Greg,
Thank you for the tip on using the ~ to find slave records in the wonderful chancery suit database. You are absolutely right that court records do pull up some horrible stuff. That's why they are in court in the first place.
Recently, I was asked to find some crowd-pleasing, titillating court cases from 1770-1780 for a group of re-enactors to portray at an upcoming festival. Oh, I found plenty of court cases, but none of them suitable for "family friendly" entertainment. Almost all of them were for theft, accusing such-and-so slave of so-and-so, who was usually found guilty and sentenced to have his hands burned and received 39 lashes. One poor soul was actually condemned to hang. And over in the other corner? Several white men accused of stealing a slave, who were let out on bond and the case was never of again.
So, yes, estate records do not give a total picture. They give a more every-day picture, outside the court room. Like any good research, all record groups need to be examined to compile a full and complete story.
Craig
On Sep 10, 2014, at 12:15 PM, Crawford, Greg (LVA) wrote:
> "My overall impression from these records was not one of horrific abuse and maltreatment, and ripping apart families." I might suggest you expand your research beyond Lancaster County estate records and research the court records. For example, the Library of Virginia has processed coroners' inquisitions of over 50 localities. The finding aids for these collections and other collections are available at http://vaheritage.org/
>
> In them, you will find the "horrific abuse and maltreatment" you did not find in the estate records. Read the following story from pour Out of the Box blog to get an idea:
>
> http://www.virginiamemory.com/blogs/out_of_the_box/2011/11/07/csi-old-virginia-coroners-edition/
>
> In the coroners' inquisitions one will also find a higher rate of infanticide and suicide among the slave population than among the white population.
>
> You will also find "horrific abuse and maltreatment" in chancery suits and common law cases:
>
> Lynchburg Chancery Cause 1830-037: Elijah Dawson vs. Benajah Gentry - The plaintiff accused defendant of fraudulently selling a slave to him. Gentry knowingly sold Dawson a female slave who had a damaged hip. The slave told the plaintiff that her hip was dislocated by one of Gentry's sons. The upper part of her left hip appeared to be forcibly sunk into the body and is about three inches shorter than her right hip. The suit includes depositions related to the slaves health and her children.
>
> Brunswick Co. District Court Judgments: Charles Collier vs John Giles May 1806: Charles Collier brought a suit against John Giles claiming that the defendant knowingly sold an unhealthy enslaved woman named Jenny to the plaintiff. The reason why she was unhealthy was because Giles had tied her to an oak tree and whipped her. The slave died from the beating.
>
> In the chancery court records, common law cases, and petitions to the General Assembly you will find the "ripping apart of families."
>
> Fairfax County Chancery Cause 1846-033: George Kephart vs. Joseph Bruin -is a suit between Bruin and George Kephart, slave trading partners in Alexandria. Kephart suing to recover money owed to him by Bruin for selling slaves for Bruin. Numerous accounts and receipts related to slave sales were used as exhibits. Includes names of slaves and names of slaveowners from whom Bruin or Kephart purchased slaves. Not all were large plantation owners but people who owned less than 10 slves. Some bills include name of city/community the slave owner resided. I counted about 100 slave names, about half of which have surnames. Check out the following image numbers for examples - 62, 71, 84, 91, 93, 164, 166, 174, 178, 209, 219, 227, 247, 251, 261, 265, 275, 277, 281, 287, 289.
>
> Go to the Library of Virginia's Chancery Records Index found at http://www.virginiamemory.com/collections/chancery to see the Fairfax images. Currently the chancery of over 60 localities have been scanned.
>
> In Surname field select includes and put a tilde symbol ~ in the Surname field. Slave names are identified with the tilde symbol. Currently there are over 55,622 slave names in the Chancery Records Index and more are being added each day.
>
> In common law cases and petitions to local courts and General Assembly you will find the "ripping apart of families."
>
> Nanny Pegee versus John Hook - Freedom Suit of a slave named Nanny Pegee heard in Franklin County (Va.) District Court, 1808 April: The case includes a statement from one Martha Meador who "recollects Nan.saying that she, Nan, remembered when she was a small girl in a manner, a child, that her father or master pickt her up in the presence of her mother and then declared to the mother that he should sell her.her mother cried and wept bitterly; that when the man who bought her carried her away from her mother that she, the mother, again cried and wept exceedingly."
