As I mentioned yesterday about the Lancaster County Estates 1835-1865 project, Hank is dead-on with the observation that surveying wills "demonstrates the obvious."
First, Over half the people 362 people who died leaving any estate worth making note left a will. Not to worry, if you don't leave a will, the state has one written for you. Which is actually sometimes better if you are doing research on estates.
But even there was a will, and certain slaves were bequeathed to heirs, that by no means is the end of the story. Those were specific slaves bequeathed for specific reasons. More often than not, the higher up the income ladder you go, there were many, many more slaves in the estate than just the ones named in a will. These appear, of course in the inventories.
And it is the inventories and especially the accounts of estates and guardianships where the really human details emerge. So yes, surveying wills is of course a good idea, but it is by no means going to tell you the whole story.
Craig
On Sep 10, 2014, at 10:02 AM, Hank Trent wrote:
> I wonder though if surveying wills demonstrates the obvious, while missing
> nuances. Yes, slaves were property to be distributed to heirs, and the
> relatively few manumissions at death show that owners generally desired to
> keep them as property--but then, if they didn't, they probably wouldn't
> have bought them in the first place.
>
>
>> The largest collection of statements by Virginia slave owners on the
>> subject of their slaves is contained in the wills recorded in Virginia
>> counties, so it should be useful to analyze those.
>>
>> I abstracted the wills of two counties (Halifax County, North Carolina,
>> and King George County, Virginia) to see how slave owners referred to their
>> slaves. I did no analysis, but "to my loving wife...a negro, horse, cow,
>> furniture" is typical.
>> http://www.freeafricanamericans.com/halifax.htm
>>
>> Paul
>>
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