John wrote:
>My understanding is that the word "mulatto" is first mentioned in [Anglo]
"American" literature in Hening's Statutes in 1705 -
John, in Virginia, it earlier appears in an act of 1662:
"Whereas some doubts have arrisen whether children got by any Englishman
upon a negro woman should be slave
or free. Be it therefore enacted and declared by this present grand
assembly, that all children borne in this country
shall be held bond or free only according to the condition of the mother."
(2 LAWS OF VA. 170, Act XII, enacted 1662 (Hening 1823).
Higginbotham and Kopytoff also report an earlier usage that I have not
personally consulted for this issue. I'll quote them here:
p. 31, n44
"... we find it [the term] used as early as March 12, 1655, when the record
refers to a 'Mulatto held to be a slave and appeal taken.' MINUTES OF THE
COUNCIL AND GENERAL COURT OF COLONIAL VIRGINIA 504 (H.R. McIlwaine 1st ed.
1924)."
Historian Joel Williamson, in _New People: Miscegenation and Mulattoes in
the United States_ (New York: Free Press/Collier Macmillan, 1980), 7-8,
pushes that first recorded usage in Virginia back yet another decade:
"In 1640 a similar case brought a somewhat different punishment from the
Virginia court. 'Whereas Robert Sweat hath begotten with child a negro woman
belonging unto Lieutenant Sheppard,' Sweat was to do public penance at James
City Church during service on the following Sabbath and the woman was to be
'whipt at the whipping post.' Four years later [i.e., 1644] the court first
inserted the term 'mulatto' in its formal record when it ruled that 'A
Mulatto named Manuel' was to be a slave." [For this first usage, Williamson
cites the classic abstracts by Helen T. Catterall, "_Judicial Cases
Concerning American Slavery,_ 5 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institute
of Washington, 1926-37), 1:77-78."]
Elizabeth
----------------------------------------------------------
Elizabeth Shown Mills, CG, CGL, FASG
The Evidence Series
To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the instructions at
http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-roots.html
|
