David,
The "nee Skelton" was not done in error but was there to emphasize the
broader social question about mixed ethnicities and set off by parentheses
because the asserted shared common ancestor was a Wayles.  My question was,
and your source details the broader reaction, about not only her blood
relatives' reaction but also, her first husband's relatives' reaction
because how do cousins react to mixed ethnic cousins?  Rothman is an
excellent discussion, as is Kathleen M. Brown's *Good Wives, Nasty Wenches,
& Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia.  *I was
reading literary criticism about Charles Chesnutt's *The Marrow of Tradition
* and the author went to examples of white female & black male
relationships in the Antebellum era.  The court's verdicts did not follow
legal guidelines but instead, made customary rulings.  It was such a small
sample as to be unusable for History but it suggests instances of more
social progressivism than would be expected.
Eric

On Thu, May 17, 2012 at 2:13 PM, David Kiracofe <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Mr. Barger overlooks an error in Eric Richardson's post --
> "President Jefferson is all well and good, but what about the Hemmings and
> their relationship to the Wayles (nee Skelton), since both women shared a
> common father and children by Thomas?"
>
>
>
> Martha Wayles was the birth name of Jefferson's wife, not Skelton --
> Skelton was her first husband.  Martha's father was John Wayles, who was
> presumed (though evidently not proved) to be the father of Sally Hemings as
> well.
>
>
>
> As to how the Jefferson family or the local community might have reacted
> to the presence of mixed race children at Monticello, I suspect there would
> not have been any particular surprise.   I am not saying that this is proof
> that Jefferson himself was the father of such children, but only that it is
> obvious that there were several mixed raced children at the plantation.   I
> recommend Joshua D. Rothman's Notorious in the Neighborhood: Sex and
> Families Across the Color Line for a more thorough discussion.
>
>
>
> David Kiracofe
>
> ________________________________________
> From: Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history [
> [log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Herbert Barger [[log in to unmask]
> ]
> Sent: Thursday, May 17, 2012 11:38 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: The Status of Women in Early Virginia
>
> Eric, I urge you and others writing of the Jefferson-Hemings controversy to
> check your facts, nothing proves that T.J.'s wife was a half-sister of
> Sally
> Hemings. See www.tjheritage.org and www.jeffersondnastudy.com for the
> FACTS
> of this controversy. "Anatomy of a Scandal: Thomas Jefferson and the Sally
> Story." While on these web [pages check out the several other books that
> point out that the RUMOR is false. A 13 person Scholars Commission reported
> NO TRUTH to these false claims, read Prof. Bob Turner's, latest and
> greatest
> book, "The Jefferson-Hemings Controversy: Report of the Scholars Commission
> Report." Herb
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Eric Richardson
> Sent: Wednesday, May 16, 2012 3:56 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [VA-HIST] The Status of Women in Early Virginia
>
> Kevin,
> The source is from 16th & 17th Century English Literature, not
> Ecclesiastical debates. This is most readily seen in the homosocial love
> poetry of Shakespeare, *The Sonnets, *specifically* *to the Young man and
> the reasons for marriage. Shakespeare provides the gentry's view on the
> institution of marriage, not the Church of England's nor that of the Roman
> Catholic Church. I will check my source when I next speak to him but this
> is the convergence of History, Literary Criticism, and Theology.  If there
> is a European (Settler-Colonial) rank before your name, you are not of the
> socioeconomic class that I examine; President Jefferson is all well and
> good, but what about the Hemmings and their relationship to the Wayles (nee
> Skelton), since both women shared a common father and children by Thomas?
> If slavery ended in 1820 (prior to Jefferson's death), how would his
> in-laws have received his children by an enslaved mother? How would the
> local community have reacted?  Would their reaction not have more bearing
> on the end of slavery than pronouncements from the pulpit, podium, or
> political grandstand?  If Melvin Patrick Eli is correct in *Israel on the
> Appomattox,* should not the experience of the "otherwise free" serve as a
> guiding experience and not just the enslaved people, for the end of slavery
> without the Civil War?
