Robaro
Freetown, Virginia edit
Please note that Edna Lewis was born in Freetown, Orange County, Virginia... NOT Albemarle County. All of the Edna Lewis information should be deleted from the Albemarle County, Freetown, Virginia article.
I live near Freetown in Albemarle County, Virginia and I can definitively say that Edna Lewis was NOT born there. The scholarship that has located her there has been very poor. Edna was born in what would now be a Unionville address in Orange County, Virginia, a little more than an hour from the Freetown in Albemarle County.
While there WAS a Freetown in Orange County, it seems to only have been locally known as such, hence today's difficulty in locating it on maps. When Edna was born, both of her parents indicated a Lahore PO address on her birth record. Edna’s sister Ruth, writing in a family history, later confirmed that the Freetown property was located in Lahore.
Edna’s official 1916 birth record states that she was born in the Taylor (Magisterial) District of Orange County. This was a political precinct comprising a very large area, changeable through time, and which was not generally indicated on maps. Freetown was, of course, located somewhere within this District. Taylor District was also repeated as her residence in the 1920 and 1930 census.
The Freetown location for her birth comes from Edna herself in one of her book biographies. For a book such as hers, the Freetown name was perfect because it was 1) precise (at least in the tradition of the family and locals) and 2) it enhanced her humble beginnings as the grandchild of slaves and her deep connections to those culinary traditions.
But the little group of buildings known as Freetown did not survive on maps. Over the years, the land was sold off, families moved away, and buildings came down. Freetown became less and less of a community and more of a memory. Today, according to Edna’s sister Ruth, the name only survives in Freetown Farm, a parcel of private property at 14311 Marquis Rd, Unionville, Virginia 22567. This was the location where the small community was roughly centered.