I’ve been looking into the forced, hard labor evoked by W&M’s memorial*  to those it enslaved, an evocation of a fireplace or hearth and hence of  the enslaved women and men cooking and washing clothes and  providing firewood.



In the course of that I’ve come across some details on one of the College’s enslaved men that seem to suggest that he may have had the means to loan one of the sub-ushers a fair amount of money and, possibly, even to have provided to the College a cook whose wages he seems to have received.



Is it possible that an enslaved man in 18th C. Virginia could have been a man of means, in some sense?  Could he have enslaved and hired out another person?



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*A panel discussion of the memorial is coming soon:



https://events.wm.edu/event/view/lemonproject/118348





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Terry L.. Meyers, Chancellor Professor of English, Emeritus<http://wmpeople.wm.edu/site/page/tlmeye/>, The College of William and Mary, in Virginia, Williamsburg  23187



Plant 8 trees for $<https://edenprojects.org>1       Or save several trees for free<http://www.ecologyfund.com/ecology/_ecology.html>       Or use the browser Ecosia<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecosia>

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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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