Free Union is a census-designated place (CDP) in Albemarle County, Virginia, United States,[1] ten miles north-northwest of Charlottesville.

Following the Civil War, the tradition of mixed-race congregations ceased in most churches, as African Americans finally were allowed to assemble together freely under the law.

[5] Early family names here included Ballard, Burruss, Catterton, Harris, Maupin, Via, Rhodes and White (north of Millington as well as southeast of there).

James Harris and wife Elizabeth obtained a land grant that included the area where Free Union stands today.

[6] Another early settler was John Rodes (1697-1775), of New Kent, Virginia, who acquired, for thirty-five pounds current money, 200 acres between the north and south forks of Moormans River, on March 10, 1761.

Here, about one and a half miles southeast of Millington, Albemarle County, he established a tobacco plantation that became known as Midway, a historic home and farm.

He was the eldest son of John White, the emigrant of Leicestershire, who acquired a land grant in 1739 near the Swift Run Gap and Ruckersville, Virginia.

Conyers appears on the 1782 tax lists and likely built a log cabin about three miles southwest of the center of Free Union, at what today is known as the equestrian estate Fox Ridge Farm.

Crenshaw sold his interest to his brother Anderson White (1794-1880), who with his wife Lucinda Huckstep (1802-1882), raised 12 children at Fox Ridge in Free Union and are buried in a family cemetery next to their house, known as the “Quaker cottage,” which remains.

His father, James White (1761-1823), owned 24 slaves at death on his farm near Nortonsville and Dyke, just over the Albemarle border in then Orange County.

Anderson's son James Cornelius White lived on the plantation, and during the Civil War, “As the story goes, J.C. left a negro slave in charge who promised to look after the family's health and safety.