TheThis is the grim reality behind the story in my historical fiction/magical realism book for ages 9-12. I don’t go into this much historical detail but focus on what they see around them and its effects on them as the enslaved twins escape on the UGRR. I can’t help but think of the immigrant families being locked away.

Virginia was one of the largest slave-holding states, with its port city of Norfolk being the fifth largest hub in the slave trade. In the 1830 federal census, Norfolk’s Black and white population was almost half and half. Many free and enslaved Blacks worked in the maritime industry. This made Norfolk a major port on the Maritime Underground Railroad. Many smaller Black churches and neighborhoods existed to help plan and execute fugitive escapes. Workers knew which ships’ ca

The Lake Drummond Hotel (also called the Halfway House) is on the state line between Virginia and North Carolina, along the Dismal Canal. The Halfway House presented an excellent option for illegal dueling, gambling, or a lover’s tryst. A criminal needed only to cross the building’s central state line to be in the other state.

Edenton Harbor in North Carolina is the first harbor stop in my middle-grade book, where two enslaved children escape with their free Black father on the Maritime Underground Railroad in 1834.

Slavery never disappears; it just evolves and continues to influence its subjects in different ways. One manifestation was the “Lost Cause” view of slavery and the Civil War.

The Great Dismal Swamp covers southeastern Virginia and northeastern North Carolina. Maroons began settling there in the late 1600s and continued living there well into the mid-19th century.

After William Byrd II and George Washington first planned the Dismal Swamp Canal, Virginia approved construction in 1787, and North Carolina in 1790. A North Carolina/Virginia private company, the Dismal Swamp Canal Company, began construction in 1793.

Humans have lived in and around the Great Dismal Swamp for thousands of years. Indigenous people hunted, fished, farmed nearby lands, and used the swamp as a seasonal resource and refuge. The rough terrain and abundant resources served them well, as did their ability to hide when needed.

In the Antebellum South (1815–1861), the planter class ensured a rigid, hierarchical society. Small farmers, or Yeomen, white workers, and poor whites made up seventy-five percent of the white population, but the wealthy planters controlled everything else. This produced significant economic and social tensions between the two classes.

Young Southern Belles who married into another elite plantation family assumed the role of plantation mistress, often as young as 18–20. Even though accustomed to plantation life, they found transitioning to the role of plantation mistress difficult. As their own diaries reveal, beneath the surface of privilege lay a private world of isolation, exhaustion, and quiet misery.