One has to be careful about counting slave runaways. At least in the  
eighteenth century, few appeared noted in estate accounts or  
inventories and those who were advertised in the papers are but a  
slice of the runaway population. War did increase the number of  
runaways dramatically--as in the Revolutionary War--and apparently in  
the two noted. Planters correspondence etc adds to the notice of  
runaways who are never advertised for.. By the end of the eighteenth  
century the local courts were no longer serving as the vehicle for  
people claiming legally established rewards for runaways and so it  
appears that they decline in numbers within the existing records, but  
that is doubtful. According to research conducted by Phil Morgan and  
myself, Virginia's rate of runaways is a lot smaller than other  
colonies/states in the eighteenth century, but there are a host of  
reasons for this, and runaways certainly existed during times of  
peace in good numbers. Most runaways were not advertised for until  
weeks and sometimes months had passed which indicates most were taken  
up or returned before they had to be advertised for. As to slave  
sales, there may not have been many needed in the settlement of  
estates, but there was an active slave market and most of those sales  
between individuals were not recorded unless a legal issue emerged.  
Estate settlements did produce the splitting up of slave holdings-- 
though not necessarily through sales--but through the distribution of  
the slaves among the heirs, as can be seen in many deed books,  
chancery cases etc. Slave hiring was obviously a flexible  
institution--most markets are--and it was not limited by sex, skill  
etc as noted. However, to say that it was more common to see  
unskilled slaves hired out may be a function of the fact that skilled  
slaves were a fraction of the whole slave population and it is clear  
that skilled slaves were hired out to support the owner or the  
estate. I don't see the issue there. The larger point is that cross  
farm/plantation families existed because of the imbalance within  
specific holdings for all sorts of reasons, one of which is because  
many of the individuals of appropriate age were your relatives.  Mick  
Nicholls

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