Reservation community.

Both Lee brothers survived the Civil War. After the proclamation in 1863, Monroe Lee established his own free life as a carpenter in the Reservation alongside his wife, Emily Lee. David also returned to Virginia to live in the community with his wife Eliza Lee.

Lassiter is also a descendant of Monroe Lee, one of the first deacons of St. John Baptist Church and the Lee family’s patriarch, she said. She also had family that lived along Felgates Creek: her great-grandparents John Henry Lee, another son of Monroe Lee, and his wife Martha Lee. Both owned 66 acres of land in the Reservation and raised six children, including Lassiter’s grandmother Yearda Lee Smith.

While she heard of the community’s name growing up, Lassiter said she didn’t fully understand until her cousin received testimonies by their family members from the National Archives. After taking part in a 2020 art project that focused on her family history, she became more invested in the Reservation.

Since then, Lassiter and other members of the descendant community have been working to keep the history alive in honor of their ancestors, she said. Noting the large group of people displaced by the U.S. government, Lassiter said their family’s story is worthy of being told.

“We didn’t really know the story when we were coming up,” Lassiter said. “We want people to know about it just like any other historical thing.”

Sharing a community’s history

In 2022, the area was recognized with a state highway marker in recognition of those who once lived there and the thriving community they created. More than 100 members of the descendent community and friends gathered for the event.

The following year, in 2023, Jacqueline Bridgeforth-Williams, a film producer and founder of The Village Initiative for Equity in Education, created a documentary titled “Life in the Reservation.” She worked with descendent community members and William & Mary to produce a 10-minute film highlighting the area’s history and what happened to the people there.

Bridgeforth-Williams has also produced another documentary about another group of Black people who had their community taken away. “Displaced from the Birthplace of America,” which highlights the displacement of Williamsburg’s Triangle Block neighborhood, recently won the Best Local Documentary award at the Virginia Black Film Festival.

For Bridgeforth-Williams, working with Reservation descendants to help preserve their history was “powerful“.

Since being premiered at William & Mary, “Life in the Reservation” has been shared at various churches and educational institutions, including at Grace Episcopal Church Yorktown and within the Williamsburg-James City County school division. Lassiter, who was part of presentations at Jamestown High and Matthew Whaley Elementary schools, said students showed enthusiasm learning about the history. They asked about family names and whether residents brought any items of value when they were displaced, she said.

Bridgeforth-Williams said she wants viewers of the documentary to understand the generational trauma that displacement causes and what kind of impact it can leave knowing that your family was forced out of their home.

“We live in a different time now where we really want to see young people making the decisions,” Bridgeforth-Williams said. “Making decisions that are better for all. I really think they’re in a space to do that.”

Preserving a legacy

Today, Lassiter and others are continuing to work on preserving the Reservation’s legacy. She wants to have more presentations that educate the public about the community, while Bridgeforth-Williams is working to get more screenings of the documentary in classrooms, universities and museums.

Despite the struggles that the Reservation community suffered from, Lassiter said the story and resilience gives her strength.

“If they could stand up to things in 1919,” she said, “I should not be afraid to stand up for what I believe is right.”

James W. Robinson, 757-799-0621, james.robinson@virginiamedia.com