One of the more fascinating outcomes of the Lancaster County Estates 1835-1865 project I worked on with the Mary Ball Washington Museum & Library and the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities back in 2007-9 was the emancipation of 44 slaves in 1856 by two bachelor brothers of Kilmarnock named James and William Kelley. These slaves were speedily sent to Liberia aboard the ship *Elvira Owen.” All but two of them, that is.

I wrote the findings of the story in the 2008 issue of *The Bulletin of the Northumberland County Historical Society* under the title of “The Kelley Brothers and the American Colonization Society: From Northumberland to Liberia.” On the ship manifest of the Elvira Owen, all of them are listed with a variety of surnames—none of them being KELLEY. Also noted in that article was that one of the passengers in that group was not a Kelley slave, but was a free black named Richard Pinn, age 21, of Lancaster County.

Left stranded, so to speak, were two slaves named Armstead and Jerry. What happened to them? At the time I wrote the article, I could only surmise they were too old to make the trip, or simply refused.

Now, I am glad to report, the latest issue of The Bulletin has solved the mystery. They did indeed refuse. The article is by Bulletin editor Thomas A. Wolf, titled “Free Blacks and Re-Enslavement in Antebellum Lancaster and Northumberland Counties.” It is a great read. 

Drawing on both my previous article and new research in his son Ted Maris-Wolf’s* new book *Family Bonds: Free Blacks and Re-enslavement Law in Antebellum Virginia* (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013), we learn the rest of the story. Indeed, Armstead and Jerry did not want to go to Liberia. But they could not stay in Virginia as free blacks. Their only choice was voluntary re-enslavement.

As it turns out, the very day (and I think deliberately) the Rev. Addison Hall presented the wills of James and William Kelley to Court (18 Feb 1856), the Virginia General Assembly enacted “An Act for Providing for the Voluntary Enslavement of Free Negroes of the Commonwealth (see: General Assembly Session Acts 1855-56, 37). 

Mr. Wolf’s recounts that emancipated slaves—at least by law—were required to leave the Commonwealth within a year of emancipation. The Kelley slaves were not emancipated per se. This left Armstead and Jerry in an awkward predicament, save the just-passed Voluntary Enslavement Act.

Tom Wolf, citing his son’s book, notes that this law has frequently and mistakenly been referred to as “one of the most repressive southern laws passed in the antebellum period.” Quite to the contrary, as this article points out. It was a means by which freed blacks could avoid expulsion from their homes and neighbors and families by choosing to re-enslave themselves to a nominal master. It was not an easy process.

I won’t belabor the points of the article, or the book, here. Instead, to jump ahead, we learn that Armistead Currie chose none other than Rev. Addison Hall to be his master (with Hall’s agreement) in November 1856. Meanwhile, Jerry Glascock, in Oct 1856, petitioned the court to have one of the Kelley brothers’ nephews, John W. Kelley, act as his new master. In Jerry’s petition, he clearly states he was one of the slaves emancipated by the wills of James and William Kelley. He also explained, through his attorney, that he was unwilling to accept the provisions made for him in the wills (to go to Liberia).

I just love tying up loose ends, and learning something entirely new at the same time.

Craig Kilby
Lancaster, VA
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craigkilby.com


*  Ted Maris-Wolf is the Vice President for research and historical interpretation at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. He had been pursuing this topic for some time on a state-wide basis before I wrote the article.

For the current issue of The Bulletin, contact Tom Wolf at the Northumberland County Historical Society ( http://www.northumberlandvahistory.org/ ), phone 804-480-8581 or email to [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]> .

For my 2008 article, click here to download for free from my dropbox account by clicking here:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/1wkvufgt31yr8dt/kelley%20brothers%20article.pdf?dl=0




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