Figure of the Week

Evalina Green (c.1845-1926) was enslaved to the Moncure family of Somerset.  She was about 17 years of age when Burnside’s troops invaded Stafford.  Her family, who were also enslaved at Somerset, left with the soldiers, but Evalina made the difficult decision to remain.  Although advised to leave by her mistress, she stayed at the only home she had ever known.  She feared that her brother, who became a servant to Ulysses S. Grant, would come back for her after the war and force her to leave, but that never happened.  Evalina Green spent the rest of her life with the family she cherished.  Her Moncure family cherished her, as well, and she was counted one of them.  At a time when most cemeteries were segregated, Evalina was buried at Somerset with her white family.  “Her casket was borne to the grave by representatives of three generations of the Moncures–all of whom she had raised.   The aristocracy of the State followed the humble slave’s casket to the Moncure graveyard, where bowed heads showed the reverence due to her life of selfless love in ministering to the comfort of all she knew.” According to her lengthy obituary, “there was no scope to the usefulness which this humble old slave rendered–at a time when battles raged and privations marked the wake of Burnside’s armies.”  In 1943 the Somerset graves were moved to Aquia Episcopal Church and she continues her rest there with her Moncure family.