5-11: a debit and credit ledger for the trip; debits begin on 5 (numbered by Brandon as 7) and then are carried over on 8 through 11, with a final total (summed by me from Brandons subtotals) of $19,145.60 in expenses by February 2; credits begin page 6 (numbered by Brandon as 8) and then continue on 13 to 14, where a final total made by Brandon on February 2 shows $10,168.25 in credits, Begin August 1863 entry. See, Trinity River (specific place illegible, but may be Madisonville) (possibly by July 22, when he paid $28 for a ferry, according to page 5 of the journal), qq Transcribe relevant portions of Texas diary, qq Go through probate records on Ancestry. The bulk of his papers are in several collections at Historic Natchez Foundation. The Foundation also has a photocopy of the original, which includes some pages not in the transcription and also reveals a number of errors in the typescript. Some newspapers even predicted that lawsuits like hers would proliferate. Plantations in Mississippi In addition to the plantation name and owner, the date the county was formed is also shown. (That route is supported by a notation on page 5 of his journal showing that he paid a toll at Neches on July 21.). What a pity, that amount would have supported you during the war. On November 15** went ot hear a Mr. Wood was never allowed to testify, however, and Ward denied her claims. After years of trials and tribulations, a group of 300 of Ross' slaves were transported to Africa, where they founded Liberia. When African slavery was largely abolished in the mid-1800s, the center of plantation agriculture moved from the Americas to the Indo-Pacific region where the indigenous people . Cookie Policy With help from his mother's court-ordered compensation, Arthur bought a house, started a family, and paid for his own schooling. Brandon Plantation was situated in the area where the regularized production of bright leaf tobacco was developed in the 1820s, an industry requiring slave labor. See Goodspeeds entry on the Brandon family. That means many American families with slave ancestors could have roots in Virginia, Levengood said. Drayton Hall's African American history interpretation began with Richmond Bowens, who was descended from enslaved African Americans at Drayton Hall. According to scarborough2003, p. 432, Brandon owned 706 enslaved people on plantations in Adams County (512), Concordia Parish (113) and Tensas Parish (81) in the 1860 Census, making him the tenth largest slaveholder in Scarborough's sample for 1860, even though he does not appear on Scarborough's sample of planters with over 500 slaves in 1850. Often they appeared in the records of the owners who owned slaves as human property, which to us sounds so obscene and alien, said Levengood, whos also a historian. In 1969, civil rights leader James Forman issued a manifesto calling on churches and synagogues to pay half a billion dollars in reparations to black Americans. I cant quite tell my age, Wood recalled in a newspaper interview in 1876, but she knew she was born enslaved to the Tousey family between 1818 and 1820. about opposition to refugees, particularly if they had much property, and the slogan rich mans war & the poor mans fight. Another refugee who had fenced up a spring. A letter Cornelia Jane Shields to James Brandons wife states that Mr. By suing Ward for the wages she had lost while owned by Brandon, her lawyers made clear that a verdict for Wood was an acknowledgment of the evils of slavery itself. Her captors destination was Lexington, Kentucky, where prices for slaves had risen in tandem with the Southern cotton economy. 2023 Smithsonian Magazine The Prospect Hill Plantation is without a doubt one of the most historically significant sites in the state. Stayed at a house in which the Ladies (3) of the house washed their feet (in our presence) in the common wash pan. . With numerous slaves and landholdings in Mississippi and Louisiana, Brandon was one of the wealthiest planters in Natchez when the Civil War began. I suffer much mentally.. I worked under the meanest overseers, and got flogged and flogged, until I thought I should die.. Zebulon Ward was their man. Wood suffered another, unexpected setback in 1874, when her lawyer was murdered by a client's husband in an unrelated divorce case. Phoebe is living with a good family for her food and clothing only. Gangs worked throughout the antebellum period to capture free black men, women, and children and smuggle them into the South, under the cover of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, which required the return of runaway slaves. Tour Rosedown Plantation State Historic Site in St. Francisville during one of its daily, hourly tours. From 1914 until the present, Brandon Hall Plantation has had ten owners. (pg 44a-44b), Adams County, Mississippi: 217 enslaved people were listed under Gerard Brandon, trustee for children. 