Ephraim Derricks

The Inner Hall at Arlington House adjacent to G.W.P. Custis' bedchamber with a reproduction of Ephraim Derricks' sleeping pallet rolled up on the side.

NPS

Ephraim Derricks was likely born around the year 1790.[1] Where he was born and what he did for the first several decades of his life remains unknown. He does not appear in historical sources until 1853. After Mary Fitzhugh Custis died in April 1853, Derricks, along with Austin Bingham, Lawrence Parks, and Daniel Dotson, served as pallbearers at her funeral.[2] He and the three other enslaved men lowered her casket into the grave, now located in Section 13 of Arlington National Cemetery.

From at least 1853 until 1857, Derricks acted as George Washington Parke Custis’s enslaved valet. He closed the house at 10:00 p.m. every night and dressed Custis for bed. He also cleaned his shoes and clothing.[3] Custis’s niece Martha “Markie” Custis Williams noted that even when he stepped out to smoke a cigar, he did so “in the company of his faithful vallet [sic] Ephraim.”[4] During her stay at Arlington House, she also observed that he was religiously devout. While in Arlington House’s loft, she heard someone praying and went downstairs to see who it was. Opening the door of her uncle’s painting room, she saw Derricks finishing his prayer. In her diary, she remarked that she was surprised by his piety.[5] He was likely a Baptist.[6]

Ordinarily, Derricks lived in the same room as George Clark above the summer kitchen.[7] Considering the heat that rose from the cooking fires, living there was likely unbearable in the summertime. At times, he was required to sleep on a pallet either in or outside of G.W.P. Custis’s bedroom, especially during his final illness. He would tend the fire as Custis was falling to sleep. He no longer slept here once Custis died.[8]

 

The South Flower Garden, where Derricks spent much of his time just prior to the Civil War.

NPS

Following G.W.P. Custis’s death, Derricks served primarily as a gardener. It does not appear that he worked in the gardens before 1857. Mildred Lee later recalled that her mother, Mary Lee, directed Derricks and other enslaved men as they dug and weeded in the flower garden.[9] He was one of several enslaved men who transported the produce of Arlington plantation to the market in Washington, D.C. For him, these trips served an additional purpose. He had a wife named Dolly Turner who was enslaved by a “Captain Gray” in Washington. Because of his enslavement at Arlington, he could not see her unless the Custises or Lees gave him a pass.[10] Following her departure from Arlington House in May 1861, Mary Lee wrote General Charles W. Sandford, commander of the U.S. Army garrison at Arlington, “My gardener Ephraim also has a wife in Washington & is accustomed to go over every Saturday and return on Monday.”[11] General Irvin McDowell, Sandford’s successor, allowed him to continue these trips.[12]

During one of his journeys into Washington in July 1862, Martha Custis Williams recalled seeing Derricks at the house of one of her friends dressed in an immaculate white suit. Markie characterized him as a “union man” since he held out hope the two sides would be united again. She also told her cousin Mary Lee that he “never let the [Lee] family be demeaned.”[13] His motivations in saying this are ambiguous. It is possible he said this knowing it was what Markie wanted to hear.

While the arrival of the U.S. Army brought the beginnings of freedom to enslaved people like Ephraim Derricks, it also brought new challenges and hardships. Possibly as a result of the large influx of soldiers, he contracted “typer fever” (most likely typhus) in 1862. There were rumors that he was “out of his mind” as a result of this disease. Added to this, the disruption of normal activities left tremendous uncertainty. Somewhat skeptical of Arlington’s occupiers, he did not mingle with the U.S. soldiers as much as other enslaved people. For this, Markie Williams went so far as to call him “the only conservative” among Arlington’s enslaved population. When she visited in July 1862, he allowed her to collect a bouquet of flowers from Arlington House’s garden, even though the army had a sentry posted to prevent this. As she prepared to leave, he said “‘Miss Martha, when you write to Miss Mary please give my best love to her & all the family & tell her we miss them all very much indeed – these people does the best they can for us, but it aint like those we an been raised with.’”[14]

