A website dedicated to the history and genealogy of the Quivers family in Virginia, Texas and California.

Emanuel Quivers was born into slavery on Berkeley Plantation, the son of Jonathan and Sarah Quivers.  Trained as a blacksmith, Quivers became an enslaved wage earner at the Tredegar Iron Works where he rose to supervise over 200 laborers. He learned the secret puddling technique that enabled Tredegar to expand its mixed-race workforce. He and his wife Frances were members of the First African Baptist Church in Richmond. To obtain his freedom, Quivers traveled to California for a mining operation and then returned to Virginia. In 1852, he and his wife purchased their family’s freedom and left for California.  In Californian, Quivers became a leading voice for education of Black children, and he campaigned against testimony laws, which prevented persons of color from testifying against whites.