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Walking Through Black History at the Brentsville Courthouse Historic Centre

Linda Lindberg,

AARP Virginia

Published March 11, 2026

Linda Lindberg

Undeterred by gloomy weather, several attendees gathered recently at the Brentsville Courthouse Historic Centre in Prince William County to learn about the court and community’s roles in the county’s African American History.

Nathan McDonald from the Prince William County Office of Historic Preservation explained that Brentsville served as the fourth county seat from 1820 to 1893. The courthouse and adjacent jail were built in the geographic center of Brentsville in 1822.

At its peak in the 1850s, said McDonald, the population of Brentsville was about 200 to 250, with roughly 70% white and 30% African American. Most of the African Americans were believed to be enslaved.

In 1863, the clerk’s office in the courthouse burned down, and many county records were lost. Some were recovered from records that were tossed out the window in hopes of saving them. But many, especially those related to the African American community, could not be recovered. Much of the community’s African American history has been pieced together from oral accounts or copies of documents from residents.

One such document that survived was a paper provided in 1837 to an African American woman, Maria Cole, stating that she was free. Free African Americans were required to carry such a court-issued paper, which included their descriptions, to protect them while traveling. Otherwise, they could be jailed and potentially sold to a slave trader.

McDonald shared the tales of several notable cases involving African Americans, such as an enslaved man named Ceasar who was accused of assault and rape in 1841. Prior to the Civil War, if a prisoner was condemned to death, the court had to pay for the execution. In Ceasar’s case, it was unclear whether his accuser was white or African American. If it was the latter, the court loathed to pay for an execution. However, another enslaved member of Ceasar’s household was compelled to testify against him, and Ceasar was hanged.

One of the most famous cases, said McDonald, was the murder of Gerald Mason in 1849. Mason was the grandson of Revolutionary patriot George Mason, but did not share his grandfather’s temperament. After moving to Georgia and getting married, Mason faked his death and returned to Virginia, where he had inherited a plantation on the Potomac River.

Neighbors didn’t like dealing with Mason, especially after he shot and killed his neighbor’s son. He was arrested, but because of his family connections, he was set free. Later, he beat a woman to death with firewood. It was witnessed by the men who delivered the wood, including the neighbor whose son was shot. This time, his case was sent to the grand jury, but it did not go any further.

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Mason had an African American servant named Agnes who did his cooking and housekeeping. McDonald said it is not clear if she was free or enslaved, but likely it was the latter. One morning, Agnes realized the fire had gone out in Mason’s room, and she knew he’d be angry with her.

When Agnes went to the room where Mason was still in bed and prepared to set the fire, she saw him reach for his shotgun. Remembering he had already killed two people, she took up a hatchet and killed him.

Mason’s neighbor – again, the same neighbor who lost his son – noticed there was no fire in the chimney and called the sheriff.

Agnes was arrested, but the jury was reluctant to find her guilty. The judge, however, told the jury to “keep at it until they came to a guilty verdict.”

Since there was a lot of sympathy towards Agnes, eligible voters in the community – who at that time were only white men – petitioned the governor to commute her sentence. The governor was willing to reduce the sentence if the judge accepted a not guilty verdict. The judge refused, and Agnes was hanged in July of 1850.

The jail building adjacent to the courthouse had four cells upstairs and two downstairs. The living quarters for the jailer were also downstairs. McDonald said the number of cells were necessary to segregate prisoners by gender and race. The upstairs cells were considered nicer because they had fireplaces.

In 1835, an enslaved man named Landon was jailed for using papers belonging to a free African American with a similar description. Landon was a smoker, and one night he lit his pipe before going to bed. The cell caught fire, and fortunately, the jailer got all prisoners out safely.

The sheriff determined that the fire was a deliberate attempt by Landon to escape, despite the fact he could have died in the fire, and charged him with treason. McDonald said treason was a kind of catch-all sentence at the time and was used if the intention of an actual crime was unclear.

Landon’s lawyer got his sentence reduced, but he faced transportation to slave markets, which often happened to criminals during that era. In 1840, Landon was sent to the Richmond slave markets, where a slave trader purchased him to sell in Louisiana.

In New Orleans, the slave trader who faked sales papers was arrested. The prisoners he brought with him were taken by the state to work on state projects. While some of those prisoners ended up in the state penitentiary, it is unknown what happened to Landon.

Arthur Woodward served as the jailer for many years, living in the jail with his wife. In the 1870s, an African American named Jesse Fouks was jailed for killing his employer. “The jail was not locked,” said McDonald, “and prisoners had the run of the area.”

One day, Fouks tried to escape. Mrs. Woodward tried to grab him, but he got away. Fouks was later found, and this time he was locked up.

Fouks was sentenced to hang, and the hangman was Woodward, the jailer. Woodward did not support capital punishment, and he showed up drunk at the hanging to take a swipe at the sheriff. Fouks was hanged nevertheless, and Woodward remained as jailer for many years.

After the Civil War, the population of Brentsville decreased significantly. McDonald estimated that about 86 of the town’s buildings were burned down during the war. Many residents moved to Manassas, which had a railroad and was becoming a more attractive hub. The county moved the county seat from Brentsville to Manassas in 1893.

Following the closure of the Brentsville courthouse, the building was used as a college for teachers, an elementary school, a community center, and an office space for the Park Authority. The jail building was repurposed as a dorm for the teacher’s college and then as a private residence, before both buildings were acquired and restored by the county’s Historic Preservation Division.

The Brentsville Courthouse Historic Centre also includes three other buildings: an 1850s farmhouse that was moved to the site from another county location; the Union Church, built in 1873 by a coalition of denominations; and the Brentsville School House, used from 1929-1944 to teach white children from first to fifth grade.