Dissertation Defense: Andrew Davenport

Candidate: Andrew Davenport

Major: History

Advisor: Adam Rothman, Ph.D.

Title: We Were Scattered: The African American Diaspora From Monticello, 1826-1900

This dissertation analyzes the unraveling of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello plantation and the forced dispersal of approximately 130 enslaved people. It examines the effects of Jefferson’s debt, death, and the auctions of Monticello’s enslaved community. Challenging previous scholarship that assumed the post-Monticello lives of enslaved people were unknowable, this dissertation reveals the concerns, strategies, and resilience of Black families. They faced continual threats long after Jefferson’s death yet built upon Jeffersonian ideals in their quest for freedom and civil rights. In the broadest terms, this work argues that there is a history beyond when Monticello was an auction block.