“How Do We Know That?”: Documenting the Slave Jail at 1315 Duke Street

In March 2020, the City of Alexandria purchased an office building at 1315 Duke Street. Built in 1812 by an Alexandria merchant, the building became one of the most notorious epicenters of the domestic slave trade starting in 1828. For the next 33 years, a series of slave traders used this site as their northern headquarters as they trafficked thousands and thousands of enslaved people over land and by water to the cotton and sugar plantations of the Deep South. Join City of Alexandria archaeologist Benjamin Skolnik as he discusses the history of the domestic slave trade in Alexandria and shows how we know what we know about the former slave jail at 1315 Duke Street.

Dr. Benjamin Skolnik is an archaeologist for Alexandria Archaeology, a division within the Office of Historic Alexandria (OHA) and the City of Alexandria, Virginia, which he joined in 2015. His PhD in Anthropology was awarded by the University of Maryland, College Park, with an emphasis on historical archaeology, plantation and urban slavery, and geographic information systems [GIS]). Since 2020, Dr. Skolnik has been at the forefront of documenting the history of the former slave jail at 1315 Duke Street (Freedom House) and is the author of several publications and presentations on the subject, including:

• Building and Property History: 1315 Duke Street, Alexandria, Virginia, available on the Office of Historic Alexandria’s website;
• “The Brig Named Uncas: The story of an all-American slave ship” in Slate;
• the two part “Photographic Presentments of Them Will Be Accepted By Posterity with an Undoubting Faith”: Correcting Two Civil War-Era Photographs of Alexandria, Virginia Attributed to William R. Pywell and Published in Gardner’s Photographic Sketch Book of the War (1866)” in the Alexandria Chronicle (part 1; part 2);
• and Exposing the Alexandria Slave Pen: Historical Photographs, Engravings, and Illustrations of 1315 Duke Street at the Alexandria Lyceum.

He contributed to the building’s Historic Structures Report and the Freedom House museum’s Comprehensive Plan and is currently working to revise and expand OHA’s exhibit on the domestic slave trade at the newly renovated and reopened museum at 1315 Duke Street.