70 slave dwellings were also noted. Now she watched nervously as the 12 jurors returned to their seats. It remains the largest known sum ever granted by a U.S. court in restitution for slavery. The family plans to occupy the. Historic house in Mississippi, United States, U.S. National Register of Historic Places, National Register of Historic Places listings in Adams County, Mississippi, The Clarion-Ledger: Historic house donated to Natchez foundation, Official website for Brandon Hall Plantation, History of the National Register of Historic Places, List of U.S. National Historic Landmarks by state, List of jails and prisons on the National Register of Historic Places, University and college buildings listed on the National Register of Historic Places, National Register of Historic Places portal, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Brandon_Hall_(Washington,_Mississippi)&oldid=1090743436, Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Mississippi, National Register of Historic Places in Adams County, Mississippi, Articles using NRISref without a reference number, Short description is different from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 31 May 2022, at 03:54. He helped Wood file a lawsuit in Cincinnati against Ward, now a wealthy man living in Lexington. S. Able who owns 3500 acres on the John Welch and Joseph Welch grants.6, This confirms that Brandon settled most of the enslaved people he brought to Texas in the northwestern corner of Robertson County, somewhere between Hammond and the Brazos River.7. "I can't quite tell my age," Wood recalled in a newspaper interview in 1876, but she knew she was born enslaved to the Tousey family between 1818 and 1820. Ward planned to make Wood the latest victim of this trade, but she resolved to fight. Prince George County: Brandon. Begins November 2 & 3 entry, attends a public sale of someones effects. Today, it remains virtually unknown, even as reparations for slavery are once again in the headlines. My father gave $25. 1890 ( photo) The Briars , (aka Briers), built 1814-18 possibly by John Perkins, Natchez. They led me to archives in nine states in search of her story, which I tell in full for the first time in my new book, Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America. Yet Wood v. Ward did not set a sweeping legal precedent. how Texas has been over stated. So you may not know you have Virginia ancestors, but you could.. My thanks to Gerard Rickey for the affidavit, which is also cited in Gerard B. Rickey and Alan C. Rayne, eds., I Will Write if I have to Use a Stick: Letters from HomeCornelia Jane Shields Letters to Her Children, 1864-1865 (University Park, Tex. Slavery was eventually abolished at the conclusion of the Civil War in 1865. Brandon Hall is a Greek Revival architecture style house built in 1856 in Washington, Mississippi, United States. Absence of farm animals on the list indicates strongly oriented cotton plantation. She was suing him for $20,000 in reparations. Wards lawyers stalled, claiming that her failed antebellum suit for freedom proved his innocence. In 1889, he was one of the first African-American graduates of what became Northwestern University's School of Law. Her captors' destination was Lexington, Kentucky, where prices for slaves had risen with the Southern cotton economy. In the eyes of Kentucky law, Wood was a slave. If you know of any others send the information to me. Im going to use this not only personally, but professionally, she said. Cookie Settings, Illustration by Cliff Alejandro; Source material: W. Caleb McDaniel; NYPL (3), Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine now for just $12, Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America, Dried Lake Reveals New Statue on Easter Island. Evangeline Wayne is seated near the center, in a cream-colored coat. Born into bondage in Kentucky, Wood testified, she had been granted her freedom in Cincinnati in 1848, but five years later she was kidnapped by Ward, who sold her, and she ended up enslaved on a Texas plantation until after the Civil War. Not only business operations and day-to-day labor routines, but family affairs, the roles of women, racial attitudes, relations between masters and slaves, social and cultural life, the values shared by members of the planter class, and Tours Robertsons college, then under construction. 