Va. historical marker dedication at Pocahontas Island
6/19/2015, 4 p.m.
Petersburg’s Pocahontas Island, a thriving free black community before the Civil War, will be commemorated with a state historical marker.
The new marker will be unveiled 1:45 p.m. Sunday, June 21, in a public ceremony that will kick off the city’s Juneteenth Freedom Festival celebrating the end of slavery.
The program to dedicate the marker will take place at the intersection of Sapony and Joseph Jenkins Roberts streets in Petersburg on the island.
The ceremony will be followed with a Unity Walk to the festival celebrating “fathers, faith, family and friends” at the nearby intersection of Pocahontas and Sapony streets. The upbeat festival will run from 2 to 7 p.m. and feature drumming, music, dance and a host of children’s activities.
Pocahontas Island, where the town of Pocahontas was established in 1752, became part of Petersburg in 1784. By 1860, more members of the city’s large free black community lived there than in any other neighborhood, according to the historical marker.
Residents of the community found work in nearby tobacco factories and on wharves that fueled the bustling Appomattox River trade, the marker states.
In 1993, a tornado left widespread damage to the area’s historic buildings. Today, the oldest standing structure on the island is the Jarratt House, built around 1819.
