Teamoh was born enslaved in 1818 in Norfolk. His parents, David and Lavinia, or Winnie, last names unknown, died when he was a young child. He and the Thomas family that owned him moved to Portsmouth about 1828. He developed a strong bond with the family matriarch, Jane Thomas. When Teamoh was about twelve, he was hired out to another family, where he was treated roughly. In 1832 while working in a brickyard he taught himself to read by listening to white children singing the alphabet in school and identifying words on handbills and posters. His clandestine attempts at literacy were curtailed when the yard’s brickmason discovered the used primer that Teamoh had found. From about 1833 until 1853 he was hired out for a series of jobs but worked mostly around the city’s shipyards as a ship’s caulker and carpenter.
Norton was born enslaved early in the 1840s in Williamsburg. His brother F. S. Norton, a member of the House of Delegates (1869–1871), was older by more than a decade. He was close in age to Robert Norton, another brother who was a member of the House of Delegates (1869–1874, 1876–1883), and they were reportedly the sons of an enslaved woman and her owner. The identities of their parents are not known for certain, but Robert Norton provided different names for his mother on each of his two marriage records: Richard and Elizabeth without surnames in one instance, and Charlotte E. Norton in another. About the middle of the 1850s, Norton and his brother Robert escaped from slavery in Gloucester County to freedom in Troy, New York. He received medical training from a doctor there and on January 23, 1860, married Edmonie, last name unknown, in Philadelphia. Two days later, she traveled to Virginia, where he refused to go, fearing re-enslavement. They did not often live together befo