When freedom came, ex-slaves searching for long-lost kin often found that their wives had started new families with other men, out of necessity, on the orders of a master, or because they never expected to see their former partner again. This legacy made Nottoway all the more grotesque, because the mansion was now a premier wedding venue, touted as the South’s largest antebellum mansion. “Every Castle Needs a Queen,” one of Nottaway’s brochures stated.
