Description
Another marker, in Portsmouth, pays tribute to George Teamoh, a man born enslaved in Virginia, who rose to prominence in his community and was later elected to the General Assembly. After his owner sold his family, Teamoh, a skilled ship’s carpenter and caulker, was was hired out to the captain of a mercantile bound for New York. He escaped in 1853 by jumping ship, and traveled to Massachusetts. After the end of the Civil War, Teamoh returned to Portsmouth and became a central community leader. During Reconstruction, Teamoh served as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1867 and served in the Virginia Senate from 1869 to 1871. Rafia Zafar, a VFH fellow in 1989 who is also Teamoh’s great-great-granddaughter of Teamoh, spent her residency editing Teamoh’s autobiography. She and her co-editors, F. N. Boney and Richard L. Hume, published "God Made Man, Man Made the Slave: The Autobiography of George Teamoh" in 1992.
