Quander Road School

Here follows a history of the school as published on the Fairfax County Public Schools website:

School History: Quander Road Elementary School
In 1961, Harry Bonnett and his wife Tillie acquired 10.6 acres of land from the heirs of Robert H. Quander along Quander Road. The Bonnetts sold the property to the Fairfax County School Board on January 3, 1966 (see Fairfax County deed books 2065, Page 69, and 2718, Page 144). Ten days later, the School Board awarded the contract for the construction of an elementary school on the Quander Road property to Burroughs & Preston, Inc.

Quander Road Elementary School was built using a modified version of the plans created two years earlier, by the architecture firm of Pickett & Siess, for Spring Hill Elementary School. Constructed at a cost of $544,800, the school opened in the fall of 1966.

Pictured above are the former principals of Quander Road Elementary School. They are, left to right, Merlin Gil Meadows (1966-1970), F. Agnes Yeager (1970-1971), Robert H. Bender (1971-1976), and Margaret R. Robinson (1976-1977).

Rising and Falling Enrollment
Quander Road Elementary School opened at a time when enrollment in Fairfax County Public Schools was growing at a rate of about 7,000 new students every year. However, by the mid-1970s, school enrollment had leveled off and then began a steady decline which lasted into the 1980s. By 1975, enrollment at Quander Road Elementary School, which had been built for a capacity of 600 students, had fallen to less than 200.

In January 1975, Jacqueline Benson, the FCPS Area I Administrator, presented a list of proposed changes for Area I to the School Board. She stated that after the defeat of the bond issue in November 1974, Area I staff began studying the programs for students with special needs that were housed at Twain Intermediate School and Rose Hill Elementary School. The special education programs at those schools were housed in portable classroom trailers and the Area I staff wanted to find a more suitable location for the students. Because enrollment at Quander Road Elementary School was in decline and the building was in good condition, she recommended moving the present Quander Road children to Belle View Elementary School and converting Quander Road into a special education center.

The South County Center
In May 1976, the School Board authorized Superintendent S. John Davis to conduct a comprehensive school closing study of Quander Road Elementary School. On January 13, 1977, the School Board approved the removal of Quander Road’s 187 general education students in grades K-6 to Belle View Elementary School, and the 12 children in Quander Road’s Head Start program to Bucknell Elementary School, effective at the beginning of the 1977-78 school year. The Board also approved, effective September 1977, the repurposing of Quander Road as the “South County Center for Emotionally Disturbed Children.”

What’s in a Name?
Quander Road Elementary School was given its name by the Fairfax County School Board on February 24, 1966. The Quander family, who once owned the land where the school was constructed, is one of America’s oldest documented African American families. You can learn more about the Quander family on the website of the current Quander Road School.

The Quander Family
The Quander Family is one of the oldest and consistently documented African-American family names in the United States of America, dating its roots back to more than 330 years into the history books. Watch the video below to find out why our school came to be named after the Quander family.

Quander Road School is named for the Quanders, one of America's oldest documented African-American families. the Quanders are believed to have originated from an ancestor with the name of Quander from Ghana, West Africa who was enslaved some three hundred years ago. Charles Henrique Quander was born in the mid-1840s. He was held as a slave by the Johnston family and was eventually freed by the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. Charles was a dairy farmer by trade and during the late 1800s. He gradually acquired 88 acres of land in eastern Fairfax County. Quander Road was originally a winding footpath running along Charles Henrique Quander's property. Over the years as his business thrived, Charles widened the path until a road large enough to accommodate a horse-drawn wagon. In later years, Charles's descendant James Quander maintained the road and officially registered it with the name Quander Road. During the 1950s and 60s, the population of Fairfax County soared. New schools were desperately needed in the mid-1960s. Part of the Quander farm was taken by the county over their objection by eminent domain. In 1966, Quander Road Elementary School opened on what was once part of the Quander farm. The school was converted into a special education center in 1976. It continues to serve in that capacity today.


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Quander Descendants Talk History
Rohulamin Quander, a 74-year-old attorney and a descendant of slaves whose land occupied 88 acres where the present day Quander Road School is located, gave a talk to our students in 2018. The Connection newspaper covered the event.

Quander Descendant Talks History in Mount Vernon
Rohulamin Quander, Esq., speaks to students at Quander Road School in Mount Vernon.
By Steve Hibbard
Monday, March 5, 2018

Rohulamin Quander, Esq., 74, an author of three books and a descendant of slaves whose land occupied 88 acres where the present day Quander Road School is located, gave a talk to students there on Friday, Feb. 23, about his African-American family’s deep roots. The retired senior administrative law judge started his presentation with a 12-minute video that highlighted the Quander story dating back to the Amkwandoh Fanti Tribe in in Ghana, West Africa.

As director of Quander Historical Society, he said that the Quander family is one of the oldest African-American families documented in history, with the name dating back to the 1600s. Henry Quando’s descendants are where the family came from. Today, the Quanders went from being slaves and farmers to teachers, principals, news anchors, judges, and authors. They have a rich family heritage, helping to preserve the history at Mount Vernon Estate with a memorial to slaves, and holding family reunions in the area since 1926.

The family’s documented presence shows the story of two brothers who got separated when they were brought over from Barbados to Charles County, Md. One was freed in 1684; the other stayed in servitude. The children found each other and vowed never to be separated. Fast forward to 1691 and court records show Henry Quando in the Charles County seat registering his cattle. He obtained a 99-year lease to farmland there. In 1741, records show another Henry Quando in court suing somebody which ruled in his favor.

