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Date: | Mon, 10 Jun 2013 13:22:55 -0400 |
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Dear all,
Several of us at the College are are renewing efforts to find the College's burial ground for those it enslaved. Several questions come to mind:
Is there any conventional or usual connection between the location of a slave quarter and a burial ground for the enslaved? Any standard distance, for example, separating the two, or any preferred kind of location for the burial ground?
Somewhat relatedly, was there a law or custom that required owners of the enslaved to bear the cost of their burial? The W&M archives have at least one receipt for a coffin, provided to Lemon (after whom the College's Lemon Project is named). And a local undertaker's Daybook and Ledger that I co-edited some years ago has many invoices to owners for the burial of those they had enslaved.
http://scdb.swem.wm.edu/?p=collections/controlcard&id=7710
Was this a regional custom or was there some mandate in Virginia requiring it universally?
Thanks.
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Terry L.. Meyers, Chancellor Professor of English, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg Virginia 23187 757-221-3932
http://wmpeople.wm.edu/site/page/tlmeye/
http://www.ecologyfund.com/ecology/_ecology.html
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Have we got a college? Have we got a football team?....Well, we can't afford both. Tomorrow we start tearing down the college.
--Groucho Marx, in "Horse Feathers."
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