Work and slave family life in antebellum Northern Virginia

Journal of Family History

Volumn 31, Issue 4, 2006, Pages 335-357

  Pargas, Damian Alan ^a  

^a LEIDEN UNIVERSITY   (Netherlands)

Author keywords

American slavery; Antebellum South; Child rearing; Fairfax County; Gang labor; Slave family economy; Virginia

Indexed keywords

EID: 33748115145     PISSN: 03631990     EISSN: 15525473     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0363199006290202     Document Type: Article

References (119)

1. Calculation based on Sixth Population Census of the United States, 1840: Fairfax County, Virginia (microfilm), National Archives (hereafter NARA), Washington, DC. Slaves of "working age" are defined here as all able-bodied bondsmen between the ages of ten and fifty-five years, as they are categorized in the census returns. In practice, however, many slaves younger than ten and older than fifty-five were also employed in agriculture; the percentage was thus likely higher.
2. Donald M. Sweig, Slavery in Fairfax County, Virginia, 1750-1860: A Research Report (Fairfax, 1983), 5;
3. Philip D. Morgan, Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and Lowcountry (Chapel Hill, 1998), 33-34;
4. Frederick Gutheim, The Potomac (New York, 1949), 70 (first quote);
5. cited in, Frederick Gutheim, The Potomac, ibid., 72 (second quote);
6. and Nan Netherton et al., Fairfax County, Virginia: A History (Fairfax, 1978), 22-26.
7. Netherton et al., Fairfax County, 27-36.
8. Workers of the Writers' Program of the Works Progress Administration in the State of Virginia (hereafter WPA), The Negro in Virginia (1940; Winston-Salem, 1994), 65 (first quote);
9. Netherton et al., Fairfax County, 161-70. The western frontier at this time consisted of the as-yet largely unsettled lands between the Appalachians and the Mississippi River.
10. Edith Moore Sprouse, Mount Air, Fairfax County, Virginia (Fairfax, 1970), 19-20.
11. Avery Odell Craven, Soil Exhaustion as a Factor in the Agricultural History of Virginia and Maryland, 1606-1860 (Urbana, 1926), 72-73 (quote);
12. Lewis Cecil Gray, History of Agriculture in the Southern United States to 1860, 2 vols. (Washington, 1933), 2:589-92.
13. WPA, Negro in Virginia, 65 (quote);
14. Netherton et al., Fairfax County, 152-57;
15. Gray, History of Agriculture, 2:602-8;
16. Craven, Soil Exhaustion, 77-80;
17. and David Klingaman, "The Significance of Grain in the Development of the Tobacco Colonies," Journal of Economic History 29 (1969): 275.
18. Gray, History of Agriculture, 606-7;
19. Netherton et al., Fairfax County, 166.
20. Netherton et al., Fairfax County, 168 (first quote);
21. Elizabeth Brown Pryor, Walney: Two Centuries of a Northern Virginia Plantation (Fairfax, 1984), 22-23 (second quote);
22. David Wilson Scott, Diary, 1819-21, Papers of David Wilson Scott, Manuscript Collection, Library of Congress (hereafter LC), Washington, DC;
23. Lawrence Lewis, Accounts and Receipts, 1810-1844, Custis-Lee Family Papers, Manuscript Collection, LC;
24. Elijah Fletcher to Jesse Fletcher Sr., August 4, 1810, in Martha von Briesen, ed., The Letters of Elijah Fletcher (Charlottesville, 1965), 8 (third quote);
25. John Davis, Travels of Four Years and a Half in the United States of America during 1798, 1799, 1800, 1801 and 1802 (New York, 1909), 390 (fourth quote);
26. Alexandria Advertiser and Gazette, February 9, 1801 (microfilm), Special Collections, Alexandria Public Library (hereafter APL), Alexandria, Virginia (fifth quote);
27. and interview with Frank Bell in Charles Perdue Jr. et al., eds., Weevils in the Wheat: Interviews with Virginia Ex-Slaves (Charlottesville, 1976), 25 (sixth quote).
28. Richard Marshall Scott Sr., Diary, 1813-28 (typescript), Virginia Room Rare Book Collection, Fairfax City Regional Library (hereafter FCRL), Fairfax, Virginia (first quote). Alexandria belonged to the District of Columbia during the first half of the nineteenth century.
29. Alexandria Gazette and Daily Advertiser, January 8, 1822 (microfilm), Special Collections, APL (second quote);
30. Phenix Gazette (Alexandria), November 13, 1828 (micro-film), APL (third quote);
31. Phenix Gazette, ibid., August 4, 1828 (fourth quote).
32. Gray, History of Agriculture, 2:818-19.
33. Craven, Soil Exhaustion, 80 (first quote) and 79-121;
34. Gray, History of Agriculture, 2:811-20;
35. Arthur G. Peterson, 'The Alexandria Market Prior to the Civil War," William and Mary Quarterly 12 (1932): 104-14;
36. Netherton et al., Fairfax County, 152-70;
37. Philo Tower, Slavery Unmasked: Being a Truthful Narrative of a Three Years' Residence and Journey in Eleven Southern States (1856; New York, 1969), 50 (second quote).
