December 26, 2025 • 28 mins
When you want to hear the inclusive story of Virginia's history, some people hope you turn to Encyclopedia Virginia. The mission of the site is to provide a free, reliable, multimedia resource for students, teachers, and communities who seek to understand how the past informs the present and the future. On this episode, we're focusing on the story of Thomas Fuller, an enslaved man born in the 1700's who earned renown at the end of his life for his ability to calculate numbers in his head and we'll learn more about Encyclopedia Virginia. Specifically, let's talk to Brendan Wolfe, the author of the Fuller biography and the former editor of Encyclopedia Virginia.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Welcome to Virginia Focus. I'm Rebecca Hughes of the Virginia
News Network. When you want to hear the inclusive story
of Virginia's history, some people hope you turn to Encyclopedia Virginia.
The mission of the site is to provide a free, reliable,
multimedia resource for students, teachers, and communities who seek to
understand how the past informs the present and the future.
(00:33):
On this episode, we're focusing on the story of Thomas Fuller,
an enslaved man born in the seventeen hundreds who earned
renown at the end of his life for his ability
to calculate numbers in his head. And we'll learn more
about Encyclopedia Virginia specifically, let's talk to Brendan Wolfe, the
author of the Fuller biography and the former editor of
Encyclopedia Virginia. Welcome to the show, mister Wolfe. I'm so
(00:55):
glad you could spend some time with us today.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Thank you very much.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
So today we're talking about Encyclopedia Virginia. Why don't we
start by explaining what that is.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Sure, Encyclopedia Virginia is a free online encyclopedia of Virginia
history and culture. We started the project, it went live
in two thousand and eight, and ever since then we
have just continued to add content, focusing at least at
(01:30):
the beginning, on Virginia history, but also we are interested
in culture, business, economics, art. We want to be a
location for anyone interested in the life and past of Virginia.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Okay, so I know you're a former editor. How did
you get involved in this project?
Speaker 3 (01:57):
My background has been in writing and publishing. So I
moved to Virginia in two thousand and seven with a
background as a journalist and editor, and I also worked
in educational publishing. And the project had started but was
(02:20):
not yet online, and what they required was someone with
the experience I had creating a workflow, understanding how to
create a voice for the publication and edit entries so
that they, even though they were written by lots of
(02:41):
different people, they seemed like they belonged in the same publication.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
If that makes sense, Yeah, that makes sense to me.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
I was an editor from January two thousand and eight
until the middle of twenty nineteen, so almost twelve years
of reading Virginia history.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Wow, And I mean, well, the background, like what you're
talking about. You obviously are a good storyteller, because you
have to be when you do the things that you've done.
How many people have been involved in this since the start?
I mean, I know you said several people writing, but
is there a scale to that? Can you help us understand? So?
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Encyclopedia Virginia is.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
Housed at the State Humanities Council, which is called Virginia Humanities,
and Virginia Humanities is compared to other state historical or
state humanities councils, excuse me, pretty well funded with a
lot of employees. But Encyclopedia Virginia at south has only
(03:47):
ever had oh between four or five, six seven employees
at a time. And so while I was editor, I
was in charge of assigning, editing, sometimes writing all the content.
(04:09):
We had a photo editor who was responsible for finding
all of the media that goes up on the website.
A few years into the project, we began employing a
primary source specialist.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
I guess you could.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
Call it someone whose job was to search out and
transcribe primary sources that were related to our entries and
that we could link to from our entries. Primary sources
are so important for understanding the history, and they're also
(04:50):
really valued by teachers in the classroom, and teachers have
always been one of the primary audiences for the encyclopedia.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Okay, well, that's good to know. Approximately, you may not
have this number, or maybe you do, but in your
twelve years of editing, approximately, how many of the stories
did you write? Personally?
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Oh, that's a good question.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Between I wrote between sixty and seventy entries, I mean,
and that's out of well more than a thousand entries total.
The number since I left is the number of total
entries is probably much higher at this point. So I
wrote a fair number, but not a huge number by
(05:40):
any by any stretch.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Okay, it sounds like a lot though, I mean, that's
a big number. So how did you choose your Yeah,
how did you choose your subject matter?
