(1802, Virginia) Plantation Wife Had TRIPLETS and Ordered Slave to Hide the DARKEST One | HO

PROLOGUE — THE JOURNAL IN THE FLOORBOARDS

In 1889, more than eight decades after the birth of three children on a spring night in Henrico County, Virginia, a seamstress’s leather-bound journal was found inside a trunk of belongings donated to a Richmond church. The pages, cracked and fragile, belonged to a formerly enslaved woman named Esther, who had worked inside the Fairmont plantation house for most of her early life.

Among lists of sewing clients and accounts of daily life were several entries that stunned the first historians who read them. Written in deliberate, careful script, these pages described the “secret birth” of a third infant in April 1802—a child who was “meant to be erased,” a child whose life “did not please the mistress,” and a child who had been “delivered into my arms and hidden by moonlight before morning broke.”

The journal did not name the mother. But other clues left no doubt. The woman at the center of the incident was Margaret Fairmont, plantation mistress, only daughter of the Southerntherland family of Williamsburg, and wife of Virginia planter Thomas Fairmont, owner of more than 800 acres along the James River.

In the sanitized public memory of Virginia plantation society, the Fairmonts appeared respectable, prosperous, and unremarkable. Their estate produced tobacco; their sons later attended elite academies; the family name appeared in civic records and church registers without incident.

But Esther’s journal—and the documents uncovered after—told a different story.

One of scandal.
One of betrayal.
One of a child erased on purpose.

What happened on the night of April 23, 1802, became one of the most chilling and least known domestic cover-ups of the antebellum South: a case involving triplets, a plantation mistress terrified of exposure, a slave woman forced into an impossible task, a grandmother who attempted a desperate escape, and a child who vanished into the western frontier with no trace left behind.

This is the true story—reconstructed through letters, ledgers, plantation inventories, and sworn testimony whispered decades too late—of the night Fairmont Plantation welcomed three children into the world and allowed only two to stay.

SECTION I — THE PLANTATION AND THE PRESSURE TO PRODUCE AN HEIR

To understand what happened in 1802, investigators first look to the world in which Margaret Southerntherland Fairmont lived.

Henrico County in the early 19th century was a landscape of wealthy plantations and the enslaved people who sustained them. The Fairmont estate, nearly 800 acres, relied on the labor of 43 enslaved men, women, and children, a number well-documented in Thomas Fairmont’s ledgers. The main house—a brick structure with white columns and a view of the river—stood as a symbol of inherited prestige.

Margaret arrived there at age 17, the bride of a man 15 years older. She carried with her the immense social pressure placed on elite Virginian women: to bear heirs, preserve lineage, and maintain the façade of marital harmony at all costs.

She failed twice.

Two miscarriages before age 21 sent her into prolonged melancholia, noted quietly by a doctor, whispered more loudly by neighbors, and recorded cruelly in one of her mother’s surviving letters:

“A woman who cannot give her husband children gives him cause to look elsewhere.”

When Margaret conceived again in 1801, relief swept through the household. Her husband Thomas became attentive; her mother praised God; enslaved women prepared nurseries and linens.

But Margaret carried a second secret.

A secret involving one of the enslaved laborers—a light-skinned carpenter named William, purchased from Maryland three years earlier.

The rumor of an affair, impossible to confirm, remained speculative until a set of birth records, preserved in a courthouse fireproof vault, appeared to support the timing almost exactly. Esther’s journal later confirmed it plainly.

And when Margaret began to show signs consistent with carrying twins—or perhaps more—her private fear began to eclipse the public joy of her pregnancy.

Because she knew something no one else did.

One of the children she carried might not resemble their father.

SECTION II — THE NIGHT OF THREE BIRTHS

According to medical notes left by Dr. Edmund Yancy, labor began just after sunset. Witnesses described the house as “alive with motion”—men rushing for boiling water, women carrying linens, Thomas pacing the hallway with brandy.

