Ellen "Nelly" VanVactor Free Black Female Landowner

Her paper trail is unusually full. Benjamin Van Vactor's will of November 1822 left Nelly his entire estate, and by the mid-1830s she was taxed on six town lots to Andrew Johnson's two. In 1824 a court gave her a mortgage on 52 acres when a debtor defaulted on $209, and in 1832 she signed a sale with her mark. She considered sailing to Liberia with her son Alfred in 1842 but stayed; his family left Liberia after about eighteen months. No will or grave has been found, though she may lie in Old Harmony Cemetery.

What the plaque says

Ellen "Nelly" VanVactor Free Black Female Landowner Front: Ellen "Nelly" VanVactor was one of the first free women of color to own real estate in Greeneville. Throughout Tennessee, there were few landowners of her race and gender prior to 1830. Born a slave in Virginia in 1780, Nelly arrived here in 1818 with Benjamin VanVactor as well as her children. Benjamin's housekeeper, Nelly inherited his estate in 1822, by which time she had been freed. She bought her first real estate the following year. By 1837 she owned six town lots. Back: Nelly and her family lived on the northwest corner of Summer and Irish streets. Her daughter, Erie, and Erie's two sons were emancipated in 1822. Nelly's son, Alfred VanVactor Thompson, was born free in 1818. Well educated, he was trained as a tailor by Andrew Johnson (1808-1875), who later became the seventeenth president of the United States. Alfred emigrated to Liberia in 1842, subsequently returning to the U.S. and becoming a successful Ohio tailor. Nelly lived in Greenville until 1856.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Andrew Johnson National Historic Site — steps away
  The tailor shop, homestead and grave of the seventeenth president in Greeneville, where the people he enslaved are named and where the Eighth of August emancipation celebration took root.
• Rogersville Historic District — 19 mi
  Tennessee's first newspaper was printed in this Hawkins County seat in 1791, and Swift Memorial College, founded in 1883, educated Black students after the state's 1901 law forced Maryville College to expel them.
• Jonesborough Historic District — 22 mi
  Tennessee's oldest town, chartered in 1779, where Elihu Embree printed The Emancipator in 1820 and a hay wagon by the courthouse started the National Storytelling Festival in 1973.
• Unicoi County Heritage Museum and the Erwin Rail Yard — 25 mi
  A museum in the old fish hatchery superintendent's house in Erwin, a Clinchfield railroad town where the elephant Mary was hanged in 1916 and Black residents were driven out in 1918.

More markers nearby

• Capitol of State of Franklin — steps away
• Death of John Morgan September 4, 1864 — steps away
• Benjamin Lundy — steps away
• Greeneville Union Convention — steps away