Speaker 3 (05:51):
How did I choose my subject matter? Well, we put
together the encyclopedia.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
We put it together in I'm sorry, I keep pausing because.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
It's been a while since I worked there, and I
have to come up with terms. Oh, sections, So we
put the encyclopedia together in sections, So sections of content,
rather than sort of thinking about Virginia history in chronological
(06:31):
terms or you know, writing entries alphabetically or whatever. We
created section of sections of content. So let's say we
did a section on the Civil War, or before I left,
we were working on a section of.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
Content on slavery in Virginia.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
So we would hire academics who were specialists in that
area and could help us create a list of entries
that our section of content should have. And that way
(07:13):
we could think of the section as a kind kind
of intellectually coherent thing. We weren't just sort of randomly
coming up with entries, but trying to think about what
would a student of Virginia need to know about slavery
in Virginia. And then we would also have the section
(07:36):
editor help us find academics to write these specific entries
and help us review the entries for general kind of
academic rigor. I guess you could say.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
So we worked within these sections, and.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
I chose entries to write, sometimes just because something seemed
very interesting and.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
Accessible to me.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
Sometimes we simply couldn't find other people to write them.
In the case of Thomas Fuller, we have a figure
about whom very little is known. There are only a
handful of primary documents that can be used to tell
(08:37):
this life, and so putting together an encyclopedia entry was
essentially delving into these primary documents and reporting out what
they tell us.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Okay, so let's talk more about him. What can you
tell us about mister Fuller.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
Well, everything we know about Thomas Filler Fuller, excuse me,
comes down to a couple of documents. One was his obituary,
which was published in a Boston newspaper in seventeen ninety,
and the other was an article that was written by
(09:20):
doctor Benjamin Rush, who was a signatory of the Declaration
of Independence. He was the surgeon General of the Continental
Army during the Revolutionary War, and he published an article
on Fuller in seventeen eighty eight about Fuller's mathematical abilities.
(09:41):
And so those are the two main sources we have
about who Fuller was and the stories about him, And
from them we know that he was born about seventeen
ten in West act Africa, and he made the Middle
(10:02):
Passage when he was fourteen years old and was enslaved
in British America and the United States for the rest
of his life. He died in seventeen ninety. At some
point he was purchased by a couple in northern Virginia,
(10:26):
a man named Presley Cox and his wife Elizabeth, and
they had a farm of about two hundred and thirty
two acres of land, four miles west of Alexandria. And
that is where some folks encountered. Some white folks encountered
Thomas Fuller later in his life and discovered that he
(10:49):
had an unusual ability to do mathematical calculations in his head.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
And so.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
They were excited both by the unusualness of his feats,
but also by the ideological potential of publicizing those feats.
In other words, if they could publicize the fact that
(11:23):
an enslaved black man was able to do these kinds
of calculations in his head, then it might say something
about the abilities of black people in general that may
undercut the ideological underpinnings of slavery in America. And so
(11:45):
that I think is what drew Benjamin Rush to him
and what allowed his story to spread.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Wow, that's a great story. I love that. And you
got that all from two documents, right sure.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
Yeah, Benjamin Rush's article about Fuller and then his obituary
in the Boston newspaper.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
And it's no.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
Coincidence that Russia's article was published in Philadelphia and the
obituary in Boston. These are two centers of anti slavery
and abolitionist activism, and so Fuller was an important figure
for them precisely because of what his abilities might mean
(12:42):
for their movement.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
Yeah, that is phenomenal. You always wish you knew more
about him, like, you know, did he have family? Did
he you know, who were his descendants? Because I'm sure
if they if they know that's who they descend from,
they're probably extremely proud.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
Sure, absolutely, And that's one of the you know, saddest
parts about African American history in this country. I'm a
professional genealogist, and so I can say this from experience
that is really really.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
Difficult, although not at all impossible.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
To trace black ancestors through slavery. The records are often
non existent or refer to people in ways, you know,
without without names, for instance, or without birth dates or
solid death dates that allow you to trace them so
(13:42):
that you can find their ancestors.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Would you say the story of Thomas Fuller is your
favorite story or do you have another one that is
your favorite that you wrote?