Like all of Arlington’s enslaved inhabitants, Derricks received his freedom on December 29, 1862, when Robert E. Lee, serving as the executor of G.W.P. Custis’s estate, filed manumission papers in Spotsylvania County, Virginia. When the historian Benson Lossing visited Arlington House toward the end of the Civil War, he rejoiced that Derricks and other newly freed people whom he had known before the war “were well cared for by their true friends, the officers of the Government.”[15] He was finally united with his wife, Dolly Turner, living with her in Washington, D.C. However, his troubles continued. When the abolitionist Julia Wilbur met him in November 1865, she wrote, “He has fits, & his mind is injured” – possibly as a result of his earlier bout of typhus. She also noted that the government had “given him no clothes in two years” and insisted she would provide him with some.[16]

Ephraim Derricks does not appear in the 1870 census, making it likely that he died sometime before that year. This would have made him nearly eighty years old. The location of his grave is unknown.

 

Footnotes:

[1] Describing his visit to Arlington House during the Civil War, Benson Lossing said he and several other enslaved people were “over seventy years of age.” Benson Lossing, Pictorial History of the Civil War, Vol. 1 (Philadelphia: G.W. Childs, 1866), 423n5.

[2] Letter from Anna Goldsborough Fitzhugh to Abby Nelson, reprinted in “Funeral of Mrs. G.W.P. Custis and Death of General R.E. Lee” (Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 35, No. 1), p. 23.

[3] Diary of Martha Custis Williams, November 3, 1853 (Arlington House Collections); Diary of Julia Wilbur, November 20, 1865, TriCollege Libraries Digital Collections Julia Wilbur diary, October to December 1865... (brynmawr.edu)

[4] Diary of Martha Custis Williams, March 7, 1854 (Arlington House Collections).

[5] Diary of Martha Custis Williams, January 9, 1854 (Arlington House Collections).

[6] An enslaved woman named Marcellina told Markie Williams that many of the enslaved people at Arlington plantation “were members of the Baptist communion, but, none of them members of the Episcopal Church.” See Diary of Martha Custis Williams, November 20, 1853 (Arlington House Collections).

[7] Interview with Emma Syphax and Sarah Wilson 1929 and Interview with Annie Baker and Ada Thompson, 1930 (National Archives and Records Administration).

[8] Interview with Annie Baker and Ada Thompson, 1930 (National Archives and Records Administration); Diary of Martha Custis Williams, November 1, 1857 (Arlington House Collections).

[9] Reminiscence of Mildred Lee, July 20, 1890. Printed in Growing Up in the 1850s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984), 118.

[10] Julia Wilbur Diary, November 20, 1865

[11] Mary Custis Lee to Charles W. Sandford, May 30, 1861. University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections.

[12] Irvin McDowell replied, “Everything has been done as you desired with respect to your servants, and your wishes, as far as they are known or could be anticipated, have been complied with.” See Irvin McDowell to Mary Lee, May 30, 1861, in War of the Rebellion: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series I, Vol. II, p. 655.

[13] Martha Custis Williams to Mary Custis Lee, July 13, 1861. Martha Custis Williams Carter to Mary Anna Randolph Custis Lee, 1861 July 13 (leefamilyarchive.org)

[14] Martha Custis Williams to Mary Custis Lee, July 25, 1862. Martha Custis Williams Carter to Mary Anna Randolph Custis Lee, 1862 July 25 (leefamilyarchive.org)

[15] Benson Lossing, Pictorial History of the Civil War, vol. 1 (Philadelphia: G.W. Childs, 1866), 423n5

[16] Diary of Julia Wilbur, November 20, 1865, TriCollege Libraries Digital Collections Julia Wilbur diary, October to December 1865... (brynmawr.edu)