>
> Petition of Jenny Parker of Surry County, 1813 - A recently emancipated slave, Jenny petitioned the GA to allow her to not compel her "to desert her native state children and friends to seek residence in some unknown, to her, quarter of the country." Her petition was rejected. Legislative Petitions related to slaves and free African Americans are available online at this link http://www.virginiamemory.com/collections/petitions
>
> A fuller account of the history of slavery is found in local court records, specifically chancery suits, common law cases, and criminal cases as well as state records, particularly legislative petitions ... not just in wills and estate inventories.
>
> The Library of Virginia is making these records available through our Making History transcription site - http://www.virginiamemory.com/transcribe/
>
> There is a section titled African American Narrative. There you will find images of many of the records I described above and more will be added in the coming weeks (freedom suits, coroners' inquisitions, criminal records, petitions). They tell the stories of enslaved individuals (and free African Americans) that have been hidden away in the drawers of courthouses for two centuries or more and only within the last decade have been discovered.
>
> Slavery is a great stain on Virginia and American history. It cannot be wiped away nor ignored nor whitewashed nor should it. We need to talk MORE about slavery and the impact it has had on our state and nation and not less. If we believe we have learned everything there is or was about slavery in Virginia and the US, we are sadly mistaken.
>
> Greg Crawford
> Local Records Program Manager
> Library of Virginia
> 800 East Broad Street
> Richmond, VA 23219-8000
> Phone: 804-692-3505
> Email: [log in to unmask]
> Library of Virginia
> Virginia Memory
> Out of the Box | Notes from the Archives at The Library of Virginia
>
> "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." - Thomas Edison
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Kilby
> Sent: Tuesday, September 09, 2014 3:27 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: [VA-HIST] Some Slave Statistics from Lancaster County 1835-1865
>
> Lancaster County, in Virginia's Northern Neck, is probably not the best barometer of state-wide statistics for the period of 1835-1865, but it may be useful when doing some statistical analysis of slave ownership and prevailing mores nonetheless.
>
> For an overview of a project funded in part by a matching grant from the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities to the Mary Ball Washington Museum & Library, the estate records of Lancaster County were combed through and compiled, which resulted in on-line searchable database which is on the MBW web site, see here:
>
> http://mbwm.org/estates.asp
>
> I was the principal researcher and compiler of the data. I had expected to encounter some horrific stories about slavery. And I must agree with David Hardwick that of course I would wish no person to ever have to live in such a society. That said, my overall impression from these records was not one of horrific abuse and maltreatment, and ripping apart families. To my surprise, a much more compassionate picture evolved, to the extent that it could be called compassionate at all. In these records are medical care and burial charges, and sustaining slaves that were "a charge to the estate", mentions of broken limbs, drownings, the mentally handicapped, and every other human condition. It appeared to me that it was extremely uncommon to break apart families, and very few were sold out of an estate.
>
> As the link will attest, less than half of the people who died during this period owned slaves. The largest slave owner had 94 slaves. The median number of slaves owned was 6.
>
> Of the over 3000 slave records identified in this project, 3% were sold outright from an estate. This was usually due to (1) insolvency of the estate (2) ill behavior of a slave.
>
> There were 10 recorded mentions of runaways, 8 of those during the civil war (which period is not complete in the records).
>
> There were 54 manumissions, of which 44 where by the bachelor Kelley Brothers who directed that these slaves be sent to Liberia (which they were.) The remaining manumissions were by the Downman family of Belle Isle Plantation.
>
> The study period did not include the War of 1812 period, though the eight non-Civil War slaves recorded as runways were from that period. Alan Taylor, in his recent book, *The Internal Enemy* puts the number of escaped slaves from the Chesapeake Bay area (mostly all Virginia) during the War of 1812 at about 3,000. That war was followed by an epidemic centered in Northumberland County which killed an estimated 30% of the population. Still, those figures are a drop in the bucket of the overall slave population of Virginia from 1810-1820, but do account for some anomalies in the Northern Neck statistics for total population schedules.
>
> Craig Kilby
>
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