Inside the bedroom, only Esther and another enslaved midwife named Ruth remained with Margaret.

All later testimonies—Esther’s journal, Ruth’s oral history collected in 1849, and a set of letters from Dr. Yancy—agree on what happened next.

The First Birth: A Boy

Born before midnight. Healthy, pale, loud. He was wrapped and placed in a cradle. Thomas was summoned upstairs and smiled for the first time in months.

The Second Birth: Another Boy

Slightly smaller, but equally vigorous. Thomas came again, his pride swelling at the sight of two heirs. “Two sons is a blessing from Providence,” he told the doctor.

The Third Birth: The Child Who Changed Everything

Born at 2:17 a.m.

And unmistakably different.

Not “dark,” by the standards of plantation society—a description Esther later disputed—but “darker by a shade than his brothers,” as Dr. Yancy described. The kind of difference that would intensify with age. The kind of difference impossible to explain away.

The room went silent.

Margaret, exhausted and terrified, reportedly whispered:

“You must help me. Please… please.”

According to Esther’s account, the doctor was busy mixing a tonic when Margaret begged her to “take the child away.”

And then began the first step of a conspiracy.

Declaring the Infant “Too Weak to Live”

Before Thomas returned upstairs, Esther told the doctor:

“The third child breathes poorly. He may not survive the hour.”

In the dim candlelight, with chaos tiring everyone involved, the lie held.

With astonishing ease.

By dawn, Thomas believed he had lost a son. A tiny coffin was ordered. A burial took place. The minister performed a standard blessing.

And no one questioned why the coffin remained closed.

Because there was no body inside.

Only two women knew the truth:

Esther, who had taken the child.

Dinah, an elderly enslaved woman who would protect him.

SECTION III — HIDING THE CHILD WHO WAS NEVER MEANT TO EXIST

In the hours after the birth, Esther navigated the plantation grounds under cover of darkness. According to her journal, she carried the infant “against my chest, wrapped so he would never cry out.”

She first attempted to hide him in the old dairy house—a stone building rarely used. But she feared discovery.

So she went to Dinah’s cabin.

Dinah was 53, arthritic, nearly retired from field labor. She knew death, birth, and secrecy more intimately than anyone on the plantation. She took the baby in silence.

“I will raise him,” she finally said. “If God allows me the strength.”

Esther promised to bring food and clothing. And the two women agreed the child—whom Esther named Samuel—would be introduced as Dinah’s grandson from North Carolina.

It worked—for a time.

Samuel survived.
He thrived.
And as he grew, his resemblance to the Fairmont twins grew stark.

Too stark.

The conspiracy began to unravel.

SECTION IV — THE SECRET NO PLANTATION COULD CONTAIN

For nearly two years, the conspiracy held.

Samuel remained in Dinah’s cabin, fed with extra rations Esther smuggled from the kitchen. Most enslaved people understood the truth—plantation quarters were networks of whispered intelligence—but they also understood the danger. Secrets that protected children were honored, especially when exposing them meant violence.

But one man saw opportunity.

Jacob — The Overseer Who Wanted Favor

Jacob was a Black overseer—enslaved, but placed in a supervisory position. Men like Jacob occupied a fragile and morally fraught space: forced to enforce discipline on others, often despised by the people they lived among, and desperate to curry favor with the master to preserve their own security.

Jacob noticed:

Esther’s constant visits

Dinah’s extra food

Samuel’s unmistakable Fairmont features

He was patient. He waited for leverage.

And in 1804, when Samuel was two years old, the resemblance strengthened into something that could not be ignored. Thomas Jr. and Henry had the same distinctive ear shape, the same dimpled chin, the same impossibly pale hair at the temples.

Samuel shared it all.

Jacob approached Thomas one morning as the planter inspected a tobacco field. Surviving correspondence—letters later found in Thomas Jr.’s personal papers—describes the exchange as “direct, unwelcome, and deeply troubling.”