>
> The equivalency I was attempting was that human beings, that had less than
> perfect possession of themselves (enslavement or coverture, as examples)
> did have acknowledged souls after the Second Great Awakening.  Whether we
> call it Social or Cultural History, women were treated as property by
> custom by the lower socioeconomic classes and non-hegemonic groups in the
> South.  Even among the elite, Martha Custis Lee (Washington's
> granddaughter) did not posses Arlington House under her father's will; her
> husband, Robert E. Lee, did. She did not enjoy complete possession of
> herself because of the customs, and the law, at that time.  Even your
> qualifications as to potential male punishment for assault or murder are
> couched in a "could."   I agree.  Blanket statements have little place here
> but I never said it was law.  It was custom.  When a woman signs her own
> Marriage Bond during the same time period, it is usually commented upon by
> Historians because it is unusual for a woman to assert that form of
> self-possession.  Frederick Douglass assaulted the white slave breaker and
> received no punishment in MD where the law was quite clear about such an
> attack: death for the assailant.  Yet, the law was ignored for local
> reasons.  Elizabeth Keckley was unjustly whipped by the headmaster of the
> Bingham School in Mebane, NC and while he was not guilty under the law, she
> claims that she held him up to public scorn so that he never did it again.
> She employed a sophisticated understanding of balance between societally
> acceptable behavior and as you correctly indicate, the full power available
> under the law.  However, if we are not to protect sacred cows, even the
> argument (as to stratum of human society) that the enslaved could not
> testify in court does not survive the tale of Hillery G. Richardson's
> enslaved man, William.  Facts are clear; William brutally attacked and
> "virtually obliterated" Richardson's knee with a wheat cradle & scythe
> after running away and being subsequently whipped.  The jury investigated,
> took testimony from enslaved witnesses and returned a conviction on a
> lesser charge, based in some degree, on those people's testimony. (Eli,
> 407-11)  This was in subsequent "Massive Resistance" (rolled into *Brown v
> Board*) Prince Edward County.  If the attack would have occurred a decade
> or more later, William would probably have been lynched.
>
> For example, Baptist membership rolls from Sandy Creek Baptist Association
> and Kentuck Baptist (the mother church in Pittsylvania county) indicate
> membership was not extended to the enslaved people until the 1820s, the
> earliest I recall was 1824.  Prior to that, enslaved and free people, who
> were not white, do not appear in the membership lists.  Mount Olive, the
> mother of Baptist churches in Alamance County, NC had 37 founding members
> on 2 August 1834, 26 whites and 11 non-whites.  Kentuck, the Mother in
> Pittsylvania, was in existence for three decades without non-white
> membership while Mt. Olive has founding membership that is non-white.
> Something has changed over that time period in the Baptist church, which
> appears to represent cultural or social change.  First African Baptist in
> Richmond appears to follow a similar pattern when it was turned over,
> albeit under white supervision, to non-white Trustees.  The point I was
> responding to was that in 1860, religious groups appear to acknowledge that
> the bondspeople have souls because they are baptised and brought under
> doctrinal punishment regiments.  The Society of Friends had done a similar
> inclusionary membership among their future dispossessed enslaved people in
> the early 19th Century.  I have always been led to believe, this doctrinal
> issue of punishment had prevented earlier memberships because of oxymoronic
> nature of Christian master/Christian slave.  I would welcome any additional
> information on this change.  I have skimmed Charles' book but have not
> returned to it yet.  (It is on my summer reading list.)  So by the 1840s,
> the Baptist, Friends, Dunkards (who ordained their first African American
> minister during the decade), Presbyterians, Wesleyans, and the United
> Brethren (all with significant memberships in VA and the northern border
> counties in NC) hold that chattel have souls and can be of the
> Elect/Select, even if they can be alienated.  That is somewhat dramatically
> different than "they were not in the stratum of human society."  If one
> assumes that literature represents a certain segment of society, then the
> status of white women, however that is defined, who had an earlier, similar
> position, experienced an evolution of thought on their possession of
> souls.  If I overstepped propriety, it was not my intent but to compare
> analogous situations. But does not the enslavement of indentured white
> women, who had children by enslaved men, allow for more latitude in
> comparison?  Reproductive control reduced women to slaves for life and
> their offspring followed *Partus Sequitor Ventrem.*  If one cannot find
> analogies between antebellum women and chattel, than a considerable amount
> of African American Literature that argues for a common enemy for women and
> African Americans in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries is based upon
> false assumptions.  It is a logical incongruity in sister disciplines and
> the fictive realm may tell us more about broader social currents, if one
> believes Cultural History methodology.