Speaker 3 (13:55):
Oh, I'm actually working on a novel right now about
about a story that I wrote for the Encyclopedia that
has just never left my head in all the years
since I wrote it. It's about a Virginia Indian whose
(14:18):
name was Paki Cano. And in fifteen sixty one, so
we're talking, you know, almost fifty years before Jamestown, a
Spanish ship was blown off course, ended up in the
James River and picked up Pocky Caneo and a companion
and took them back to Spain. Pocky Caneo met the
(14:39):
King of Spain, Philip the Second, who was the most
powerful man in the world at the time, and got
permission from him to return to Virginia. But first he
had to meet with some Dominican monks in Mexico City.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
And they were going to go back to Virginia with him.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
So after sailing to all the way to Spain, he
then goes all the way to Mexico City, and there
he becomes so ill that it's believed he might die,
And while on his deathbed, he converted to Christianity, took
a Christian named Don Luis Dave Alasko, but somehow survived.
(15:22):
At that point, however, the mission had been canceled and
he spent four years in Mexico City. After those four years,
another mission to Virginia was organized, but somehow they couldn't
find the Testapeake Bay, and so they sailed all the
(15:45):
way to Spain again. There he spent four more years,
this time with Jesuits, until a third mission of Virginia
was organized. He sailed to Havana, where he met with
the Jesuits, and then returned to Virginia. Finally, in fifteen seventy,
nine years after he'd originally left.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
His people remembered him.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
Told the priests that it was like a god had
come back to life, and Paki Caneo went back to
his people, left the Jesuits more or less on their own,
and they died the next year. Some people say that
Paki Caneo killed them, other people say they may have
(16:31):
starved that it's not clear. Whatever the case, Paki Caneo
completely disappeared from history after that. No one knows what
happened to him after fifteen seventy.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
But I've always been fascinated.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
With the story and with the idea of an Indian
traveling to Europe and kind of doing the sort of
reverse of going to the New World.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Go into the old world.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
But seeing it as new and kind of upending our
understanding of how history.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Worked in a way.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
Yeah, definitely that I understand why that stuck in your head.
That is an amazing story. How much documentation have you
had to go through to be able to tell that one?
Speaker 3 (17:21):
Well, there's a there's a fair amount of documentation there.
When Paki Caneo was first picked up by the Spanish
in fifteen sixty one and they sailed him back to
the city of Seville, and there the Spanish captain Alasquez
(17:41):
wanted to take Paki Caneto to the king.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
He thought Paki Caneo was interesting.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
Enough and unusual and important enough to be of interest
to the king.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
So at that point he needed to.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
Interact with the Spanish bureaucracy sort of register the fact
that Paki Caneo was there, and also to get money
or some clothing so that he would be fit to
be in the presence of the king.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
And the record of that interaction still exists, as does.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
The Spanish bureaucrats recording of Paki Caneo's name. That's the
only place where we see his Indian name, and that
document is right there in the entry for Don Luis
paki Cano in Encyclopedia Virginia.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
It's really cool.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
Wow, do we know what I'm a little.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
Kid, but that was really really fun entry to work on.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
Yeah. Do we know which tribe he was a part
of and maybe what his name might mean?
Speaker 2 (18:50):
You know, that's a great question, so we we don't.
There were a whole.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
Bunch of Virginia Indian groups in that Tidewater area and
he was thought to have been found by the Spanish
right around the area where the Jamestown settlers ended up.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
History, so this is what the entry says.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
Historians very variously suggested that Paki Caneo hailed from a Paspahgue,
Kiskak or Kikakan family.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
So you know, nobody knows for sure.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
The records don't tell us that much, but there are
records of him with the Dominicans in Mexico City, and
then when he arrived back in Virginia with the Jesuits,
two of the Jesuit priests who were in charge of
the mission wrote a letter within a day or two
(19:57):
of them arriving that was back to their boss and
Havana or Spain or wherever he was, telling that they
had arrived, what some things that had happened after they'd arrived,
And then that letter was taken by the pilot of
the ship they arrived on back to Cuba and then Spain.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
And so that letter still exists, and.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
Translation of that is on Encyclopedia Virginia as well. And
so that letter by itself tells an amazing story of
Paki Cano's return to Virginia.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
That is fascinating. That is so cool. So let me
ask you a similar but slightly different question. Was there
anyone else when you worked there who you loved their
writing and you had a favorite story of theirs?
Speaker 3 (20:55):
Oh that's a really good question. Two, just trying to
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, let me find it here.
