Prof. Meyers,

I would be very interested to hear an answer to this. In my experience, I
have never seen an example of an enslaved person owning another enslaved
person. An enslaved person could have money if he/she were able to hire
themselves out and keep some portion of their wages. This might account for
the lending of money. You're certain that this person is enslaved and not
an indentured servant or free person?

As for the cook, the person was not a relative? Someone that the enslaved
man might have had some (limited) control or responsibility for, a spouse
or child?


*Vincent T. Brooks*
Senior Local Records Archivist
Library of Virginia
800 East Broad St.
Richmond, VA 23219
804-692-3525
Fax 804-692-2277
*The Uncommonwealth* <https://uncommonwealth.virginiamemory.com/>



On Fri, Aug 21, 2020 at 1:02 PM Meyers, Terry L <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> 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?
>
> ———————————————————————
> *A panel discussion of the memorial is coming soon:
>
> https://events.wm.edu/event/view/lemonproject/118348
>
>
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 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
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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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