73 Natchez Trace Pkwy,Natchez, Mississippi, 39120, 7 beds 8 baths 10,768 sqft 45 acres, Jackie Smith PAUL GREEN REALTORS 601-442-2768. Captivating Houses, Some newspapers even predicted that lawsuits like hers would proliferate. By 1878, white Northerners were retreating from Reconstruction. Inside, behind the handsomely recessed main entrance, were parlor rugs from the Orient, services of English silver, mantels of the finest Italian marble and great pier mirrors from France., Since the 1860 slave schedule was not searchable at the time, the page numbers are provided for the Mississippi and Louisiana slave schedules., The affidavit says that on the 1st of July, 1863, the pending war, and the exigencies of the times compelled his hasty departure from this state for the state of Texas, where he was detained until February 1864. He then traveled on to Texas via these stops, according to a list on an unnumbered page of his journal: If he followed marked roads out of Alexandria to the Sabine River, then he would have gone through Natchitoches, but that road would have taken him to Milam, Texas, not Sabinetown. Whether she succeeded in that quest is unknown but she did find a lawyer, Harvey Myers. ( photo) Brandon House , ca. "Fortunately for this country the institution of slavery has passed away," he had instructed the jurors, "and we should not bring our particular ideas of the legality or morality of an institution of that character into Court or the jury-box." If he followed the road from San Augustine to Crockett pictured on Texas Map (1865), then he likely passed through Nacogdoches as well. Known as the Robintation Tree, it is said to have been quite feared by the slaves of the plantation. Woods victory briefly made her lawsuit national news. It wasn't until she returned to Mississippi with Brandon in 1866 that she gained her freedom; she continued to work for Brandon, now promised a salary of $10 a month, but she would say she was never paid. The database features a public message board, filled with notes posted by users searching for ancestors who may have been slaves. A second ferry location is illegible, but he also paid for ferries across Cocodrie Bayou and Cross Bayou. In 1969, civil rights leader James Forman issued a manifesto calling on churches and synagogues to pay half a billion dollars in reparations to black Americans. Plantation records reveal nearly every aspect of plantation life. Brandon Hall is a beautifully restored plantation home that dates back to 1856. and was bought for Miss Perking of Buckingham.. The society Saturday held the first of four community workshops on how to use the online database at the organizations headquarters in Richmond, Virginia. "Not so many complications of a legal nature arise out of the old relations of master and slave as might have been expected," the New-York Tribune argued with barely concealed relief. They also said that Wards alleged crimes had occurred too far in the pasta recurring argument against reparations. Its a database for the ones that are coming up. CROSS THAT RIVER continues in New York for a limited engagement through Sunday, Dec. 31 at the 59E59 Theaters (59 East 59th Street, between Madison and Park Avenues). . The New York Times observed, Files of newspapers of the five years following the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law are filled with stories of the kidnapping of free men in free States. (In fact, free black Northerners had been kidnapped for years before the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.) The Civil War began, followed in 1863 by the Emancipation Proclamation, but Woods ordeal continued. They also said that Ward's alleged crimes had occurred too far in the past a recurring argument against reparations. 2. This property has much more to offer. Went to pay for some corn. An 1858 runaway slave ad for Elijah, who said Gerard Brandon was his owner, is in the Runaway Slaves in Mississippi project, edited by Douglas Chambers and Max Grivno, on p.536. The case was eventually dismissed. By the 1850s, the interstate slave trade was booming, and the Whites saw dollar signs whenever they thought of Wood. The private, nonprofit historical society, the fourth-oldest in the nation, is assembling a growing roster of slaves names and other information, such as the slaves occupations, locations and plantation owners names, said Levengood. The freedom suit had prevented Ward from selling Wood for nearly two years, but in 1855, he took her to a Kentucky slave-trading firm that