This is a story that I really like to tell
(21:16):
when talking about slavery.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
Okay, here we go. The entry was.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
Written by Kendra Hamilton. It's about a book that was
published in nineteen forty called The Negro in Virginia, and
it was funded by the Virginia Writers Project, which itself
was part of the New Deal WPA's Federal Writers Project.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
And one of the things that.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
The WPA folks did in Virginia, as they did in
other Southern states. Is they sent people out to interview
formally enslaved people. And these interviews, these oral histories, can
be found on the Library of Congress website and they've
(22:11):
been published in books, are very famous and very interesting.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
And so.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
They had this, you know, cash of these oral histories,
they decided they wanted to create a history of.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
Black people in Virginia.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
And so in a way, I mean that goes back
to sixteen nineteen, that's almost the entire history of Virginia.
So we're really talking about a history of Virginia, but
from the black person's point of view, a fascinating project.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
There was a chapter.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
In the book called thirty and and thirty and nine
refers to a common punishment for enslaved people to receive
thirty and nine lashes or thirty nine lashes, And so
(23:19):
this is going to be a you know, kind of
a gruesome chapter already.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
But there was a story of a girl who was
in the kitchen.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
Of her mistress, you know, the woman who who owned
and enslaved her, and she took a piece of candy
when she shouldn't have and was punished in just the
most severe and awful way.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Among other things. The woman put.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
Her face under a rocking chair, and it was just
so awful that the so the editor of the book
and the man creating the book was a black man,
but his boss was a white woman, and she read
this draft and she said, that's so awful. I'm not
(24:25):
sure that I believe it.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
And she suggested that it might not be true.
Speaker 3 (24:34):
And so what the writer did was said, Hey, this
woman is still alive. She's living in West Point, Virginia.
She's in the tidewater. And he said, why don't you
go and meet her? And, to this white woman's credit,
(24:55):
she did. She went to West Point. She knocked on
a few doors and asked about this former slave woman
who had been beaten so bad that her face was disfigured.
And they said, oh, sure, I know who that is,
and they pointed her to the right house.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
And the woman later wrote, she.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
Looks exactly as mister Lewis describes her. And she told
me almost word for word the story mister Lewis relates.
I had no difficulty finding her, merely by asking on
the street where I might locate the old woman who
had been severely beaten by her mistress. Wow, and what
strikes me about this story is that what sounded to
(25:45):
use this white woman's words grossly exaggerated back in the
nineteen thirties still might sound grossly exaggerated today, And in fact,
there are still plenty of people today who want to
deny the horrors of slavery. What is too bad is
(26:06):
that we can no longer drive to West Point, knock
on a few doors and find this woman and hear
her story. There's a kind of you know, history passes
by and we're left with these stories, but we're no
(26:26):
longer left with the people who told them.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
But I was just always.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
Really amazed by that story and impressed by the woman's
willingness to test her own doubts. That's not something that
we see enough of these days.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
I agree with that. So let's shift gears just a
little bit, because we're almost out of time. If a
person hears this podcast and they are like, you know what,
I have some information on stories that would be beneficial
to add to it, whether it's historical or current events,
how do they go about possibly getting involved?
Speaker 3 (27:10):
Okay, so the best way is to email the encyclopedia.
So if you're interested in reaching out to Encyclopedia Virginia.
Then the best way is to write an email. It's
at EV at Virginia Humanities dot org.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
EV that's for.
Speaker 3 (27:33):
Encyclopedia Virginia at Virginia Humanities all one word dot org
and the phone number is four three four nine two
four three two nine six awesome.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
And if anybody wants to check it out on the web,
what's that web address?
Speaker 3 (27:53):
Encyclopedia of Virginia again, all one word dot org.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Okay, awesome. So just to make sure, do you think
we've covered it pretty well? Is there anything else we
need to talk about?
Speaker 2 (28:06):
No, it has been really fun.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
Yeah, it has. I've learned a lot. I can't wait
to dive into this website.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
All right, that's great, Thanks Rebecca.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
I hope you've enjoyed today's show. Thanks for tuning into
the show on your favorite local radio station. You can
now listen to this show or past shows through the
iheartapp or on iHeart dot com. Just search for Virginia
Focus under podcasts. I'm Rebecca Hughes with the Virginia News
Network and I'll be here next week on Virginia Focus
Welcome to Virginia Focus. I'm Rebecca Hughes of the Virginia
News Network. When you want to hear the inclusive story
of Virginia's history, some people hope you turn to Encyclopedia Virginia.
