During the Federal retreat at Ball’s Bluff, Lewis A. Bell, a free African American camp worker, may have been the first Black man to fire a gun in support of the Union Army.

According to the 1870 edition of History of Worcester in the War of the Rebellion, Bell worked for Colonel Milton Cogswell, 42nd New York Infantry Regiment, while other sources cite his involvement with a Massachusetts unit. Bell “supplied himself with arms, and loaded and fired with great spirit” before being taken to Richmond as a prisoner of war.

This late 18th-century African American cemetery contains 91 burials of people who were likely free and enslaved. Members of the extended Harris family are buried here.

The twenty-two enslaved workers at Temple Hall probably performed functions like those at other farms in Loudoun. The farm raised a variety of crops including corn, wheat and potatoes and the adult male (and at times female) enslaved worked in the fields planting, weeding and harvesting. Mason also raised livestock including beef cattle, milk cows, hogs and sheep so the male enslaved tended to these animals as well as the horses kept for riding and plowing.

When Temple Hall Farm was established in 1812, the house and farm buildings of the time were likely built with Black enslaved workers. Enslaved workers were held in bondage there for the next 50 years to provide free labor for the property owners.

This burial ground of enslaved people is tangible evidence of the system of slavery which existed in Virginia until the end of the Civil War when the 13th Amendment to the Constitution banned the practice. These individuals were held in bondage and forced to work the farm which became Bull Run Marina.