38. The following description of tobacco cultivation is based on Morgan, Slave Counterpoint, 164-70;
39. Gutheim, Potomac, 70-4;
40. and Jack P. Greene, ed., The Diary of Colonel Carter of Sabine Hall, 1752-1778, 2 vols. (Charlottesville, 1965), 346-47.
41. John Carter, in Morgan, Slave Counterpoint, 169 (first quote);
42. John Carter, Slave Counterpoint,. ibid., 191 (second quote).
43. For a description of the development of gang labor in the Chesapeake, see Morgan, Slave Counterpoint, 187-94.
44. Gutheim, Potomac, 181 (quote);
45. Morgan, Slave Counterpoint, 170-8;
46. and Brenda E. Stevenson, Life in Black and White: Family and Community in the Slave South (Oxford, 1996), 191. The description of the cultivation of wheat, corn, rye, and oats in this and the following two paragraphs is based on Wilson Scott, Diary.
47. Wilson Scott, Diary; Alexandria Gazette and Daily Advertiser, January 5, 1822 (first quote);
48. and Pryor, Walney, 52 (second quote).
49. Morgan, Slave Counterpoint, 190-91;
50. Frank Bell in Perdue et al., Weevils in the Wheat, 26;
51. Stevenson, Life in Black and White, 187-88;
52. and Ira Berlin, Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves (Cambridge, 2003), 212.
53. Morgan, Slave Counterpoint, 191 (quote);
54. Wilson Scott, Diary;
55. and Berlin, Generations of Captivity, 212.
56. Based on the Virginia ex-slave interviews, the WPA concluded that "field work in nineteenth century Virginia was for most slaves greater drudgery than it had been in the previous century." WPA, Negro in Virginia, 66.
57. Stevenson, Life in Black and White, 187, 189 (first quote);
58. Austin Steward, Twenty-two Years a Slave and Forty Years a Freeman (1857; Syracuse, 2002), 4 (second quote);
59. interview with Christopher Nichols in Benjamin Drew, ed., A North-Side View of Slavery: The Refugee, or the Narratives of Fugitive Slaves in Canada (1856; New York, 1968), 67-68 (third quote);
60. interview with George Jackson in Federal Writers' Project (hereafter FWP), Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, 17 vols. (Washington, DC, 1941), 12:46 (fourth quote);
61. Elijah Fletcher to Jesse Fletcher, August 4, 1810, August 29, 1810, in Von Briesen, Letters of Elijah Fletcher, 8, 14 (fifth quote);
62. and Arthur W. Machen to Lewis Machen, June 17, 1848, in Arthur W. Machen Jr., ed., Letters of Arthur W. Machen with Biographical Sketch (Baltimore, 1917), 97 (sixth quote).
63. Stevenson, Life in Black and White, 250-51 (first quote on p. 250);
64. interview with Francis Henderson in Drew, North-Side, 155 (second quote);
65. and Frank Bell in Perdue et al., Weevils in the Wheat, 25-26 (third quote).
66. Out of a total of 541 slaveholdings in Fairfax County in 1840, 353 contained at least one slave child younger than ten years, of which 58 also contained at least one elderly slave woman aged fifty-five to one hundred, meaning that on approximately 1 in 6.08 slaveholdings, child rearing by elderly female slaves was physically possible. Calculations are based on the 1840 census returns for Fairfax County, Virginia.
67. Dorothy Sterling, ed., We Are Your Sisters: Black Women in the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1984), 6;
68. interview with Christopher Nichols in Drew, North-Side, 68 (first quote);
69. Frederick Law Olrnsted, A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States in the Years 1853-1854, with Remarks on their Economy, 2 vols. (1856; New York, 1904), 1:19;
70. Sterling, We Are Your Sisters, 41;
71. interview with Charles Peyton Lucas in Drew, North-Side, 105;
72. and Richard Marshall Scott Sr., Diary.
73. Stevenson, Life in Black and White, 187-88;
74. George Jackson in FWP, Slave Narratives, 12:45-46 (first quote);
75. interview with Silas Jackson in Norman R. Yetman, ed., Voices from Slavery: 100 Authentic Slave Narratives (Mineola, 2000), 176 (second quote);
76. and cited in Stevenson, Life in Black and White, 188 (third quote).
77. Frank Bell in Perdue et al., Weevils in the Wheat, 26.
78. William L. Van Deburg, The Slave Drivers: Black Agricultural Labor Supervisors in the Antebellum South (Westport, 1979), 5;
79. and Frank Bell in Perdue et al., Weevils in the Wheat, 26 (quote).
80. Stevenson, Life in Black and White, 191-92;
81. and Morgan, Slave Counterpoint, 173-74.
82. Berlin, Generations of Captivity, 91.
83. Silas Jackson in Yetman, Voices from Slavery, 176 (first quote);
84. and Steward, Twenty-two Years a Slave, 3 (second quote).
85. Frank Bell in Perdue et al., Weevils in the Wheat, 27 (quote);
86. Stevenson, Life in Black and White, 186-87;
87. and Fairfax County Deed Book, G-3, 147, microfilm, FCRL. Virtually all other slaves who gained their freedom in antebellum Fairfax County were manumitted by the wills of their former masters.