The mission of the site is to provide a free, reliable,
multimedia resource for students, teachers, and communities who seek to
understand how the past informs the present and the future.
(00:33):
On this episode, we're focusing on the story of Thomas Fuller,
an enslaved man born in the seventeen hundreds who earned
renown at the end of his life for his ability
to calculate numbers in his head. And we'll learn more
about Encyclopedia Virginia specifically, let's talk to Brendan Wolfe, the
author of the Fuller biography and the former editor of
Encyclopedia Virginia. Welcome to the show, mister Wolfe. I'm so
(00:55):
glad you could spend some time with us today.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Thank you very much.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
So today we're talking about Encyclopedia Virginia. Why don't we
start by explaining what that is.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Sure, Encyclopedia Virginia is a free online encyclopedia of Virginia
history and culture. We started the project, it went live
in two thousand and eight, and ever since then we
have just continued to add content, focusing at least at
(01:30):
the beginning, on Virginia history, but also we are interested
in culture, business, economics, art. We want to be a
location for anyone interested in the life and past of Virginia.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Okay, so I know you're a former editor. How did
you get involved in this project?
Speaker 3 (01:57):
My background has been in writing and publishing. So I
moved to Virginia in two thousand and seven with a
background as a journalist and editor, and I also worked
in educational publishing. And the project had started but was
(02:20):
not yet online, and what they required was someone with
the experience I had creating a workflow, understanding how to
create a voice for the publication and edit entries so
that they, even though they were written by lots of
(02:41):
different people, they seemed like they belonged in the same publication.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
If that makes sense, Yeah, that makes sense to me.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
I was an editor from January two thousand and eight
until the middle of twenty nineteen, so almost twelve years
of reading Virginia history.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Wow, And I mean, well, the background, like what you're
talking about. You obviously are a good storyteller, because you
have to be when you do the things that you've done.
How many people have been involved in this since the start?
I mean, I know you said several people writing, but
is there a scale to that? Can you help us understand? So?
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Encyclopedia Virginia is.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
Housed at the State Humanities Council, which is called Virginia Humanities,
and Virginia Humanities is compared to other state historical or
state humanities councils, excuse me, pretty well funded with a
lot of employees. But Encyclopedia Virginia at south has only
(03:47):
ever had oh between four or five, six seven employees
at a time. And so while I was editor, I
was in charge of assigning, editing, sometimes writing all the content.
(04:09):
We had a photo editor who was responsible for finding
all of the media that goes up on the website.
A few years into the project, we began employing a
primary source specialist.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
I guess you could.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
Call it someone whose job was to search out and
transcribe primary sources that were related to our entries and
that we could link to from our entries. Primary sources
are so important for understanding the history, and they're also
(04:50):
really valued by teachers in the classroom, and teachers have
always been one of the primary audiences for the encyclopedia.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Okay, well, that's good to know. Approximately, you may not
have this number, or maybe you do, but in your
twelve years of editing, approximately, how many of the stories
did you write? Personally?
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Oh, that's a good question.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Between I wrote between sixty and seventy entries, I mean,
and that's out of well more than a thousand entries total.
The number since I left is the number of total
entries is probably much higher at this point. So I
wrote a fair number, but not a huge number by
(05:40):
any by any stretch.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Okay, it sounds like a lot though, I mean, that's
a big number. So how did you choose your Yeah,
how did you choose your subject matter?
Speaker 3 (05:51):
How did I choose my subject matter? Well, we put
together the encyclopedia.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
We put it together in I'm sorry, I keep pausing because.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
It's been a while since I worked there, and I
have to come up with terms. Oh, sections, So we
put the encyclopedia together in sections, So sections of content,
rather than sort of thinking about Virginia history in chronological
(06:31):
terms or you know, writing entries alphabetically or whatever. We
created section of sections of content. So let's say we
did a section on the Civil War, or before I left,
we were working on a section of.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
Content on slavery in Virginia.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
So we would hire academics who were specialists in that
area and could help us create a list of entries
that our section of content should have. And that way
(07:13):
we could think of the section as a kind kind
of intellectually coherent thing. We weren't just sort of randomly
coming up with entries, but trying to think about what
would a student of Virginia need to know about slavery
in Virginia. And then we would also have the section
(07:36):
editor help us find academics to write these specific entries
and help us review the entries for general kind of
academic rigor. I guess you could say.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
So we worked within these sections, and.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
I chose entries to write, sometimes just because something seemed
very interesting and.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
Accessible to me.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
Sometimes we simply couldn't find other people to write them.
