Because today is the first day of trusts and estates I thought I'd talk some about my recent research on the nineteenth century history of wills. And because of the controversy The Help has stirred about the relationship of white employers and African American maids during the era of Jim Crow, I thought that I'd reach back a little further and talk some about slaveowners whose wills distributed slaves. I have read hundreds, probably at this point thousands, of wills over the years of slaves who were willed to family members -- this is no surprise. Enslaved humans were a huge source of wealth in the old South. Often times the enslaved humans are treated as fungible property -- there were wills, for instance, that gave instructions on what to do with the profits made off of renting out slaves (like use it to educate a favorite nephew), or to sell real property and invest the proceeds in human beings, or continue to operate the plantation and divide the proceeds among family members. Or just flat out divide the humans among several family members.
But every once in a while there are instructions regarding a particularly important person. Taking a couple of examples from Stephen Davis and my recent paper on probate in Greene County, Alabama: one of my most haunting ones involves the slave child Alfred, who had predeceased his owner (who was also perhaps, indeed probably, his father). Alfred was to be exhumed and buried at his former owner's feet. That will also freed Alfred's mother and sister and any other children born to her within nine months of the testator's demise.
Then there is the case where a brother freed a slave at the request of his sister -- shades of Little Eva in Uncle Tom's Cabin, perhaps? A few others gave away enslaved humans but put restraints on the sale of them. Take, for instance, Mary Cashaden's will from Greene County, Alabama. She instructed that one of her slaves was not to be sold, but was to be taken care of for his life.
So there are some wills out that that have restraints on alienation of some slaves -- and, of course, some that emancipate many human beings. But what I have never seen until this summer was a will that put a restraint on sale of all of a testor's enslaved humans for an extended period. Consider, then, the will of John Robinson of Rockbridge County, Virginia, who left instructions that none of his enslaved humans (or their progeny) could be sold for fifty years.
The image is of the monument to Robinson on the Washington and Lee campus.
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