The Lost Black Communities of Merrifield, the Pines, and Williamstown

After the Civil War, Black landownership in Fairfax County increased by leaps and bounds.

By the 1870s, retired Union officers were purchasing land that they sold to African Americans like Joshua Ball, Joshua Pearson, Robert Bradley and John Coates. Merrifield, the Pines and Williamstown soon emerged as vibrant communities founded by born-free Blacks, the formerly enslaved and their descendants. These African Americans quickly established farms to provide for their families and engaged in truck farming to stimulate trade. They formed charitable organizations and a church. Unfortunately, from the 1960s through the 1980s, these towns disappeared due to eminent domain practices, modern progress and gentrification. Historian Marion Ransell Dobbins unearths the legacy of these vanished communities.

Marion Ransell Dobbins was born and raised in Merrifield. From a young age, she was drawn to history. As a child, she sat at her grandmother’s knee and listened to the stories of her ancestors and the communities they built. However, from the 1960s to the 1980s, Marion became disheartened by the changing landscape of these Black communities and the growing disregard for their historical significance. Over the past four decades, she has dedicated herself to researching, collecting and speaking out about these lost spaces in Merrifield, the Pines and Williamstown and the people who built them.