Rather remotely is the honest answer to this question. But, in my attempt to link everything to famous people--hey, if there's the "Tribe Obama Thesis," why not "Reese Witherspoon on Antebellum Trust Law"?-- I thought I'd use a connection to a star for this installment on the series on probate in the old South. Reese Witherspoon is related (though a common ancestor) to Reverend Thomas Witherspoon of Greenesboro. Reverend Witherspoon (not Ms. Witherspoon's ancestor -- Ms. Witherspoon and Reverend Witherspoon have a common ancestor) left the twenty-some people he owned in trust to Henry Clay, who was president of the American Colonization Society. Witherspoon was born in 1805 in South Carolina, then moved with his family in the early 1820s to Greensboro. He graduated from Union College in New York in 1828, then returned to Greensboro, where he studied for the Presbyterian ministry. He ministered in Greensboro for fifteen years and was preparing to occupy a chair in theology at Georgia’s Oglethorpe College, when he died in 1845. (The Eutaw Presbyterian Church is below -- that wasn't Witherspoon's primary pulpit; he was in Greensboro, not Eutaw. But the Historic Buildings Survey doesn't have a picture of the Greeneboro church.)
Now, things get even stranger. I know, I know, you don't believe what I'm saying already -- the ACS (American Colonization Society) used Eutaw lawyer Charles Inness Thornton, whose family were some of the earliest settlers of Greene County and some of its wealthiest citizens, to handle the case. Carl Carmer, who wrote Stars Fell on Alabama (we blogged about him here last year), talks about the Thornton estate of Thornhill. Of course the Library of Congress' Historic Buildings Survey has pictures of Thornhill (though there is not a picture of the front, which is really unfortunate; it's an extraordinary home).
Several of the wills that Stephen Davis and I discuss in our study of probate in Greene County, Alabama in the antebellum years were designed to free the decedents' enslaved human property. James Jones, who like Reverend Witherspoon died in 1845, established a trust so that his slaves could "be sent to some place where slavery does not exist [and] where they can be free.” Jones suggested “the British West India Islands would be the suitable place, or Liberia.” Though we suspect that wish was not carried out, for a James Jones, Junior was listed in the 1860 census as the owner of more than 100 people.
Another testator provided that his slaves should be freed upon reaching age 50, if the law permitted it; and yet another testator provided for freedom for several (though presumably not all) of his slaves, to fulfill a promise he made to his sister.
But the vast majority of people held in slavery would continue to be held in slavery. Sometimes a testor gave instructions to an executor to sell sales of "bad character;" several of the wills had detailed instructions regarding the division of the enslaved humans between family members -- which I think might tell us a lot about how the enslaved people and their "owners" thought of the families' relations to one another. Because this was a paper about legal rather than social history, Stephen and I didn't do much with this, though if one could get some more wills like those, I think there could be some really creative work done with them.
Another testator ordered his real property sold and the proceeds used to purchased enslaved people (who could then be rented out). The proceeds from this trust were to be used, in part, for the education of the testator's sister's children. As I observed in the last post, about the trusts in our study, it's extraordinary how creative people were in harnessing legal devices to make money.
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