Charles Diuguid Blacksmith Shop Site

Charles Diuguid

Charles Diuguid was one of 171 free African Americans living in Appomattox County according to the 1860 census. In 1854, Diuguid partnered with William Wright to purchase a half-acre of land to establish a blacksmith shop. With the money gained through this work, Diuguid purchased an enslaved woman and the two started a family. Diuguid chose not to manumit his wife and children prior to, or during, the Civil War. Though the reasoning for this decision is not known with certainty, it is possible that he believed his family would be better protected on a legal basis through Virginia’s private property laws than through the limited civil rights afforded to free African Americans in the antebellum South. Despite his status as a free man, the Confederate army pressed Diuguid into uncompensated service as a laborer in 1861 and 1864 to construct earthwork defenses in Northern Virginia and Richmond.

Within months of the surrender, the Freedmen’s Bureau established the first public school in Appomattox County near this site to provide for the education of black families in the area. A white teacher from Massachusetts named Charles McMahon moved to the village to instruct the students. Despite several threats made by disgruntled white residents against McMahon and local black citizens, the school persisted, eventually moving to a more suitable building a mile west of the village at Galilee Baptist Church, a church established by black residents shortly after the surrender.