Richard Holloway was a free person of color from Maryland who settled in Charleston, learned carpentry, and in 1803 married and joined a society for free men of color, the Brown Fellowship Society. When the College sold off some of the “College Lands” in 1817, Holloway bought lot number 8, at the corner of Green and College streets. By the 1840s he owned five houses in a row on College Street, in addition to eight more properties nearby. This portrait was preserved in a scrapbook compiled by one if his grandsons, James Holloway (1849-1913). The scrapbook provides a nuanced view of the ways free persons of color navigated antebellum society and the practice of slave ownership. In some cases, this practice offered a way to protect enslaved family members or friends whom state laws would not allowed to be freed, while others were truly treated as property. The scrapbook is now available through the Lowcountry Digital Library. Courtesy of the Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture.Download Original File
