Henrietta was an enslaved woman who lived and worked at Tuckahoe during the Wight and Allen period. She was thought to be born sometime around 1837 to Mahala and Spy Boyd. Her siblings were Chaney, Armistead, Robert, Matilda, Thomas, and Margaret. Henrietta and her mother were among only a handful of enslaved workers that worked inside the house (the majority labored in the fields).
Henrietta is recorded as having given birth to a daughter (Mary Eliza) on May 15, 1855. On February 15, 1858 she gave birth to another daughter named Sallie and is also listed as the mother for a child named James in 1861. There is no indication of who the father was for these children. It is possible that the father may have been one of the Allens, a white overseer, or that he was an enslaved man on another plantation. It appears that Henrietta, Mary Eliza, and Sallie continued to live with the rest of her family in the South Cabin along Plantation Street which would have now housed about 10 occupants. Mr. Allen noted in the margins of his account that the family was allotted 5 blankets at that time.
After the Civil War, a number of the Boyd family stayed in the area and is thought to have continued working at Tuckahoe for pay. It is not known if Henrietta and her children stayed nearby or left the area completely. None of them are listed in the Boyd household census records and it seems that it was her sister, Margaret who was now listed as working as a house servant along with their mother, Mahala.