88. George Jackson in FWP, Slave Narratives, 12:47 (first and third quotes);
89. and Berlin, Generations of Captivity, 226 (second quote).
90. For Fairfax County family structures, see Damian Alan Pargas, "Weathering Different Storms: Een vergelijkende analyse van slavengezinnen in Fairfax County, Virginia en Georgetown District, South Carolina gedurende de antebellum periode" (master's thesis, Universiteit Leiden, 2004), 47-58.
91. Stevenson, Life in Black and White, 188-89;
92. and Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, Under Their Vine and Fig Tree: Travels through America in 1797-1799, 1805 with Some Further Account of Life in New Jersey (Elizabeth, 1965), 89 (quote).
93. Berlin, Generations of Captivity, 226 (quote);
94. and Larry E. Hudson Jr., '"All That Cash': Work and Status in the Slave Quarters," in Working toward Freedom: Slave Society and Domestic Economy in the American South, ed. Larry E. Hudson Jr. (Rochester, 1994), 84.
95. Olmsted, Journey in the Seaboard Slave States, 1:13-14 (first and fourth quotes);
96. and Robert Sutcliffe, Travels in Some Parts of North America in the Years 1804, 1805, and 1806 (Philadelphia, 1812), 37 (second and third quotes).
97. Free blacks and urban slaves made up 22 percent of the population of Alexandria in 1860. Free blacks often worked as hucksters at the city's places of market. See Harold W. Hurst, Alexandria on the Potomac: The Portrait of an Antebellum Community (Lanham, 1991), 37.
98. George Jackson in FWP, Slave Narratives, 12:46 (first quote);
99. Wilson Scott, Diary;
100. Stevenson, Life in Black and White, 188 (second quote);
101. and Steward, Twenty-two Years a Slave, 3 (third quote).
102. Robert William Fogel, Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery (New York, 1989), 192.
103. Olmsted, Journey in the Seaboard Slave States, 2:689 (quote);
104. and Southern Cultivator, cited in, Olmsted, Journey in the Seaboard Slave States, 2:689 ibid.
105. Richard M. Scott's farm produced five hundred bushels of wheat and twelve hundred bushels of corn in 1850. Wheat sold in 1850 at approximately $1.01 per bushel, while corn sold at an average of $0.59 per bushel. Probably half of the corn crop, however, was consumed by Scott's family, slaves, and livestock. Most likely, only six hundred bushels were destined for the market. Scott owned twenty slaves in 1850, of whom eight were between ten and fifty-five years old. Thus, if five hundred bushels of wheat and six hundred bushels of corn were produced by eight hands, the gross return per able-bodied slave was approximately $107.38. Average annual expenses per able-bodied slave came to about $17, comprising the purchase of ready-made clothing, fish, and meat, but not cornmeal, which was produced on the farm. Thus, $107.38 minus $17 equals a net return of $90.38 per able-bodied slave. Nonpopulation Census Schedules, Fairfax County, Virginia, 1850 agriculture (microfilm), NARA; Gray, History of Agriculture, 2:1039 and 1:544;
106. R. H. Taylor, "Feeding Slaves," Journal of Negro History, 9 (1924): 140-42;
107. Seventh Population Census of the United States, 1850: Fairfax County, Virginia, Slave Schedules (microfilm), NARA.37. Davis, Travels of Four Years and a Half, 423 (quote). Eugene Genovese has argued that slaves throughout the South succeeded in establishing customary rights and getting their owners
108. to respect these rights. However, in Fairfax County, evidence suggests that garden plots remained privileges, not rights, throughout the antebellum period. See Eugene D. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York, 1974), 30-31.
109. Peter Kolchin, American Slavery, 1619-1877 (New York, 1993), 113-14, 129-30;
110. Stevenson, Life in Black and White, 188-89;
111. and Wilson Scott, Diary.
112. Hudson, "All That Cash," 80-81;
113. Fogel, Without Consent or Contract, 192-93.
114. Elijah Fletcher to Jesse Fletcher Sr., August 29, 1810, December 7, 1810, in Von Briesen, Letters of Elijah Fletcher, 14, 23 (first quote);
115. E. S. Abdy, Journal of a Residence and Tour in the United States of North America, from April 1834 to October 1834, 2 vols. (1835; New York, 1969), 181 (second quote);
116. and Francis Henderson in Drew, North-Side, 155-56 (third quote).
117. Olmsted, Journey in the Seaboard Slave States, 2:689 (first quote);
118. Anonymous, "A Slave's Story," Putnam's Monthly Magazine 9 (1857): 617 (second and third quotes);
119. and John T. Schlotterbeck, "The Internal Economy of Slavery in Rural Piedmont Virginia," in The Slaves' Economy: Independent Production by Slaves in the Americas, ed. Ira Berlin and Philip D. Morgan (London, 1991), 171 (fourth quote).