In connection with some work I’ve been doing, I too was interested in the
background of the phrase ‘given his/her/their time” referring to an
informal means of manumission.  A while back I spent a few hours poking
into it.  Nothing definitive (my notes are below) but it was interesting
that the first source I found linked Anglo-Am family law to the Institutes
of Justinian!  Some of my impressions were :

-Roman law had recognized a number of forms of informal manumission from
slavery

-Roman law about parental authority also drew upon some of the same concepts

-Perhaps this prompted survival of these phrases into the 19th century
BOTH in regard to informal manumission and parental authority (reflected
in passages below)

-Parallel contemporary uses of the phrase “their time” – beyond its
apparent use by Jefferson to instruct his daughter regarding the informal
manumission of three of his slaves (at least two of whom were too old for
manumission under VA law) – included
-	permitting slaves to hire out their time,
-	giving slaves Sundays to cultivate their gardens etc.,
-	in the 1844 Clay speech giving slaves a time off “to go to all
          political gatherings,” etc.
-	other usages regarded parental authority and guardianship
          (and its interesting that the examples I could find are
           from northern sources.)

For what its worth, the notes I accumulated are below – I’ve retyped the
phrase “give their time” in all caps to make it stand out.

Jon Kukla

=========
“There is a survival of the Roman fiduciary guardianship of parents in
Anglo-American and other modern law where the father or mother has a very
limited amount of control over children set free or GIVEN THEIR TIME.”
Charles P. Sherman, “The Debt of the Modern Law of Guardianship to Roman
Law,” Michigan Law Review, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Dec., 1913), 128.
     Sherman’s footnote cites Williams [ed], Institutes of Justinian, pp.
35, 36 – which is interesting insofar as the several forms of
informal manumission described in Adolf Berger, Encyclopedic
Dictionary of Roman Law Transactions of the American Philosophical
Society, New Ser., Vol. 43, No. 2 (1953), pp. 245-247 seem also to
have been codified by Justinian.

==========
Harry Smith, Fifty Years of Slavery in the United States of America (Grand
Rapids, Mich. 1891) [Electronic text from Special Collections, University
of Virginia Library - E444 .S63 1891 ]

Page 161
“Thousands of people had congregated together to listen [in Louisville, KY
in 1844] to the famous speech delivered by Cacius M. Clay. Excitement was
running high all through the south this year. As the speaker was hotly
engaged in his speech standing on the court house steps, someone in the
crowd several times interrupted him by calling him, a damned liar. The
speaker who was well guarded, paid no attention, but continued more
eloquent. Presently a well dressed young lady was seen wending her way
through the crowd, and stopping in the centre of the assemblage, exclaimed
in a clear and modest voice, "I will give any man $500 who will point out
the individual who called my husband a liar." Silence reigned supreme, and
a death like stillness prevailed.
{Page 162}
        After waiting a few moments and receiving no reply, she again
repeated her offer. The lady remained standing during the
remainder of the speech, no one daring to insult her husband
again. Silence reigned through that great crowd during the balance
of the speech. After speaking, cheer after cheer rent the air for
this noble and patriotic lady, for so nobly defending her husband.
This year was attended with the greatest excitement all through
the South ever witnessed. The slaves among the rest were GIVEN
THEIR TIME to go to all political gatherings, carrying flags,
banners, polk yokes--a year of great jubilee among the colored
race. Heavy bets were made, as to who should be president, many
losing their farms. Fine horses, valuable property, was won and
lost on both sides.”

==========
From James D. Schmidt, "Restless Movements Characteristic of Childhood":
The Legal Construction of Child Labor in Nineteenth-Century
Massachusetts," Law and History Review 23, no. 2 (Summer 2005)

“In the decades before the Civil War, the Massachusetts court slowly
worked out a set of contract rules for children's wage work. Doing so
required resolution of a critical contradiction, both in the rules
themselves and in the broader legalities of childhood and labor. On the
one hand, received custom and precedent granted fathers an absolute right
to their children's wages and stipulated that minors themselves could not
make binding contracts for anything more than support or education.
Consequently, young people could not enter the labor market as their own
agents unless they had been "emancipated" from the control of their
fathers, or "GIVEN THEIR TIME" in the parlance of the day. Bargains made
by unemancipated minors were automatically void, or at least, voidable. On
the other hand, developing labor law held all labor contracts to be
binding, authorizing employers to withhold wages from workers who quit
without permission. This legal contradiction raised fundamental questions
about the legitimacy of children's work outside apprenticeship and about
the larger issue of rights and obligations of children in a capitalist
society. By 1860, the court had resolved the legal contradictions by
fashioning two new rules about children's labor contracts. One, "implied
emancipation" (or "implied assent") supplied a fictional way around
parental control of minors' earnings. A second rule allowed minors to
break their agreements at-will while holding their employers bound to
their half of the bargain. In reaching this conclusion, the court began to
erode children's legal incapacity, increasingly envisioning and
legitimating young people as agents in a capitalist labor market.”

Schmidt’s footnote to this paragraph cites : Amy Dru Stanley, From Bondage
to Contract: Wage Labor, Marriage, and the Market in the Age of Slave
Emancipation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), esp. ch. 5 and
Fabian Witt, "Rethinking the Nineteenth-Century Employment Contract,
Again," Law and History Review 18 (2000): 9–10.

==============
From Edward D. Neill and J. Fletcher Williams "History of Dakota County
and the City of Hastings, including the Explorers and Pioneers of
Minnesota , and Outlines of the History of Minnesota". (Minneapolis by
North Star Publishing Company, 1881), p. 421:

“F. K. Balch [of Lakeville, Minnesota] was born in New Hampshire, in 1847.
He came with his parents to St. Anthony, Minnesota, in 1855, and on
reaching the age of twenty years, was GIVEN HIS TIME by his father. Three
years he gave his attention to lumbering, then to agricultural pursuits;
afterwards worked at railroad grading for different parties until locating
at Lakeville, Dakota county, in 1875. Purchasing a one-half interest in
the elevator with Mr. Perkins, he has since continued in that business. In
1880, he and Miss Etta M. Perkins were united in marriage.”

=================
From Spencer Elsworth "The  Record of Olden Times or Fifty Year on the
Prairie" (Lacon, IL, 1880)

“Jarvice G. Evans, pastor of the M. E. church at Wenona, was born in Evans
township, Marshall County, December 19, 1833. The sons and daughters of
Joshua Evans were all reared in toil. Joshua Evans allowed no idlers about
his home. So, at the age of 16, J.G. was given his time and allowed to do
for himself, that he could secure a greatly coveted education. His father
could have helped him, but he did not think it best to do so, any farther
than to GIVE HIM HIS TIME, believing that it would be better for the boy
to work his own way, which he did, first by farming and afterward by
teaching to get money to pay expenses while going to school. J.G. received
his education at the Peoria Wesleyan Seminary, Judson College, Mt.
Palatine, and at the Ohio Wesleyan University. “

==============================================
Dr. Jon Kukla, Executive Vice-President
Red Hill - The Patrick Henry National Memorial
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