Julia Branson - The best cook in the neighborhood (written by Jessica Kaplan)

Julia Branson was born around 1810. It is unclear when she first became enslaved by Smith and Polly Minor because two conflicting stories survive about her origins. According to Smith Minor’s petition for compensation for Julia’s emancipation under the District of Columbia’s Compensated Emancipation Act, Minor purchased Julia from an unknown enslaver in 1814, when she was four years old.

A perhaps more likely account is that Julia was enslaved by Simon Sommers from birth or was purchased by him soon afterward. Sommers’s daughter Mary—also called Polly—married Smith Minor in 1817, and Julia may have been given to the newlyweds as a wedding gift. When Simon Sommers died in 1836, the inventory and partition of his estate stated: “We also find that Polly Minor, another of the heirs of the said Simon Sommers, received before his death the following slaves: Moses [Bennet], a boy of 4 years valued at $150, Henny, a woman valued at $500, and Julia Ann, valued at $300.”

Simon Sommers lived on a farm near what is now Arlington’s Westover neighborhood. Whatever the truth of Julia’s early history, she came of age in Arlington.

Until 1837, the Minors lived on a 125-acre farm in North Arlington, “four miles from the Georgetown Ferry.” The property included a farmhouse and numerous outbuildings, including a kitchen, meat house, stables, corn house, and slave quarters. In 1838, the family moved to Laurel Hill Farm in Fairfax County, taking their enslaved people with them. Eleven years later, in 1849, the Minors moved again, this time to a farm outside St. Louis, Missouri.

Disaster struck soon after the family’s relocation to Missouri. Their eighteen-year-old daughter, Helen, died unexpectedly. Grieving, the family returned to Arlington by 1853. They purchased the former farm of Polly’s father, Simon Sommers, along present-day Langston Boulevard, near the site of what is now Rivendell School.

Julia moved with the Minor family. Along the way, she married Lewis Branson, who was also enslaved by the Minors, and began a family of her own. Julia and Lewis had their first child, William, in 1837. Mary Ann was born in 1843, followed by Horace in 1845, James in 1849, and Frank in 1851.

Julia and her four eldest children made the journey to St. Louis with the Minors. Although their time in Missouri lasted only a few years, the move uprooted Julia from much of the life she had known and her husband.

Working for and living alongside the Minors could be exasperating. Mary Lemen, Smith Minor’s niece, described the couple in her unpublished memoir, Once Upon a Time, as opposites. Smith was neat and precise, while Polly “wore the pants” in the family. Lemen remembered Polly as “tall, large, and commanding in both form and manner.” She considered her “capable and efficient” and said that she “ruled her household wisely.”

Smith and Polly Minor had six daughters and three sons, but only four daughters—Marietta, Mary Jane, Cornelia, and Lizzie—survived to adulthood. They remained in their parents’ household through the 1860s.

Julia worked as a servant for the Minor family, cooking, washing, ironing, cleaning, providing childcare, and performing countless other household tasks. Fortunately, Lemen left behind a few remarkable memories of Julia’s abilities as a cook. She wrote:

“Aunt Polly Smith’s Julie was considered the best cook in the neighborhood. No matter how simple the meal, it was always served to perfection. I’ve heard mother say that their cornpone was so light and rich that it fairly quivered on the plate, the coffee was like a rich cordial, and the meat or fish, if it were only smoked herring, was food fit for an epicure.”

Lemen remembered that most visitors, including herself, were not “allowed to enter that coveted place, the kitchen, without permission.”

Lemen also wrote about Julia’s daughter Mary Ann, who had been “trained with the greatest care, as housemaid and dining-room servant.” Like her mother, Mary Ann cooked, washed, and ironed and remained at the family’s beck and call. Lemen did not recall the names of Mary Ann’s brothers, perhaps because they worked outside the house as farmhands and wagoners.

