, Scylla

Scylla was an enslaved woman who, along with her mother and seven siblings, was held in bondage by Armistead T. Mason as part of a trust he managed on behalf of his younger cousins Elizabeth and Mary Armistead.  Their father, Robert Armistead, organized this trust in 1805, having inherited Scylla and the other members of her family following the 1804 death of his first wife, Lucinda Margaret Ellzey Armistead. It is likely that Lucinda had in turn received Scylla’s mother, Esther (or Hester), and a few (if not all) of Esther’s children as a gift from her own mother, Alice Blackburn Ellzey, in 1796.

Scylla’s line of ownership illustrates how elite women benefited from and perpetuated Virginia’s system of slavery. Upon his death in 1796, Lucinda’s father, Loudoun County landowner William Ellzey, directed in his will that his wife Alice receive “all my slaves to be disposed of in her lifetime or at her death among my children as she shall think proper.” Alice renounced the widow’s inheritance that she had received from William that same year, possibly as she was expecting to live with and be cared for by one of her other family members and did not want to be burdened with the complexities of managing her husband’s estate. Although neither Scylla nor her mother were explicitly mentioned in William’s will, they represented a valuable source of independent and portable wealth for Alice’s daughter Lucinda (and eventually Lucinda’s daughters, Elizabeth and Mary Armistead), particularly on account of the reproductive labor they could provide as women. Slaveholders valued enslaved women for their potential to increase their owners’ property by giving birth to enslaved children.

Although many details of Scylla’s life are difficult to discern, entries in the Mason family manuscript account book offer a few key glimpses into her time at Raspberry Plain. Armistead T. Mason began leasing Scylla out to earn money on behalf of Elizabeth and Mary Armistead in the mid-1810s. Abraham Skillman, another Loudoun County landowner, leased Scylla for $40 a year in 1813 and 1814, during which time he either used her for domestic or agricultural labor. In 1815, Scylla was leased for $30 a year by a “Mrs. Scott” who ran a celebrated academy for young ladies in Leesburg that the teenaged Armistead girls attended. As tuition for both Elizabeth and Mary also amounted to $30 annually, it is likely that Mason was financing his cousins’ education through Scylla’s labor. Scylla might have worked as a domestic for Mrs. Scott, spending long hours cooking, cleaning, and sewing either in Mrs. Scott’s home or at her school.  

It is unclear when Scylla was born or if she ever married or had any children. The Mason family manuscript account book notes that she died in 1816, likely in early March. Scylla’s mother also passed away that same year, opening the possibility that they both may have suffered from the same illness if their deaths were the result of disease. Scylla died in bondage while serving a second lease term with Mrs. Scott, working for a woman whose institution extolled education as “one of the ‘deepest principles of independence’” while excluding enslaved women like Scylla from the benefits of education.

By Nicole Penn