In the case of Thomas Fuller, we have a figure
about whom very little is known. There are only a
handful of primary documents that can be used to tell
(08:37):
this life, and so putting together an encyclopedia entry was
essentially delving into these primary documents and reporting out what
they tell us.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Okay, so let's talk more about him. What can you
tell us about mister Fuller.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
Well, everything we know about Thomas Filler Fuller, excuse me,
comes down to a couple of documents. One was his obituary,
which was published in a Boston newspaper in seventeen ninety,
and the other was an article that was written by
(09:20):
doctor Benjamin Rush, who was a signatory of the Declaration
of Independence. He was the surgeon General of the Continental
Army during the Revolutionary War, and he published an article
on Fuller in seventeen eighty eight about Fuller's mathematical abilities.
(09:41):
And so those are the two main sources we have
about who Fuller was and the stories about him, And
from them we know that he was born about seventeen
ten in West act Africa, and he made the Middle
(10:02):
Passage when he was fourteen years old and was enslaved
in British America and the United States for the rest
of his life. He died in seventeen ninety. At some
point he was purchased by a couple in northern Virginia,
(10:26):
a man named Presley Cox and his wife Elizabeth, and
they had a farm of about two hundred and thirty
two acres of land, four miles west of Alexandria. And
that is where some folks encountered. Some white folks encountered
Thomas Fuller later in his life and discovered that he
(10:49):
had an unusual ability to do mathematical calculations in his head.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
And so.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
They were excited both by the unusualness of his feats,
but also by the ideological potential of publicizing those feats.
In other words, if they could publicize the fact that
(11:23):
an enslaved black man was able to do these kinds
of calculations in his head, then it might say something
about the abilities of black people in general that may
undercut the ideological underpinnings of slavery in America. And so
(11:45):
that I think is what drew Benjamin Rush to him
and what allowed his story to spread.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Wow, that's a great story. I love that. And you
got that all from two documents, right sure.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
Yeah, Benjamin Rush's article about Fuller and then his obituary
in the Boston newspaper.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
And it's no.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
Coincidence that Russia's article was published in Philadelphia and the
obituary in Boston. These are two centers of anti slavery
and abolitionist activism, and so Fuller was an important figure
for them precisely because of what his abilities might mean
(12:42):
for their movement.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
Yeah, that is phenomenal. You always wish you knew more
about him, like, you know, did he have family? Did
he you know, who were his descendants? Because I'm sure
if they if they know that's who they descend from,
they're probably extremely proud.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
Sure, absolutely, And that's one of the you know, saddest
parts about African American history in this country. I'm a
professional genealogist, and so I can say this from experience
that is really really.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
Difficult, although not at all impossible.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
To trace black ancestors through slavery. The records are often
non existent or refer to people in ways, you know,
without without names, for instance, or without birth dates or
solid death dates that allow you to trace them so
(13:42):
that you can find their ancestors.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Would you say the story of Thomas Fuller is your
favorite story or do you have another one that is
your favorite that you wrote?
Speaker 3 (13:55):
Oh, I'm actually working on a novel right now about
about a story that I wrote for the Encyclopedia that
has just never left my head in all the years
since I wrote it. It's about a Virginia Indian whose
(14:18):
name was Paki Cano. And in fifteen sixty one, so
we're talking, you know, almost fifty years before Jamestown, a
Spanish ship was blown off course, ended up in the
James River and picked up Pocky Caneo and a companion
and took them back to Spain. Pocky Caneo met the
(14:39):
King of Spain, Philip the Second, who was the most
powerful man in the world at the time, and got
permission from him to return to Virginia. But first he
had to meet with some Dominican monks in Mexico City.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
And they were going to go back to Virginia with him.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
So after sailing to all the way to Spain, he
then goes all the way to Mexico City, and there
he becomes so ill that it's believed he might die,
And while on his deathbed, he converted to Christianity, took
a Christian named Don Luis Dave Alasko, but somehow survived.
