In doing research for my book on the Hairstons, I found that during the
Revolution, in 1780, Patrick Henry made a deal with Joseph Habersham of
Georgia to hire twenty of Habersham's slaves.  At that time, many planters
who felt endangered by the British were leasing their slaves to planters
in interior regions they believed would be safe from British raids.  I
found the Habersham/Patrick Henry lease in the business papers of Peter
Hairston, who had land on both sides of the VA/NC line in the region west
of Danville, mainly in Stokes County, NC, around the present town of
Walnut Cove.  Perhaps Hairston took over the lease from P. Henry -- the
document doesn't say.  The lease names all twenty slaves. [The document is
at the Southern Historical Collection, UNC, in the Hairston and Wilson
Papers; I got the microfilm on ILL -- reel 1, np, 1780.]

This lease may not have anything to do with Ralph Henry, but it raises the
possibility that Patrick Henry might have sent some of his Hanover slaves
to the Piedmont and that escapes might have occurred there or en route.
All this is speculation on my part.

It is also of interest that the enslaved people of the Piedmont carried a
strong memory of the British as liberators; a generation after the
Revolution some of the enslaved in Henry County welcomed the coming of the
War of 1812 as another opportunity to get their freedom through the
British.  A small group of Henry County slaves planned an uprising to
coincide with the expected British invasion.  One planter was murdered but
the uprising fizzled.

Henry Wiencek
Charlottesville

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