>
> I look at ethnicities across the South. If we look at pre-contact VA,
> Mourning War would have functioned as a societal safety valve, keeping
> communities in balance by replacing members from outside the group,
> including women.  Julianna Barr's* Peace Came in the Form of a Woman:
> Indians and Spaniards in the Texas Borderlands* looks at this female
> commodification in Texas, which may be similiar to what was seen between
> John Smith  & Pocahontas in VA.  If it is chattel bondage, the woman
> appears to be alienable, following the Federal Indian Civilization program
> under Jefferson, even in historically matrilineal groups.  If it is
> Mourning War, it is not so clear.  Some Native American females were
> alienable (those captured in war in VA during the late 17th Century) while
> others were not alienable but were still a form of property under a Native
> American form of slavery.  This system is what the English colony was
> founded alongside.  When did it disappear?  The Dawes Freedmen rolls have
> Catawba women listed as former bondspeople in the 1890s, who went on the
> Trail of Tears.  Since Removal was imperfect and the initial discussion was
> on the end of slavery without the Civil War, these types of slavery (and
> with Mourning War, a different route to manumission) exist concurrently
> with gang, task, maritime, and rice & indigo slavery.  If we are to argue a
> counter-factual, should not divergent sources be included?
>
> Thank you for the criticism.  I should have been even more specific.
> Best,
> Eric
>
> On Sat, May 12, 2012 at 3:45 PM, Hardwick, Kevin - hardwikr <
> [log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> > Eric Richardson writes:  "As to inclusion in the stratum of human
> society,
> > women were property regardless of ethnicity during the same period and
> > coming from English tradition, there were questions as to whether they
> had
> > souls.  John Donne, Shakespeare, And Milton all hold a similar viewpoint
> > about women."
> >
> > I'd like to see these claims warranted somehow in sources.  I can say
> with
> > complete confidence, based on study of Church of England theology, that
> no
> > Anglican, in Virginia or in Great Britain, at any time tried to defend
> the
> > claim that only men had souls.  The broader notion that Christian faith
> > more broadly denied the existence of souls in women is something of a
> > canard, and derives from various relatively obscure debates during the
> > reformation (over the proper translation of the latin "homo" for
> example).
> >  I don't know the theology of protestant dissent anywhere near so well as
> I
> > do that of the Church of England, but I'd be very surprised indeed if
> > Baptist or Presbyterian ministers at any point attempted to argue that
> > women did not have souls.  Perhaps Charles Irons or John Ragosta, or
> > someone similarly knowledgeable in these sources can comment?
> >
> > I am also uncomfortable with the blanket assertion that "women were
> > property" under 17th or 18th century Virginia law.  It certainly is the
> > case that the legal doctrine of coverture operated in British Colonial
> > Virginia, and that this doctrine was debilitating to the status of women.
> >  But there were important distinctions between the dependent status of
> > women and that of enslaved persons.  For one thing, enslaved persons, as
> > property, could be alienated--they could be bought and sold.  For
> another,
> > Virginia law released masters of slaves from the sanctions applied
> against
> > men or women who perpetuated the various legal categories of violence
> > against other persons.  In other words, a master who killed his slave was
> > not guilty of murder; and a master who physically attacked his slave was
> > not guilty of assault or battery.  But in Virginia law, a husband who
> > killed his wife, or a father who killed his daughter, or a son who killed
> > his mother, *could* be found guilty of murder.  Similarly, a husband who
> > beat his wife, mother, or daughter could, under certain conditions, be
> > found guilty of assault or battery.  These strike me as important
> > distinctions.
> >
> > Generally speaking, scholars who try to document evolving status of
> > dependency and supremacy, of hierarchy, or of oppression and
> exploitation,
> > draw a distinction in their work between the operation of slavery, and
> the
> > various institutional dependencies to which women were subject.  Thus,
> for
> > example Chris Tomlins, in his brilliant (if unnecessarily difficult and
> > over-written) study FREEDOM BOUND, treats slavery in one chapter, and
> > dependencies of gender in another.  He does this because they are not the
> > same thing--they had different logics to them, both legal and social, and
> > hence should be treated as analytically distinct categories.
> >
> > All best,
> > Kevin
> > ___________________________
> > Kevin R. Hardwick
> > Associate Professor
> > Department of History, MSC 8001
> > James Madison University
> > Harrisonburg, Virginia 22807
> > ______________________________________
> > To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe please see the instructions
> at
> > http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Eric J. Richardson
> Master's of Arts in History
> Master's of Arts Candidate in English
> North Carolina Central University
> Durham, NC 27707
> [log in to unmask]
> (336) 202-7341
>
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-- 
Eric J. Richardson
Master's of Arts in History
Master's of Arts Candidate in English
North Carolina Central University
Durham, NC 27707
[log in to unmask]
(336) 202-7341

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