Patience was one of the sixteen known enslaved persons held at the Bush-Holley House. Our first known record of Patience is a document recording the birth of her first child, Phillis. Over the next twelve years, Patience and her partner Cull, would have five more children together: Milley, Rose, Lucy, Nanny, and Cull Jr.
Thanks to the Gradual Emancipation Act, all of Patience’s children became free upon turning 21 years old. Her partner, Cull, was also freed not long after the birth of their youngest child. But Patience would never be free; she remained enslaved at the Bush household until her death circa 1830.
Patience can be remembered in the moments of strength born from love; the strength to bring six children into this world, the strength to help them grow in the hardest of situations, and the strength to see them go into the world, free, but without her.