In 1758, George Washington came to Mount Vernon, and brought Martha with him in 1759. He went over to the Maryland side to buy slaves (three enslaved people for the price of two). Among those he brought over that were listed in the 1760 census was Suckey Bay, mother of Nancy Carter who would be Nancy Quander. Both were slaves on the grounds of Mount Vernon Estate.

But later Washington decided the institution of permanent in servitude needed to be done away with. He reached out to George Mason, James Madison, and Thomas Jefferson and said he would like to propose that they free their enslaved negroes. They said no, but Washington freed those in his servitude, which he wrote in his will. But he could only free those who were his own property.

When Washington died in 1799, he had 123 slaves in his ownership. So, he freed them but said they could not leave until Martha died. Martha decided on the anniversary of George’s death, that she would free them in 1801, and she did. She released her slaves and they went back to various Custis properties. George’s slaves were allowed to leave. The children who went back to Custis family ended up at Robert E. Lee’s residence. So, the children ended up at the Custis-Lee Mansion.

Now freed, Nancy Carter married Charles Quander and by 1810-1820, they had three children; thus, began the presence of the Quander family now coming over to the Virginia side. Over the years, a different Charles Henry Quander purchased the 88 acres which became a Quander dairy farm where the Quander Road School sits today. The land was then subdivided and broken up; the family still has some of the land, but not much.

Regarding Quander’s talk, Mount Vernon School Board Member Karen Corbett Sanders said: “Quander is such an important school because of its historic relevance in Fairfax County as being a school built as a desegregated elementary school and one that embraced the diversity that is what Mount Vernon is all about. Having Mr. Quander come and share the history of his family, which is actually Virginia’s history, is so important and we we’re just thrilled that he took the time to come and talk to the students today.”


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The Quander Family Connection to George Washington
For more information about Nancy Carter Quander, enslaved at Mount Vernon and later freed following a provision in George Washington’s will, is available from The National Library for the Study of George Washington.

Article written by Jessie MacLeod, Associate Curator at George Washington's Mount Vernon:

Nancy Carter Quander
On November 16, 1835, the Alexandria Gazette ran a story about a visit to George Washington’s new tomb, which had been constructed at Mount Vernon four years earlier. A reporter on the scene observed, “Eleven colored men were industriously employed in levelling the earth, and turfing around the sepulcher. . . . They stated they were a few of the many slaves freed by General George Washington, and they had offered their services upon this last and melancholy occasion, as the only return in their power to make to the remains of the man who had been more than a father to them; and they should continue their labors as long as anything should be pointed out for them to do. . . . I trust their names will not be forgotten, and that the circumstance here mentioned may be a recommendation to them during life.”

The reporter then recorded their identities: Sambo Anderson, William Anderson, Berkley Clark, William Hayes, Dick Jasper, Morris Jasper, George Lear, William Moss, Joe Richardson, Levi Richardson, Joseph Smith, and Nancy Quander—the only woman—who cooked for the men while they worked.

Nancy was eleven years old in 1799, when George Washington made a list of all the enslaved people on his plantation. She lived on River Farm with her mother, Suckey Bay, a field-worker. Nancy’s father, an enslaved man with the last name of Carter, lived at the plantation of Washington’s closest neighbor, Abednego Adams.2 Nancy had two siblings who also lived on River Farm: Rose, who was twenty-eight in 1799, and a four-year-old sister also listed as Nancy on Washington’s census. (It is unclear why these two girls have the same name.) Because Suckey Bay belonged to George Washington directly, she and her children were among those freed in January 1801, by Martha Washington, following the provision in her husband’s will.

We know only snippets about Nancy’s life after freedom. Sometime in the next ten years, she married Charles Quander, a free black man from Maryland. Quander belonged to one of the oldest African American families in the country, descending from a man named Amkwando, who had been captured in present-day Ghana and brought to the American colonies enslaved prior to 1684. Nancy and Charles Quander had three children: Gracy, born about 1811; Elizabeth, born about 1815; and Osmond, born about 1825.

Virginia law required that free African Americans like the Quanders register with local authorities every three years to obtain a certificate of freedom. The burden of proof rested on free people: those who did not have the proper registration could be detained as fugitive slaves. Registration records consisted primarily of name, age, a report of how the individual became free (whether by birth or manumission), and a detailed physical description including skin color, height, build, hair, countenance, and any noticeable scars or marks. The records that survive (covering just a handful of years) are often brief, occasionally error ridden, and always from the perspective of white record keepers. They nevertheless remain a valuable resource for learning about the free black population of nineteenth-century Virginia.

In 1831 the Fairfax County Register of Free Blacks described Nancy’s eldest daughter, Gracy, as “a black Girl about twenty years of age five feet and an half inch high prominent cheek bones, pleasant Countenance a scar on the first finger of the left hand.” The entry went on to say that Gracy was “the daughter of Nancy a free woman emancipated by Genl. Washington.” In 1836 Nancy’s daughter Elizabeth—then married to William Hayes—was listed in Alexandria records as “four feet five and a half inches high, about Twenty one years of age of a dark Complexion, a scar on the right Cheek prominent features, considerably marked with the Small pox.” Elizabeth’s entry also states that she gained her freedom through her mother, who was freed by George Washington.

When Nancy Quander returned to Mount Vernon in 1835 to support the men caring for the tomb, she was joined by her son-in-law William Hayes and her nephew George Lear (son of her sister Rose). Neither of these men had been enslaved at Mount Vernon. In fact, five of the twelve people mentioned in the Alexandria Gazette article were the children of people formerly enslaved at Mount Vernon and had been born free after Washington’s death. Their return underlines the deep impact of Mount Vernon on their families’ collective memories, even after emancipation.