The Home's Builders: Twin Brothers, Ambrose and Reuben Dallard

 

In 1895, Ambrose and Reuben Dallard built the home for Ambrose's daughter, Lucy, at the center of the African American settlement of Newtown. The twin brothers were trained as carpenters while enslaved at the Riverbank Plantation, and their obituaries and oral histories highlight the men's local reputations as skilled carpenters.

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Reuben is the first Dallard family member to be recorded living in Newtown. The local newspaper first mentions Reuben in 1866, the year after the Civil War ends. It is likely that Ambrose, Harriet, and other Dallard family members had also settled in Newtown by the same date of 1866.   

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