Henry and others, thank you for an eye-opening thread.  The extent of 
the intra-plantation economic networks you've unearthed at Monticello 
is surely news to many of us, and I look forward to learning more.

At one point Henry wrote:

"A number of Jefferson's people received
regular gratuities, and others got a cut of profits from nailmaking,
coopering, charcoal burning, etc. as an incentive.  It's an interesting
contrast with GW's practices at Mount Vernon, where it seems GW never 
paid a
farthing to a slave for anything."

I wonder to what degree these practices varied by region?  Whether, for 
example, the Monticello example was more or less typical of large 
Piedmont plantations and Mount Vernon comparably typical of large 
plantations in the older-established Tidewater?  On the other hand, 
Martha Katz-Hyman wrote:

"In my research for preparing the furnishing plan for the Carter's Grove
Slave Quarter, I found many references to slaves earning money by 
selling
chickens, cider, wheat, oysters and hogs, among other things, making 
stools
and other furniture, sewing, or doing other extra work."

So perhaps Mount Vernon was an exception within its region . . . or 
Carter's Grove was?

Needless to say, one perennial pitfall for those of us who use the 
lives and records of the Founders and other much-studied persons in our 
research is to assume that their habits, attitudes, and practices 
reflect on them primarily as individuals.  Instead, they may have been 
typical for people of that time and place -- we just don't have 
comparable records, or at least a comparable body of scholarship, 
concerning the great man's (or woman's) neighbors and other social 
peers.

I believe that Jillian Galle, an archaeologist at Monticello, is 
currently directing some of her research toward learning how slaves 
participated in the burgeoning consumer economy of the late eighteenth 
and early nineteenth century.  See the superb database she and her 
colleagues have developed, http://www.daacs.org/, for some of the 
evidence.  Jillian's work, too, should make fascinating reading once it 
is published.

-- Jurretta Heckscher