I would be interested to know a little more information from you
Craig
I would be interested to know a little more information from your Lancaster Co study regarding the expenses for slave upkeep and burials.
can you provide data pertaining to average cost for upkeep/burial per slave, cost for upkeep/burial for slaves per estate, cost of upkeep/burial per estate size (e.g. <100 acres/100-250 acres/250-500 acres/etc.).
thanks
Raymond Ezell, RPA
Senior Archaeologist
ECS Mid-Atlantic, LLC
915 Maple Grove Drive, Suite 206, Fredericksburg, VA 22407
T: 540-785-6100 F: 540-785-3577 C: 540-379-5518
[log in to unmask] • www.ecslimited.com
________________________________
From: Craig Kilby <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Friday, July 31, 2009 9:04:00 AM
Subject: Re: [VA-HIST] slaves
Doug,
I will have to respectfully disagree with some of what you have written here. I am basing my comments on an in-depth analysis of 472 estates in Lancaster County from 1835-1865. The first two points are in answer to what you wrote. The following comments are other observations we learned from this project (which will be on line later this year.)
1. With one exception, the cases of runaways were all during a time of war (War of 1812 and the Civil War).
2. Hiring out of slaves was not limited to skilled males. In fact, quite the opposite. Skilled slaves were kept in the family plantation (or farm but that was another thread) for the reason they could produce income for the estate. It was more common to see unskilled slaves hired out, and by no means was this limited by sex or skill level. It was the product of someone needing labor and an estate who did not need the labor (and the corresponding expense of maintaining a slave) but needed the income from the labor.
3. It was a rare time when slaves were actually sold out of the estate. I would say out of the 3,000 slave records we compiled (keep in mind this does not mean 3,000 individual slaves, many of the records are for the same person), maybe 100 AT MOST were sales of slaves. The main reasons for selling a slave out of the estate were (1) insolvency of the estate (2) ill behavior of a slave and (3) no feasible way to divide the assets of an estate among the heirs. This almost always included liquidation of land as well.
4. Contrary to some popular myths about slavery: the accounts of estates are replete with expenses for clothing, food, medical care and burial expenses for slaves. I realize our study was just in one county in the Northern Neck. There were only handful of really large slave holding white families. I don't think any of them exceeded 100 slaves. So, we are not talking Deep South "plantations" here. In this case, we are talking about a much more interwoven group of free blacks, slaves and whites all living and working together. The picture this project has painted is one of relative harmony punctuated with occasional disasters and fireworks.
On Jul 30, 2009, at 12:29 PM, J D Deal wrote:
> As Mick Nicholls has observed, if slave husbands and wives belonged to different owners, the husbands would not appear (or be enumerated) on the census schedules along with their wives. The plantation with a equal number of adult male and adult female slaves was rare indeed.
>
> Why else might males appear to be missing?
> 1) running away (most runaways were males);
> 2) hired out (most slaves hired out to employers in nearby towns [or elsewhere] were likely to be skilled males).
>
> If we add all three reasons together, a sizable number of households with no adult male slaves would not be that unusual.
>
> Doug Deal
> History?SUNY Oswego
>
> ______________________________________
> To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe please see the instructions at
> http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html
______________________________________
To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe please see the instructions at
http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html
______________________________________
To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe please see the instructions at
http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html
|
