Finding Sarah Ann
By Annabelle Spencer
Sarah Ann was enslaved in Fairfax County Virginia in the early 1800s by the Follin family. The Follin family plantation has remained unknown in today's world, having been bulldozed over and developed and therefore, so has the life of Sarah Ann. Her strategically silenced and smothered story has never been told. Defying the odds and risking it all, she plotted and escaped from the Follins in January of 1850 while she was pregnant and with her 7 year old daughter Mary. Even under these incredibly rare circumstances, Sarah Ann and her children were never seen again, never found out or returned. Where did they go and were they ultimately successful? This story that is being uncovered, its pieces connected for the very first time, is one of womanhood and motherhood compounded with enslavement, generational sacrifice, reproductive autonomy, racial passing, white womanhood, rape, oppression, survival, and resistance.