While I have not personally seen the documentation, I have been told by 
a well-respected local researcher that Madison's Montpelier plantation 
early on was under the direction of an enslaved overseer.
And I have seen the will of one of my own ancestor's who directed that a 
particular slave be allowed to run his own business paying back to one 
of the heirs a set amount each year until he had bought his way out of 
slavery. I'm sure that there are many other documented accounts of this 
type of experience.

Perhaps what you have is someone who is subcontracting another 
self-employed enslaved individual.

Barbara Vines Little, CG, FNGS, FUGA, FVGS
PO Box 1273
Orange, VA 22960

540-832-3473
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CG, Certified Genealogist, is a service mark of the Board for Certification of Genealogists, used
under license by board-certified genealogists after periodic evaluation; the board name is
registered in the US Patent & Trademark Office.

On 8/20/2020 5:16 PM, Meyers, Terry L 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 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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