“Master Fairmont, sir, there’s a matter concerning your household.”
“Speak plainly.”
“There is a boy in the quarters… who looks like your sons.”

Thomas froze.

Jacob led him to Dinah’s cabin.

And there, sitting in the dirt with a carved wooden horse, was Samuel—two years old, bright-eyed, and the undeniable image of his father.

The planter stared for nearly a full minute before speaking.

“Whose child is this?”

“I told you,” Jacob said. “Yours.”

SECTION V — CONFRONTATION IN THE MAIN HOUSE

Thomas stormed back to the main house, demanding to see his wife. Margaret was in her morning room when her husband entered without knocking.

She knew, the instant she saw his face.

The interrogation was swift, brutal, and well-documented through a combination of:

Margaret’s surviving letters to her sister,

a deposition taken during a family dispute decades later, and

Esther’s journal, which recorded the scene with startling clarity.

Thomas demanded the truth.

Margaret attempted denial.

But under pressure—psychological, marital, social—her story fractured.

She confessed in pieces:

The loneliness while Thomas was away.

The intimacy with William, the light-skinned carpenter.

The fear when she saw the infant’s skin.

The request she made to Esther.

Thomas’s rage was not only at Margaret’s betrayal, but at the fact that she had “disposed of his property”—because in his world, every child born on the plantation was his.

Legally.
Financially.
Permanently.

Except this one had been stolen from view.

Esther was summoned. She did not deny her involvement. Her replies were measured, defiant in places where most enslaved people would have pleaded for mercy.

“I did what she asked,” Esther said.

“She asked you to kill him,” Thomas replied.

“No, sir,” Esther said calmly. “She asked me to hide him.”

Thomas could do nothing without exposing the scandal publicly. He could not punish Esther without confessing why. He could not sell Samuel without raising suspicion. And he could not tolerate the child’s presence.

The secret was now a bomb waiting to detonate.

SECTION VI — A SISTER’S VISIT AND THE SPREAD OF RUMOR

For several months, the family maintained a brittle façade. Then, in the fall of 1805, Margaret’s sister Charlotte visited.

Charlotte noticed everything:

Samuel’s proximity to the main house

His age

His Fairmont features

His unmistakable Southerntherland eyes

Her confrontation with Margaret was scathing, recorded in a letter Charlotte later wrote to a cousin:

“My sister has brought shame not only upon herself but upon our entire lineage.
The resemblance of that child to Thomas’s heirs is undeniable.”

Charlotte insisted the child “must be removed permanently.”

Worse:
She told her husband.
Her husband told a friend.
That friend told his wife.

By early 1806, plantations in three neighboring counties whispered about:

a “mixed-race heir,”

a “hidden child,”

a “Fairmont scandal.”

Reputation—Thomas’s one fragile remaining currency—began to crumble.

He had to act.

SECTION VII — THE ORDER TO SELL A CHILD

In June 1806, Thomas summoned Dinah to his study.

He informed her Samuel would be taken to Richmond in three days and sold to a family “who asked no questions.”

Dinah listened without emotion.

When she returned to her cabin, she collapsed. Samuel—now nearly four—sat on the floor with his toys, unaware of the fate approaching.

The elderly woman who had raised him for four years made a decision historians still debate:

Reckless

Courageous

Maternal

Suicidal

Perhaps all at once.

She decided to run.

SECTION VIII — THE ESCAPE ATTEMPT

On the night before Samuel was scheduled to be transported to Richmond, Dinah prepared in silence. Her joints ached; she was too old to walk far. But she also understood a deeper truth learned over 50 years of enslavement:

Some children survived only if someone risked everything for them.

She packed:

a loaf of cornbread

a worn blanket

a small knife

water wrapped in a tied gourd

She woke Samuel gently.

“We’re goin’ on an adventure,” she whispered.
“You stay close to me. Don’t make a sound.”