(15:22):
At that point, however, the mission had been canceled and
he spent four years in Mexico City. After those four years,
another mission to Virginia was organized, but somehow they couldn't
find the Testapeake Bay, and so they sailed all the
(15:45):
way to Spain again. There he spent four more years,
this time with Jesuits, until a third mission of Virginia
was organized. He sailed to Havana, where he met with
the Jesuits, and then returned to Virginia. Finally, in fifteen seventy,
nine years after he'd originally left.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
His people remembered him.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
Told the priests that it was like a god had
come back to life, and Paki Caneo went back to
his people, left the Jesuits more or less on their own,
and they died the next year. Some people say that
Paki Caneo killed them, other people say they may have
(16:31):
starved that it's not clear. Whatever the case, Paki Caneo
completely disappeared from history after that. No one knows what
happened to him after fifteen seventy.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
But I've always been fascinated.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
With the story and with the idea of an Indian
traveling to Europe and kind of doing the sort of
reverse of going to the New World.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Go into the old world.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
But seeing it as new and kind of upending our
understanding of how history.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Worked in a way.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
Yeah, definitely that I understand why that stuck in your head.
That is an amazing story. How much documentation have you
had to go through to be able to tell that one?
Speaker 3 (17:21):
Well, there's a there's a fair amount of documentation there.
When Paki Caneo was first picked up by the Spanish
in fifteen sixty one and they sailed him back to
the city of Seville, and there the Spanish captain Alasquez
(17:41):
wanted to take Paki Caneto to the king.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
He thought Paki Caneo was interesting.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
Enough and unusual and important enough to be of interest
to the king.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
So at that point he needed to.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
Interact with the Spanish bureaucracy sort of register the fact
that Paki Caneo was there, and also to get money
or some clothing so that he would be fit to
be in the presence of the king.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
And the record of that interaction still exists, as does.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
The Spanish bureaucrats recording of Paki Caneo's name. That's the
only place where we see his Indian name, and that
document is right there in the entry for Don Luis
paki Cano in Encyclopedia Virginia.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
It's really cool.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
Wow, do we know what I'm a little.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
Kid, but that was really really fun entry to work on.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
Yeah. Do we know which tribe he was a part
of and maybe what his name might mean?
Speaker 2 (18:50):
You know, that's a great question, so we we don't.
There were a whole.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
Bunch of Virginia Indian groups in that Tidewater area and
he was thought to have been found by the Spanish
right around the area where the Jamestown settlers ended up.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
History, so this is what the entry says.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
Historians very variously suggested that Paki Caneo hailed from a Paspahgue,
Kiskak or Kikakan family.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
So you know, nobody knows for sure.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
The records don't tell us that much, but there are
records of him with the Dominicans in Mexico City, and
then when he arrived back in Virginia with the Jesuits,
two of the Jesuit priests who were in charge of
the mission wrote a letter within a day or two
(19:57):
of them arriving that was back to their boss and
Havana or Spain or wherever he was, telling that they
had arrived, what some things that had happened after they'd arrived,
And then that letter was taken by the pilot of
the ship they arrived on back to Cuba and then Spain.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
And so that letter still exists, and.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
Translation of that is on Encyclopedia Virginia as well. And
so that letter by itself tells an amazing story of
Paki Cano's return to Virginia.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
That is fascinating. That is so cool. So let me
ask you a similar but slightly different question. Was there
anyone else when you worked there who you loved their
writing and you had a favorite story of theirs?
Speaker 3 (20:55):
Oh that's a really good question. Two, just trying to
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, let me find it here.
This is a story that I really like to tell
(21:16):
when talking about slavery.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
Okay, here we go. The entry was.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
Written by Kendra Hamilton. It's about a book that was
published in nineteen forty called The Negro in Virginia, and
it was funded by the Virginia Writers Project, which itself
was part of the New Deal WPA's Federal Writers Project.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
And one of the things that.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
The WPA folks did in Virginia, as they did in
other Southern states. Is they sent people out to interview
formally enslaved people. And these interviews, these oral histories, can
be found on the Library of Congress website and they've
(22:11):
been published in books, are very famous and very interesting.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
And so.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
They had this, you know, cash of these oral histories,
they decided they wanted to create a history of.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
Black people in Virginia.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
And so in a way, I mean that goes back
to sixteen nineteen, that's almost the entire history of Virginia.
