A Box of Freedom

Richmond from the James River Canal
"Honey, I'm Home!
...Honey?"

But the house is empty. Your wife and your kids are gone. And they are never coming back.

Before we delve into the mystery of the missing family, we'll look at some pictures from a recent canal boat ride that Sherry, Ember, Morris & I enjoyed one Sunday.

I bought tickets awhile back, but it was so freakishly hot this summer that we waited until the danger of spontaneous combustion had passed. I had to trick Sherry into going by avoiding mention of words like "educational" and "historical information." As far as she knew, it was simply a pretty boat ride.


The canal ride is a pleasant, short excursion along the lower remnants of the James River and Kanawha Canal, which was a grand scheme of George Washington's back when he was hiking over hill & dale surveying the countryside as a young man. It was conceived as a means of transporting goods & passengers by water between the coast and the remote western settled regions, over the Eastern Continental Divide to link up with the Ohio River. That never happened. Along came the railroad, which was a much more productive system.



This is some sort of rolling bascule bridge. The thing up in the air that looks like an upside-down kitchen grater is a counterweight that lifts the bridge span so that ships can pass.

A very active railroad trestle runs along the canal. Large warehouses & manufacturing plants were built conveniently close to the old canal docks. Now, vegetation claims the banks, and you can see turtles lazing in the sun. Ember saw a dead squirrel floating in the canal. I didn't see it, but she does a good imitation of it, and that's better than seeing the real thing as far as I'm concerned.

There are lots of former tobacco factories lining the canal. Most have been turned into upscale residential spaces. It's a dot com world out there.

Isn't this a superb photo of Ember, Morris, and Sherry? You can see Sherry clutching a bottle. She still has a severe drinking problem. Wherever she goes, she is accompanied by great sloshing noises. I don't know that I've ever seen her with less than three types of beverage; iced tea, water, and something she calls "diet." We can go into a restaurant, and when asked what she would like to drink, Sherry simply says "Diet" and the correct beverage appears. On the other hand, I can ask for water and get a barrage of questions: bottled? imported? with lemon? lime? strawberry? carbonated? supplemented? distilled? holy?

As our guide Cotton pointed out, here you see the history of Richmond's transportation. The picture was taken from a boat, next we have a railway, topped by a modern highway, with the skyway of air travel overlooking it all.

Now, what of the man who returned home from work to find his family gone?

Along Richmond's Canal Walk there is a metal representation of the three foot by two & a half foot wooden crate used by Henry "Box" Brown to ship himself out of slavery in 1849. One aspect of the complex system of American slavery was the hiring-out of slave labor, particularly in industrial areas. Owners would lease their slaves to work in private industries and, during the Civil War, to military departments.

Henry Brown was born on a plantation outside Richmond, but when his master died he was moved to Richmond by the master's son to work in his tobacco factory. Slaves out on-hire usually arranged for their own dwellings and other needs, and gave most of their wages to their owners. Henry met another slave, a woman named Nancy, and married her. They had three children together and lived in a small house. However, marriages between slaves were not recognized by the legal system, and Nancy & the children were sold by her owner. Henry was told about this while he was at work one day. He saw his family for the last time as they were leaving with other slaves who had been sold down South.

Having had his family torn from him by slavery, be was determined to escape its bonds, and he devised a plan to ship himself as dry goods to Philadelphia. With the aid of a free black man and a white shop owner, he had himself sealed in a small wooden crate and escaped to freedom.

You can read more about Henry by clicking here.