The best place to start is Joshua D. Rothman, Notorious in the
Neighborhood: Sex and Families across the Color Line in Virginia,
1787-1861 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003;
Library of Congress call number  HQ1031 .R695 2003).  The publisher's
description is here:
http://www.loc.gov/catdir/description/unc041/2002007568.htm  --and an
H-Net review is here:   http://www.h-net.org/review/hrev-a0d1n8-aa

--Jurretta Heckscher


On Sep 5, 2006, at 5:58 PM, Sally Phillips wrote:

> Would it be fair to say that residents of Cumberland County, Virginia,
> and
> other counties well west of the fall line, in the 50 or so years
> following
> the Revolution, would be more independent-minded, more free-spirited,
> less
> bound to the 100-year-old traditions of the more easterly counties?  I
> am
> trying not to use the word "liberal" as it is used today, because I
> don't
> know what "liberal" meant in 1800.  But that is what I'm getting at.
> I am
> researching an inter-racial family where the father/owner and the
> mother/slave and the offspring lived publicly as a family.  As well as
> I
> can tell from the records, they seem to have been at least tolerated.
> They appear to have functioned well in the community.  Although
> Cumberland
> County was far from the frontier in 1800-1825, had it been settled by
> frontier-seekers who simply didn't care that much about traditions?  Is
> there a book that deals with this subject?
>

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