So we're really talking about a history of Virginia, but
from the black person's point of view, a fascinating project.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
There was a chapter.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
In the book called thirty and and thirty and nine
refers to a common punishment for enslaved people to receive
thirty and nine lashes or thirty nine lashes, And so
(23:19):
this is going to be a you know, kind of
a gruesome chapter already.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
But there was a story of a girl who was
in the kitchen.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
Of her mistress, you know, the woman who who owned
and enslaved her, and she took a piece of candy
when she shouldn't have and was punished in just the
most severe and awful way.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Among other things. The woman put.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
Her face under a rocking chair, and it was just
so awful that the so the editor of the book
and the man creating the book was a black man,
but his boss was a white woman, and she read
this draft and she said, that's so awful. I'm not
(24:25):
sure that I believe it.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
And she suggested that it might not be true.
Speaker 3 (24:34):
And so what the writer did was said, Hey, this
woman is still alive. She's living in West Point, Virginia.
She's in the tidewater. And he said, why don't you
go and meet her? And, to this white woman's credit,
(24:55):
she did. She went to West Point. She knocked on
a few doors and asked about this former slave woman
who had been beaten so bad that her face was disfigured.
And they said, oh, sure, I know who that is,
and they pointed her to the right house.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
And the woman later wrote, she.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
Looks exactly as mister Lewis describes her. And she told
me almost word for word the story mister Lewis relates.
I had no difficulty finding her, merely by asking on
the street where I might locate the old woman who
had been severely beaten by her mistress. Wow, and what
strikes me about this story is that what sounded to
(25:45):
use this white woman's words grossly exaggerated back in the
nineteen thirties still might sound grossly exaggerated today, And in fact,
there are still plenty of people today who want to
deny the horrors of slavery. What is too bad is
(26:06):
that we can no longer drive to West Point, knock
on a few doors and find this woman and hear
her story. There's a kind of you know, history passes
by and we're left with these stories, but we're no
(26:26):
longer left with the people who told them.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
But I was just always.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
Really amazed by that story and impressed by the woman's
willingness to test her own doubts. That's not something that
we see enough of these days.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
I agree with that. So let's shift gears just a
little bit, because we're almost out of time. If a
person hears this podcast and they are like, you know what,
I have some information on stories that would be beneficial
to add to it, whether it's historical or current events,
how do they go about possibly getting involved?
Speaker 3 (27:10):
Okay, so the best way is to email the encyclopedia.
So if you're interested in reaching out to Encyclopedia Virginia.
Then the best way is to write an email. It's
at EV at Virginia Humanities dot org.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
EV that's for.
Speaker 3 (27:33):
Encyclopedia Virginia at Virginia Humanities all one word dot org
and the phone number is four three four nine two
four three two nine six awesome.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
And if anybody wants to check it out on the web,
what's that web address?
Speaker 3 (27:53):
Encyclopedia of Virginia again, all one word dot org.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Okay, awesome. So just to make sure, do you think
we've covered it pretty well? Is there anything else we
need to talk about?
Speaker 2 (28:06):
No, it has been really fun.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
Yeah, it has. I've learned a lot. I can't wait
to dive into this website.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
All right, that's great, Thanks Rebecca.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
I hope you've enjoyed today's show. Thanks for tuning into
the show on your favorite local radio station. You can
now listen to this show or past shows through the
iheartapp or on iHeart dot com. Just search for Virginia
Focus under podcasts. I'm Rebecca Hughes with the Virginia News
Network and I'll be here next week on Virginia Focus
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
Two Guys, Five Rings: Matt, Bowen & The Olympics
Two Guys (Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers). Five Rings (you know, from the Olympics logo). One essential podcast for the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics. Bowen Yang (SNL, Wicked) and Matt Rogers (Palm Royale, No Good Deed) of Las Culturistas are back for a second season of Two Guys, Five Rings, a collaboration with NBC Sports and iHeartRadio. In this 15-episode event, Bowen and Matt discuss the top storylines, obsess over Italian culture, and find out what really goes on in the Olympic Village.