Julia suffered a devastating loss in January 1855 when her husband, Lewis, died by suicide. A brief article in the Alexandria Gazette reported:

“Louis [Lewis], aged about forty, the slave of Mr. Smith Minor, hung himself in the barn of his master, in Alexandria County, VA. He was the confidential and most trusted family servant of his master, who with all his family were much attached to him. No cause is assigned for the act, as he was apparently well in mind, and on good terms with everybody.”

It is impossible to know what drove Lewis to take his own life. The newspaper offered no explanation, and the language used to describe him reflected the perspective of his enslaver rather than Lewis’s own experience. Whatever the cause, his death left Julia to raise their five children without him.

Julia and her family’s world began to change dramatically with the outbreak of the Civil War. Union troops built forts and encamped throughout Arlington, particularly around the high point of Minor’s Hill. In the process, they seized crops and property from local farms. According to Lemen’s memoir, the Minor home had been “bombarded by Union forces.” She wrote, “All of their household goods and the livestock had been destroyed or taken, with the exception of an old mule. The family was notified that at certain hour they must vacate their home…They decided to go to Washington, but it is not at all clear how they got there.” The family rented a home in Washington and turned it into a boarding house.

Horace, one of Julia’s middle sons, decided to leave the farm with troops from Captain Cole’s regiment. His self-emancipation must have been both exciting and frightening for Julia. Her son had escaped slavery, but his future was uncertain.

As disorder and destruction spread through Arlington, Smith Minor moved some of his family into the District of Columbia in September 1861, bringing Julia, her children, and Moses Bennet, another enslaved man, with him. Smith’s mother, Catherine Minor, and his daughter Marietta instead fled to Leesburg and Confederate-held territory near the District.

The move to the District of Columbia proved significant for the Bransons and Moses Bennet. In 1862, Congress passed the District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act, which abolished slavery in the District and provided compensation to enslavers who met the requirements of the law. In April 1862, Smith Minor filed a petition seeking compensation for the emancipation of the Bransons and Bennet. Horace had returned to the family by then and was included in the petition.

The document provides a rare physical description of Julia and her children, along with a record of their ages and the skills their enslaver considered valuable:

• Julia was 5 feet 5 inches tall, “black in color,” and 52 years old. She was described as a “fine servant, cook, washer, and ironer.”
• William was 6 feet tall, “very erect and straight,” “black in color,” and 25 years old. He “stands number one as a good wagoner, field hand, and marketer.”
• Mary Ann was 5 feet 7 inches tall, “fine looking,” “coppery” in color, and 19 years old. She was described as a “fair cook and good washer and ironer.”
• Horace was 5 feet 10 inches tall, “dark in color,” and 17 years old. He was a “pretty good wagoner and farm hand.”
• James was 5 feet 10 inches tall, “dark in color,” and 13 years old. He was described as a “fine sprightly boy” who earned “some months $5–$6 per month,” suggesting that he was regularly hired out.
• Frank was 5 feet 3 inches tall, “dark in color,” and 11 years old. He was described as “sprightly tall and healthy.”

Controversy surrounded Smith Minor’s petition for compensation. Only Union loyalists were eligible for compensation, and Minor had voted for secession in a local election in May 1861. The Minor family’s Southern sympathies were well known in Arlington. A commission appointed by President Abraham Lincoln to oversee the petition and compensation process ultimately denied Smith Minor’s claim.

The Bransons and Moses Bennet nevertheless gained their freedom. They received nothing for the years of forced labor they had given to the Minors. The Minors received no compensation either.

After emancipation, the Bransons settled in the District of Columbia. Julia’s sons worked primarily as laborers, waiters, and porters, reflecting the limited range of employment opportunities available to Black workers at the time. Julia does not appear in the federal census records, but she was listed in the 1870 Washington, D.C., directory as the widow of Lewis. After that, she disappears from the surviving records.

Julia’s life is therefore preserved only in fragments: an estate inventory, a family memoir, an emancipation petition, a newspaper notice, and a city directory. Together, these records reveal a woman who spent most of her life enslaved, raised five children, endured the loss of her husband, survived the upheaval of war, and ultimately gained her freedom. They also offer an unusually detailed glimpse into the life of an enslaved family in antebellum Arlington.