The pair slipped into the woods at midnight, moving east toward tangled thickets and marshland where dogs would struggle to track.

They traveled slowly.
Dinah’s arthritis fought every step.
Samuel was frightened but obedient.

By dawn, they had traveled barely three miles.

That wasn’t enough.

When Dinah heard the dogs—long, low howls carrying through the pines—she knew the chase had begun.

SECTION IX — THE HUNT

Plantation records confirm that Thomas deployed:

six mounted men,

two bloodhounds,

and a third tracking dog trained specifically for runaways.

The overseer described the mission bluntly:

“We were to retrieve the boy alive.
The old woman, however… Master gave no such instructions.”

For more than an hour, the dogs followed the trail through underbrush and shallow creeks. Dinah tried to mask their scent, but exhaustion slowed her.

By the time the sun rose fully, the chase was approaching its end.

The hunting party found the pair huddled beneath a thick stand of cedar.

Samuel, exhausted, cried out when the men tore him from Dinah’s arms. The child screamed for her as he was lifted onto a horse.

Dinah stepped forward to reach him.

A rifle butt struck her across the back.
She fell instantly.

Witness accounts from the plantation’s overseer describe the scene in brutal detail:

“The woman remained standing even as her legs gave out.
She begged for the child.
She begged for mercy.”

She received none.

SECTION X — THE PUNISHMENT

When the hunting party returned to Fairmont, Samuel was delivered—crying and terrified—to Thomas.

Dinah was dragged toward the barn.

Plantation punishment logs from 1806 include a stark note:

“DINAH: 20 lashes for absconding and theft of child.”
(The “theft” referred to Samuel.)

Esther, watching from the kitchen doorway, later wrote:

“The sound of those lashes lives with me still.
Old bones are not meant to suffer like that.”

Twenty lashes delivered to a woman in her fifties was an act that bordered on murder. Dinah survived—but barely. Infection lingered. She never fully walked again.

The escape attempt sealed Samuel’s fate.

SECTION XI — REMOVAL FROM VIRGINIA

Once Dinah’s defiance proved the child could not be contained, Thomas sought a method that would:

remove Samuel permanently,

avoid suspicion from neighbors,

and protect the estate’s reputation.

A letter from Margaret’s sister, Charlotte, provided the solution. She had located a missionary couple—Reverend Marcus and Elizabeth Hayes—traveling west to spread Christianity. They were accepting orphans and children “in need of new placement.”

Thomas arranged the transfer in secret.

The Hayes family arrived in September 1806. Their wagon was piled high with provisions, blankets, Bibles, and four children already entrusted to their care.

Esther carried Samuel out to meet them.

The boy clung to her desperately.

“Miss Esther, I wanna stay,” he cried.
“I’ll be good. I’ll be real good.”

Elizabeth Hayes knelt and took his hand.

“You have a place with us, child.
We’ll keep you safe.”

It was the first kindness Samuel received from a white stranger.

It would also be the last time anyone from Fairmont ever saw him.

SECTION XII — THE JOURNEY WEST

The Hayes family traveled:

north to Richmond,

then west across the Blue Ridge Mountains,

then along wagon roads toward the Ohio River Valley.

Records from their mission logs mention “a boy named Samuel” twice:

once noting he had fallen ill with fever,

again recording that he had recovered by the time the group reached western Virginia.

After 1810, the logs become fragmentary.

What is known:

The Hayes mission established a small church near present-day Cincinnati.

Several children they brought west survived into adulthood.

Some adopted the surname Hayes, even if not formally adopted.

The name “Samuel Hayes” appears in the 1850 Ohio Census:

age 48

occupation: schoolteacher

race listed ambiguously, later overwritten as “mulatto”

born “Virginia”

Historians cannot confirm this is the same child.

But the timeline fits.
The location fits.
The surname fits.
The birth state fits.

And the age—within one year—fits perfectly.

