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From:
"Hardin, David" <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Mon, 17 Dec 2007 00:31:53 -0500
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If 20 slaves was the threshold for a "plantation," there would have been very few of them in Virginia.  The idea of a slave-number-threshold seeps back down into the colonial period by way of the antebellum cotton South and studies thereof.  I went round and round about this in my master's thesis defense with a member of the committee who has studied antebellum plantations and modern neoplantations for decades.  I agree with Harold Gill:  the only distiction in Virginia was whether one "planted" tobacco - and thus a plantation - or whether one "farmed" corn or wheat - and thus a farm.  Washington - who raised tobacco and other crops with considerably more than 20 slaves - began calling himself a farmer when he started raising large amounts of wheat.
___________________________________________

Dr. David S. Hardin
Assistant Professor of Geography
Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences
Longwood University
Farmville, Virginia 23909
Phone: (434) 395-2581
e-mail: [log in to unmask]

********************
"For as Geography without History
seemeth a carkasse without motion,
so History without Geography
wandreth as a Vagrant without a
certaine habitation."
John Smith, 1627
________________________________________
From: Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Paul Finkelman [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Sunday, December 16, 2007 12:42 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: definition of a planter

most scholars consisder a "planatation" as a farm with 20 or more
slaves; otherwise the term becomes meaningless.  After call, Rhode
Island was known as "Prividence Plantation" but no one thinks of the
whole colony as a plantation.

Paul Finkelman
President William McKinley Distinguished Professor of Law
     and Public Policy
Albany Law School
80 New Scotland Avenue
Albany, New York   12208-3494

518-445-3386
[log in to unmask]
>>> [log in to unmask] 12/15/07 7:04 PM >>>
In most records before about 1800 the word plantation was used in
Virginia
wills to mean any property which was planted. Testators with no slaves
and
less than 50 acres referred to their property as their plantation. Some
referred to their "plantation and its crop of peas and corn," so
whatever
the actual definition, Virginians did not necessarily follow it.

Also, it was common for the courts to order the churchwardens to bind an
indigent child to become a "planter or sawyer." Early Registers of Free
Negroes referred to the bearer as being a "planter."

Starting about 1820 some testators referred to their property as their
farm
regardless of its size and how many slaves they owned, and it was common
for
the the courts to order the overseers of the poor to bind out an
indigent
child "to be a planter or farmer."
Paul

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