On Jun 19, 2007, at 2:07 PM, Anita Wills wrote:

> To those of us interested in the discussion on whether George  
> Washington owned interest in Iron Works, here is a link to his  
> fathers' Will.  If you read down, you will notice that he left his  
> son Lawrence the interest to his mine works. When Lawrence died, he  
> left that interest to his brother George Washington. Lawrence  
> Washingoton had one daughter who died in childhood (so he died  
> without Issue), and his estate went to George Washington, including  
> the iron works.
So far so good. That's a good succession of info pointing to GW  
having an interest in a mine.

> If any whites worked in  mines it was to supervise slaves.
And your source for this would be? As stated before, Germans, Irish  
and undoubtedly others of the paleface persuasion worked in mines,  
not always as supervisors, but as laborers, skilled and otherwise.  
What you appear to be doing without citation is offering an  
unsubstantiated opinion. Having said that, I would be hard pressed  
indeed to find a citation (due to my lack of information at hand)  
that showed the ethnic composition of miners in the colonial period  
(ending 1782). I do have that information in the ante-bellum and  
immediate post-bellum periods.

> I doubt that anyone cared whether slaves worked in dangerous  
> conditions.
That's a rather sweeping statement at odds with the facts. Purely  
from the amoral capitalist viewpoint, one simply does not put a  
person where they are likely to be killed (loss of investment),  
maimed (loss of investment and future income) or otherwise injured  
(loss of income).

Purely in amoral capitalist terms, slaves were not likely to be a  
favorite source of labor in dangerous situations whereas free labor,  
using the old "kill a mule, hire a mule" dictum would operate. 19th  
century newspaper accounts of mine disasters helped make mine safety  
a priority. The Richmond Coal Basin, using imported experts from  
Europe, lead the country in devising safer means of mining that  
resulted in less loss of life for all concerned.

> Slaves were by definition there to do manual labor, and work that  
> was not considered suitable for a white man.
The 19th century info says you're absolutely wrong on that for  
mining. Both "races" went into the mines as miners.

Lyle Browning, RPA
>
> Anita
>
> This information is kept by the Kenmore Foundation.
>
> http://www.kenmore.org/WashingtonFamilyInfo/augustine_wash_will.html
>
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