Martha: Good points. As you and others who are interested in Southern Material Culture look further into this you will find that some so-called slave owners possibly passed along even more used articles to both house and field enslaved people on their plantations. Personally I am beginning to see something of an "extended family" type of situation as far as this goes but even there are limits to this. Jane Steele. -----Original Message----- >From: Martha Katz-Hyman <[log in to unmask]> >Sent: Jun 22, 2007 3:31 PM >To: [log in to unmask] >Subject: Re: [VA-HIST] Jefferson's soap > >Juretta, > >Thanks for your comments. Because I didn't have a lot of time to search my >files when I answered last night, I was only able to comment on the research >for Carter's Grove. But the references come from all over Virginia (Francis >Taylor was from Orange County or Joseph Ball of "Morattico"), and it is >clear that slaves both *were* property and *owned* property and that >merchants had no hesitation in selling goods to slaves who had ready money >(cash) and were even willing to have them as credit customers. > >I have also been doing some preliminary research in the James Logan papers >at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania for a project interpreting the >lives of slaves at the 1719 William Trent House, and, from the account books >that survive, it appears that he, too, ran credit accounts with slaves. So >I don't think that this kind of economic activity was confined to one colony >or region. > >Much as we, today, have unwritten rules of conduct in our communities and >neighborhoods as to how we run our households and what is expected of us as >property owners, so too did 18th century Tidewater slaveowners share some >unwritten rules. One of them had to do with the kinds of crops and products >that slaves could raise or produce for their own benefit. Over 15 years >ago, Philip Schwarz kindly pointed out to me a letter written in 1798 by >Jefferson to his son-in-law, Thomas Mann Randolph, that makes this >understanding explicit. In this letter, Jefferson thanked Randolph "for >putting an end to the cultivation of tobacco as the peculium of the >negroes. I have ever found it necessary to confine them to such articles as >are not raised on the farm. There is no other way of drawing a line between >what is theirs & mine." (Philadlephia, June 14, 1798, Jefferson Papers, >Library of Congress, 21--see also Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social >Death, p. 182-186). I also have a reference that Lorena Walsh provided to >me about a court case in Maryland where it is clear from the slaveowner's >testimony that the way he treated his slaves was not only just as his >neighbors did but even better! A precise reference, however, will have to >wait a few weeks until I have time to search out the details. > >As part of the project to furnish the Carter's Grove Slave Quarter, I wrote >a furnishing report that is available via Interlibrary Loan from Colonial >Williamsburg and is also in the Monticello Library. The title is "In the >Middle of This Poverty Some Cups and a Teapot:" The Material Culture of >Slavery in Eighteenth-Century Virginia and the Furnishing of Slave Quarters >at Carter's Grove." It's a lengthy report, but a much shorter version >(without all of the details that a furnishing report requires but with >footnotes) was published in The American Home: Material Culture, Domestic >Space, and Family Life, edited by Eleanor McD. Thompson and published in >1998 by Winterthur Museum and the University Press of New England. > >From all of this research, plus the research I have done since then, it is >clear to me that the relationship between the enslaved and the people who >owned them was complex and contradictory. Just accepting that slaves both >*were* property and *owned* property is pretty difficult for a lot of people >to understand, let alone finding out that some slaves owned more property >than some poor whites. But this is what the records reveal--and I am glad >to have had a hand in helping thousands of visitors to Carter's Grove (and >the Peyton Randolph Kitchen, another one of my projects) understand some of >the complexities of 18th century Virginia society. > >Martha Katz-Hyman ** Lillian Jane Steele