It strikes me that 'reporting generalized phenomena in the context of a specific
person' sounds like a good definition of biography - and a description that fits
a good deal of poetry, drama, and fiction, too. Based on what I've seen of Mr.
Wiencek's splendid work - the Hairston book of course but some thoughtful things
in American Heritage too - "the truth" seems in pretty good hands here.
Jon Kukla
==============
malinda wrote:
> Don't you think by restricting your reporting of a generalized phenomena to
> a specific person, you might be warping the truth ? Who is sponsoring your
> project ? Who is publishing your book ?
>
> ~malinda
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Donna Lucey / Henry Wiencek" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Saturday, February 16, 2002 6:49 AM
> Subject: Bound children
>
> > My thanks to Jim Watkinson for his comments on bound children. You are
> > absolutely right to beware of generalizing!
> >
> > I was speaking specifically of the situation that obtained right after
> > the Civil War in the Southside tobacco counties. There, at that time,
> > the records seem to show that significant numbers of black children were
> > scooped up and indentured even though they were not orphans and their
> > parents wanted to reclaim them. In this, I followed Lynda Morgan's
> > research as well as my own. (In the antebellum records in Henry County
> > I found records of white children being bound because their families
> > were poor.) On the subject of education, I found a letter from a
> > wealthy white Hairston complaining about his taxes and the uselessness
> > of educating lower-class whites who will just be farmers anyway.
> >
> > I am also specifically researching the social, legal, and racial context
> > of Washington's life. I am not attempting to make general statements
> > about all of Virginia in the colonial period. I want to know what
> > Washington and his peers were doing in their counties. I'm taking a
> > "micro-climate" approach because I think that's the best way to get this
> > man and his milieu in focus. It sounds like your research, if you have
> > gone back to the 1740s through 1770s, would be very useful to me as a
> > point of comparison to what was going on in Fairfax and Westmoreland.
> > The state indenture law, and local practice, seem to have combined to
> > heavily punish white women who had mixed-race children, and the children
> > were given, by law, 30-year indentures. The effect of this was a
> > quasi-slavery of mixed-race people because the indentures were
> > self-perpetuating for generation after generation. Four generations of
> > one family of mixed-race people ended up in servitude to Washington's
> > family members: indentured mother had a daughter, who was then
> > indentured because the mother was indentured; the indentured daughter
> > had a daughter, who was herself indentured, and so on. Neat system--no
> > capital outlay; a 30-year contract instead of seven; and no payoff at
> > the end. The other effect was to quash the development of a free
> > mixed-race community.
> > Henry Wiencek
> > Charlottesville
> >
> > To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the instructions
> > at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html
>
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--
Jon Kukla
1250 Red Hill Road
Brookneal, Virginia 23528
434 376-4172
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