Aunt Winnie

For this image, the author reported on a visit to an estate in Central Virginia, not far from Charlottesville, where they met an enslaved domestic, Aunt Winnie, who was “of too much importance on the estate to be slighted. . . Her little white-washed cabin stood at no great distance from the great house, and was fitted up with due regard to the comfort of the aged occupant, not forgetting the ornamental, in the shape of highly colored lithographs and white-fringed curtains. . . Aunt Winnie was supposed to be upward of a hundred years old, and could count among her descendants’ children of the fifth generation, one of whom stood at her side when Crayon took a sketch of her. She walked with difficulty, but her eyes were bright, and her other faculties apparently complete. Her memory was good and her narratives of the olden time replete with interest” (p. 309-310). David Hunter Strother (1816–1888) was a successful magazine illustrator and writer, popularly known by his pseudonym, "Porte Crayon." He rose through the ranks of the union army to Brevet Brigadier General. For Virginia Illustrated, he wrote and illustrated “Adventures of Porte Crayon and His Cousins,” which was a narrative of the experiences of several travelers through central Virginia in late 1853. The series then appeared in five parts in Harpers New Monthly Magazine between 1854 and 1856. See Cecil Eby, Porte Crayon: The Life of David Hunter Strother (Chapel Hill, 1960); and also images HARP01 and HARP02.