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Booker Taliaferro Washington was born in 1856 into slavery in Hales Ford, Franklin County, Virginia. By his own account his mother was the plantation cook for the "Big House", but had no recollections of his father, other than to say that the man was a "white man from another nearby plantation". He had two older brothers, John the oldest, and James who was adopted, as well as one sister-Amanda. After the Emancipation Proclamation of 1865, the family relocated to Malden, West Virginia, where Washington began work in the salt furnace and coal mines at an early age until he could secure enough of the basic reading skills to make his brave journey to Hampton. Eventually the two brothers would follow his educational path to the Hampton Institute and later join Washington at Tuskegee as instructors and then administrators during the formative years at the Institute (Washington, 1985: [1901]).

//Picture above: The James Burroughs Plantation in Hales Ford, Franklin County, Virginia in it's period reconstruction. Source: National Park Service//

 Washington's personal life was equally challenging as securing his education. During his life he married three time but lost two to early deaths. The first, to one of his Malden school pupils, Fanny Norton Smith in 1882 produces a daughter Portia, who was born in 1883. Fanny died in 1884. Next he married Olivia Davidson in 1885, also a Hampton graduate, Olivia was the assistant principal of Tuskegee. and had great influence on Washington during the early years of fundraising, speech making and the development of his Northern philanthropic support. Together they had two sons, Booker T. Washington Jr. and Ernest Davidson Washington who were raised at Tuskegee and where Olivia died in 1889. FInally, Washington was married to Margaret James Murray in 1892. Also a dedicated teacher, Margaret became the Lady Principal of Tuskegee after Olivia's death and kept a marital home, called "The Oaks", for the family until she died in 1925 (National Parks Service, 2000).