did business in Natchez, Mississippi. Slave traders met the demand by buying slaves in Virginia, Kentucky and Maryland and selling them in the cotton states. Hover over the town names to trace her tortuous path from slavery to freedomand back. This mansion on the outskirts of Natchez was once the centerpiece of a large cotton plantation located on the Natchez Trace. In 1809 the property was sold at public auction to William Lock Chew for the sum of $7,000. This article originally appeared in Smithsonian Magazine. Brandon Hall Briars Plantation: Senderson Brighton Plantation :Mosby Brighton Woods Browmers Prissint: Adams Buckhunt Plantation: Mercer Canowa Plantation (on the Mississippi River): McAlroy, Metcalf Canowa Plantation (at Gaillards Lake): Ligon Carthage Plantation: Minor Cherry Grove Clermont Plantation: Nevitt Clifford Plantation Cliffs Plantation An affidavit provided by Brandon in a later lawsuit indicates he departed on July 1.5. The building is an example of the fast-disappearing service structures that once were a ubiquitous feature of the Southern agrarian landscape. She finally returned to Cincinnati in 1869, a free woman. "Brandon was a very rich man," Wood later said. Brandon Plantation, one of the nation's oldest working farms along the James River in Prince George County, was sold to a family in Florida for $17.8 million. Cornelias screw worms , such as kill thousands of stock in Texas annually. Poole has been ill for three days. Born into bondage in Kentucky, Wood testified, she had been granted her freedom in Cincinnati in 1848, but five years later she was kidnapped by Ward, who sold her, and she ended up enslaved on a Texas plantation until after the Civil War. Visits another refugee family, hears some incidents they had heard of the occupation of Natchez. Legal trouble with Hughes.12 Talks to lawyer A. One of N.J.'s first instances of slavery is marked at this burial ground 27/02/2023 Kathy DeAngelo, a member of the historian commission from the Tinton Falls historical society shows the Crawford House and burial ground that was an iron mine where enslaved African Americans worked in Tinton Falls, NJ on Tuesday Feb. 14, 2023. Today, it remains virtually unknown, even as reparations for slavery are once again in the headlines. They note that disenfranchisement and segregation only worsened the racial wealth gap, which was established under slavery and remains today. p.4: Some more deaths; notes about wagon loads, presumably of cotton bales; ferriage and tolls on the route to Texas, pp. Not everyone agreed with the verdict, but the facts of her horrific story were widely accepted as credible. Even the judge who presided over Woods case, Phillip Swing, viewed it narrowly. When the Horlbeck family bought the plantation in 1817, they opened up a brickyard and began producing bricks using the clay from the nearby Wampacheone Creek. Brandon and Middleton travelling. Goes hunting for deer. Terms of Use The Unknown No Longer: A Database of Virginia Slave Names website is the first online resource listing slaves names across all of slaveholding Virginia, the nations oldest state which had the largest enslaved population, numbering a half million people, at the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, society officials said. Gerard Brandon, one of the largest slaveholders in the South, bought Wood and took her to his house, Brandon Hall, on the Natchez Trace. The first plantations in the Americas of sugar cane, cocoa, tobacco, and cotton were maintained and harvested by African slaves controlled by European masters. Researching a slaveholder's genealogy can be a time-consuming task, but fortunately, there are many genealogies for South Carolina slaveholders . This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. (pg 45a-46a), Adams County, Mississippi: 93 enslaved people were listed under Gerard Brandon, trustee for wife and children. (pg 46a-46b), Concordia Parish, Louisiana: 113 enslaved people are listed under G. Brandon of Canebrake (the, Tensas Parish, Louisiana: 81 enslaved people are listed under Gerard Brandon of Monclova. Two hundred and five years ago, on the night of January 8, 1811, more than 500 enslaved people took up arms in one of the largest slave rebellions in U.S. history. Newspapers described Wood's suit as an "old case" or a "relic of slavery times," consigning stories like hers to a fading past. Destructive 'Super Pigs' From Canada Threaten the Northern U.S. Did an Ancient Magnetic Field Reversal Cause Chaos for Life on Earth 42,000 Years Ago? 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