Lackey, Virginia
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Lackey (also known locally in its heyday as "the Reservation") was a small
unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...
near Yorktown in York County,
Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States between the East Coast of the United States ...
, United States established primarily after the
Civil War A civil war is a war between organized groups within the same Sovereign state, state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies.J ...
. Lackey is now extinct as the properties were bought by the federal government in 1918 for use as a naval military installation.


History

Evidence from an oral history study suggests there was a small
free people of color In the context of the history of slavery in the Americas, free people of color (; ) were primarily people of mixed African, European, and Native American descent who were not enslaved. However, the term also applied to people born free who we ...
community in this area before the Civil War. Free African American families were established primarily by unions between white slave owners and African or African-American women during the colonial period, when the working class lived and worked together. From 1860 to 1870, the black population in York County doubled, due to slaves escaping to Union lines. The total population in the county was majority black, with a portion having gained freedom before the war. After the war, a number of freedmen remained, settling in and near what became called "the reservation" and then Lackey, along the Yorktown-Williamsburg Road. Several hundred African-American families lived here by the turn of the 20th century. They worked in farming and/or (and sometimes both) as fishermen and oystermen in the local waters.Bradley M. McDonald, Kenneth E. Stuck, and Kathleen J. Bragdon, ''"Cast Down Your Bucket Where You Are": An Ethnohistorical Study of the African-American Community on the Lands of the Yorktown Naval Weapons Station, 1865–1918''
1992. William and Mary College Occasional Papers in Archaeology, pp. 10-12, full text online at Hathi Trust
During
World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...
, the properties of many primarily
African-American African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from any of the Black racial groups of Africa. ...
landowners along the former Yorktown-Williamsburg Road were taken to create a military reservation now known as
Naval Weapons Station Yorktown Naval Weapons Station Yorktown is a United States Navy base in York County, James City County, and Newport News in the Hampton Roads region of Virginia. It provided a weapons and ammunition storage and loading facility for ships of the Unit ...
. Oral histories indicate that as many as 60 African-American families were displaced by the Navy, and many of these were said to own their land. Three churches also had to vacate the desired land. Assisted by self-educated farmer John Tack Roberts (born approximately 1860), who studied law and became a magistrate, many of the displaced residents of Lackey were able to obtain financial compensation from the government for their property. A number relocated to the community of Grove in nearby
James City County James City County is a county located in the Commonwealth of Virginia. As of the 2020 census, the population was 78,254. Although politically separate from the county, the county seat is the adjacent independent city of Williamsburg. Located o ...
. Others moved to Williamsburg, or Lee Hall. Many were unable to buy comparable areas with their compensation, and turned from farming to other trades. Another small community, also named Lackey, was later developed along the Yorktown Road a few miles away. However, the original Lackey is now considered extinct and one of the many lost towns of Virginia.


See also

*
List of ghost towns in Virginia This is an incomplete List of ghost towns in Virginia. * Bigler's Mill ( York County) * Ca Ira (Cumberland County) * Canada (Charlottesville) * Carvins Cove * Colchester, Virginia * Elko Tract * Falling Creek * Hanover Town * Henricus * ...


Further reading

*McCartney, Martha W. (1977) ''James City County: Keystone of the Commonwealth''; James City County, Virginia; Donning and Company;


References


External links


Bradley M. McDonald, Kenneth E. Stuck, and Kathleen J. Bragdon, ''"Cast Down Your Bucket Where You Are": An Ethnohistorical Study of the African-American Community on the Lands of the Yorktown Naval Weapons Station, 1865–1918''
1992. William and Mary College Occasional Papers in Archaeology, full text online at Hathi Trust. {{coord, 37, 13, 52, N, 76, 33, 10, W, type:city_region:US-VA, display=title Geography of York County, Virginia Ghost towns in Virginia