Lucy was an enslaved woman at Tuckahoe during the Allen period. She is thought to have been born sometime between 1820-1822 in Stafford County, VA. Her name first appears on the Allen account list of 1858 where she and her daughter, Jane, are listed as house servants. Her husband, Joe Parker, was listed as a field hand. In May of 1858 she gave birth to another daughter named Rachael. As both she and Jane worked inside the house it is quite possible that the family lived in one of the cabins which still stands along Plantation Street.
It seems that some of the Parkers moved closer to Richmond as they were listed as living in Monroe Ward by 1870. In 1872, Lucy and her daughter, Rachael, are listed on a record for the Freedman’s Bank. (She does not mention any other children on this record so it is quite possible that Jane had passed away by this point). The bank, which had been created to assist the newly freed enslaved population after the Civil War, would fail and close just a few years later in 1874. Many depositors would have lost all of their money and it is very possible that this would have happened to the Parker family.
