Bricks

Built by enslaved craftspeople in 1753 for William Randolph III and his wife Anne Carter Harrison Randolph, Wilton House was a tobacco plantation and home to the largest enslaved population in Henrico County, Virginia. This house, made of bricks crafted onsite by enslaved brick masons, was a silent witness to some of the most signficant events of the Revolutionary War period and hosted founding fathers and dignitaries such as Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, and the Marquis de Lafayette. Often overlooked, 18th-century bricks regularly bear the fingerprints and indentations of their unrecorded creators. While we may never know the identities of Wilton’s enslaved brick masons, their lives were as important as the Randolphs and their legacies remain forever embedded in the bricks that created a space for many discussions of freedom and liberty.