William Syphax

William Syphax ( — June 15, 1891) was born into slavery but manumitted when he was about one year old, along with his mother Maria Carter Syphax and sister. As a young man, he became a U.S. government civil servant in Republican administrations, and built a network in the capital city. He gained passage of a relief bill in Congress in 1866 to restore 17 acres of land his mother had received from her father, planter George Washington Parke Custis, the only grandson of the late First Lady Martha Washington. After the Civil War, Syphax served as the first African-American president of the Board of Trustees of Colored Schools of Washington and Georgetown in Washington, D.C. Life and career Syphax was born into slavery in Alexandria County, Virginia, about 1825. His mother was Maria Carter, an enslaved mixed-race woman who was the daughter of Ariana, a slave, and planter George Washington Parke Custis. He owned the plantation known as Arlington, where Maria and her mother Ariana lived and worked. (Custis was the only grandson of Martha Custis Washington, by her first marriage, and the step-grandson and adopted son of George Washington). Syphax's father was Charles Syphax, a slave at Mount Vernon who had overseen construction of Arlington House. By the mid-1820s Charles had been taken by Custis to Arlington when he took over the property. Custis allowed Maria and Charles to marry in the house. His brother was John B. Syphax, member of the Virginia House of Delegates. In 1826 Custis sold Maria Syphax, her eldest child Elinor, and William to a Quaker living in Alexandria, Virginia, perhaps so that the man could manumit Maria and her two children. In 1826 Custis gave Maria a bequest of 17 acres of land from the south part of the Arlington estate. Charles Syphax was held as a slave until freed in 1857 by his next master, Robert E. Lee, under the terms of the George W. P. Custis will.