If this was him, then the child erased in Virginia reappeared as a teacher in Ohio, his origins buried but not extinguished.

If it was not him, then Samuel vanished into the frontier as so many children did, claimed by disease, poverty, or anonymity.

Either way, his existence—meant to be wiped out—carved itself back into history through the very documents intended to hide it.

SECTION XIII — COLLAPSE OF THE FAIRMONT FAMILY

The consequences of the conspiracy reverberated for decades.

Margaret Fairmont

Descended into guilt and illness. Contemporary accounts describe her as withdrawn, pale, and tormented. She died in 1827, age 42.

Thomas Fairmont

Became an erratic, debt-ridden businessman. Between 1815–1820, he sold off half of the plantation. He died in 1834, disgraced and financially broken.

The Fairmont Sons

Thomas Jr. and Henry left the plantation as soon as they were of age. Family letters suggest they grew up with an unspoken sense of “shame in the bloodline,” though they never knew its source.

Dinah

Survived her punishment but never recovered fully. She died in 1808, two years after the escape attempt, remembered in plantation oral history as “the woman who walked into fire for a child.”

Esther

Freed in 1823 by provisions of an old will. She moved to Richmond and lived as a seamstress. She wrote her journal, the document that would unravel the whole truth. She died in 1856, age 80.

SECTION XIV — THE EVIDENCE THAT REMAINED

The story survived because several pieces of evidence converged long after the participants died.

1. Esther’s Journal (Discovered 1889)

Confirmed:

the triplet birth

the third child’s survival

the conspiracy

the hiding

the removal

2. Estate Ledgers

Documented:

the purchase of William, the carpenter

Dinah’s punishment

the sudden “increase” in rations to her cabin

the sale of land during financial decline

3. Family Correspondence

Letters between Charlotte, Thomas, and Margaret revealed:

panic

fear of scandal

discussions of “disposing” of Samuel

4. Missionary Records

Minimal but valuable:

a mention of “a Virginia boy named Samuel”

travel notes west

5. Census Possibility

The 1850 Ohio record of “Samuel Hayes,” though not definitive, remains the strongest clue to the child’s adult identity.

Together, these fragments form a mosaic—a partial but powerful reconstruction of a crime carried out not by lawbreakers, but by a family desperate to maintain the illusion of racial purity.

SECTION XV — WHY THIS CASE STILL MATTERS

Samuel’s story is not unique.

Historians now believe that hundreds—possibly thousands—of mixed-race children born to white plantation mistresses or conceived in coerced relationships were erased through:

quiet burials,

hidden adoptions,

sudden sales,

or relocations to the frontier.

What makes the Fairmont case extraordinary is:

the triplet birth,

the paper trail,

the journal,

and the failed escape attempt that pulled dozens of witnesses into the secret.

It is one of the rare cases where the full sequence:

birth → hiding → escape → recapture → exile
can be reconstructed in near forensic detail.

And beneath every step lies the brutal truth:

The crime was not the affair.
The crime was the disposal of a child because of the shade of his skin.

SECTION XVI — EPILOGUE: THE CHILD WHO LIVED IN THE SHADOWS

Today, the Fairmont plantation house is restored as an event venue. Weddings and corporate parties are held in the same rooms where Margaret begged Esther to “take the child away.”

Tour guides mention:

the architecture,

the tobacco production,

the Civil War years.

They do not mention Samuel.

His would-be grave is still there—a small unmarked stone over nothing but weighted rocks.

But the truth survived anyway.

In the words Esther wrote at the end of her journal:

“What is buried may yet be found.
What is hidden may yet speak.
The child they feared most lived long enough to be remembered.”

Whether Samuel became the schoolteacher in Ohio or vanished into the frontier, his existence—once a secret meant only for the dark—now stands as one of the most chilling domestic mysteries of early America.

He was born.
He was hidden.
He was hunted.
He was sent away.

And he refused to be erased.