Craven, Sarah

Sarah “Sally” Sinclair Craven—referred to in the Mason family manuscript account book as Mrs. Craven—was born on 15 October 1775 in Loudoun County to planter John Sinclair and his wife Sarah McDowell Sinclair. Sarah married Abner Craven on 9 November 1799 in Loudoun County. They had five children together. Sarah and Abner remained married until his death in 1808, leaving her a widow and the primary caretaker of their four living children. Sarah never remarried. 

Abner Craven left his wife a 257-acre estate on Limestone Run, a creek that crosses what is now the James Monroe Highway (Route 15) above the town of Leesburg. The Craven estate was located just south of the Raspberry Plain plantation owned by Stevens Thomson Mason and later by his widow, Mary Elizabeth Mason. The two widows were neighbors who had occasional business dealings with each other, as had their husbands before their deaths. 

Federal census records listed Mrs. Craven’s occupation as a farmer and indicated that she owned anywhere from five to nine enslaved people at any given time. Slaveholding widows formed a sizable minority among slaveholders. Craven, whose husband died when she was thirty-four years old, was part of a smaller minority of women who were widowed in their twenties or thirties. Although census records suggest that her son William also lived on the Craven estate, as a widow Sarah Craven had significant legal power regarding the farms and her own finances. 

Sarah Craven died on 7 June 1862 at the age of eighty-six, one month after the death of her youngest daughter Sarah and five months before the death of her oldest son. The inventory of Craven’s estate conducted after her death indicated that she had many bonds, some of which were issued by the Confederate States of America. 

by Amanda Kopf