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The estate where, by its own account, Josephine Williams was enslaved before emancipation. Its research supplies the short sequence of records that follows her afterward.
The 360-acre historic property in Clarke County whose own account places Josephine Williams in enslavement at Clermont before emancipation. The estate's ownership and operation are now split — the land is owned by the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, and the Clermont Foundation runs the site.
Clermont's own account places Josephine Williams in enslavement at Clermont before emancipation1. That the estate itself carries this account of Josephine's early life is what threads Clermont into the corpus's Josephine narratives — the shirt receipt she signed in 1867 for her former enslavers, and the small sequence of records that follows her afterward. The account is Clermont's, not a third-party reconstruction; the estate is testifying against its own historical role, and that carries a specific institutional weight worth naming.
One claim ties Clermont into the Josephine research strand and identifies the estate as the physical site of her enslavement. Fuller institutional history — the Clermont Foundation's operating partnership with the Virginia DHR, and the Clermont Farm photograph the entity carries as its hero image — is on the Clermont Foundation's own entity page. The chain of title for the estate through and after Emancipation is the natural next research target for this entity specifically.
Clermont's account places Josephine in enslavement at Clermont before emancipation.
An institutional account supports this biographical connection.
This short profile is not a complete biography and does not infer undocumented motives.
Evidence role: supports. Supports the claim at the stated source level; see limits.
Clermont Farm / Cory A. Van Horn
Locator: Opening paragraph; final two historical paragraphs
Checked: Page text reviewed. Original image not independently inspected.
Open sourceSource family: clermont-josephine. Multiple passages from one source are not independent witnesses.
AI-assisted source check · 2026-09-08. How this project checks its sources
Clermont's account places Josephine in enslavement at Clermont before emancipation.
Clermont's account places Josephine in enslavement at Clermont before emancipation.
An institutional account supports this biographical connection.
This short profile is not a complete biography and does not infer undocumented motives.
Evidence role: supports. Supports the claim at the stated source level; see limits.
Clermont Farm / Cory A. Van Horn
Locator: Opening paragraph; final two historical paragraphs
Checked: Page text reviewed. Original image not independently inspected.
Open sourceSource family: clermont-josephine. Multiple passages from one source are not independent witnesses.
AI-assisted source check · 2026-09-08. How this project checks its sources
See a related record at the Clarke County Historical Association
Also indexed as: Clermont Farm.
Know something about this place or record? Help fill a gap. It stays private until it is reviewed.
In 1870, twenty-four formerly enslaved African Americans purchased the land that became Josephine City. Their community went on to build a school through local contributions of labor and money.
What the evidence says Founding documented. Naming account qualified.
A first at the fire company, thirty people with brush cutters in a cemetery, eighty-five thousand anonymous dollars for the schools, and a hundred meals put together in a few days.
What the evidence says One year of a county, read from the twelve 2025 issues of its own monthly paper.
