If you are as captivated as I am, then spend as much time as you like, browsing through their historic beauty! 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." I wanted to be able to see and connect the dots.. A native Kentuckian who had recently moved to Covington, just across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, Ward became a deputy sheriff in 1853. Mandys child died. Slave traders met the demand by buying slaves in Virginia, Kentucky and Maryland and selling them in the cotton states. I am captivated by their character and charm! Sends Sandy to post office hoping to hear from home. Reprinted with permission from Smithsonian Enterprises. : Estate of Sara Brandon Rickey, 2000), 63n6., Thanks to Will Jones for locating Brandons name in the county tax rolls as part of his RA Assignments for Fall 2015., See Map of Robertson County, Portal to Texas History., Sandersons 72 slaves, valued at $64,800 appear in the Freestone County Tax Roles for 1864. That's why, at the end . how Texas has been over stated. Though a fraction of what Wood had asked for, the amount would be worth nearly $65,000 today. Ownership was also an investment: purchased children and adults may or may not have been . Ward began to plot with a group of these notorious slave catchers. The gang located Woods employer in Cincinnati, a boardinghouse keeper named Rebecca Boyd, and paid her to join their scheme. These slaves hadn't been disguised as 'servants . Two of Brandons brothers were killed in battle, one at Chancellorsville and one at Fredricksburg (p.329). He would charge $5 an acre for cleared land & let me pay for it by picking cotton at $1 per 100 pounds. For more on Able, see Able Family. From 1914 until the present, Brandon Hall Plantation has had ten owners. (She is still living this October 6, 1932. Begins September 15 entry. The mill is out of fix, & too bad to get up a beef and all hands are on short rations. Thoughts of home. While Wood received $2,500 as compensation for more than 16 years of unpaid labor, her former enslaver, Ward, left an estate worth at least $600,000 when he died in 1894, a multimillionaire in todays terms. Between 1820 and 1860, nearly a million people were sold "down the river.". But Wood's name never made it into the history books. Robert Payne, who attended Saturdays workshop, said hes been researching his family for the past 15 years, but finding information about his ancestors wasnt easy. (That route is supported by a notation on page 5 of his journal showing that he paid a toll at Neches on July 21.). All accommodations at this luxury home have private in-room (not shared) bathrooms. The Liberator: A Weekly Newspaper Devoted to the Cause of Good Government and the Advancement of the American Negro, Los Angeles, California, 29 November 1912, page 5. Notations on page 5 of his pocketbook indicate that on July 1, he first paid $140 for a ferry at Quitmans (a reference to a contemporary place in Adams County known as Quitmans Landing and referred to in papers and military records of that time; it was north of Natchez). She was later removed from the cotton fields and put to work in Brandon's house. The traders put Wood up for sale at Natchez's infamous Forks of the Road slave market. She would one day recall that period of her life as a sweet taste of liberty.. 1890 ( photo) The Briars , (aka Briers), built 1814-18 possibly by John Perkins, Natchez. II, p. 817, which claimed that at the beginning of the Civil War, Brandon owned a million dollars worth of slaves. Snowfall, the deepest I ever saw in the South. Begins December 31 entry, bitter cold, water freezes on the shelf inside his cabin. Even Juneteenth, the day in June 1865 when Union soldiers arrived in Texas to enforce emancipation, did not liberate Wood. Also Brandon Hall in Reid Smith and John Owens, The Majesty of Natchez (Montgomery, Ala.: Paddle Wheel Publications, 1969): it is obvious that he, like so many of his contemporaries, had succumbed to the Greek Revival era of elegance. Slaves at the Boone Hall Plantation & Gardens. See menn1964 for more information about this holding., J. H. Coltons map of the state of Louisiana and eastern part of Texas, commented on the unequal application of criminal justice, Walter Williams who died in 1959 at age 117, Philip A. Brandon (b. Ancestry places birth on December 5, 1864., See also this genealogy page and the Gerard Brandon children website., See Steven Brooke, The Majesty of Natchez (Gretna, La. The Prospect Hill Plantation is without a doubt one of the most historically significant sites in the state. Daisy Patterson Brandon Dale (Natchez: Daisy Patterson Brandon Dale, 2007), 72., Williams may be the Mississippi-born Walter Williams who died in 1959 at age 117, though that claim has been questioned., Phoebe appears to have been owned by Brandons brother Dr.James C. Brandon. Today, it remains virtually unknown, even as reparations for slavery are once again in the headlines. To purchase tickets, call . Yes, Boone Hall Plantation did have slaves right from the time it was established in 1681. Sanford Poole & Sandy had gone to kill a deer. Middleton arrives, and he gets a package from home. Because the award was small, procedural rules prevented Ward from appealing to higher courts where the verdict might have been more widely noticed. Captivating Houses, Brandon was a very rich man, Wood later said. So you may not know you have Virginia ancestors, but you could.. They also operate tours during the fall and spring pilgrimages. 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. 73 Natchez Trace Pkwy,Natchez, Mississippi, 39120, 7 beds 8 baths 10,768 sqft 45 acres, Jackie Smith PAUL GREEN REALTORS 601-442-2768. Tours Robertsons college, then under construction. But these people were writing down their inventory as if you would for insurance purposes. His wife Charlotte (age 49) and his children Mary (15) and Charles (5) are listed as fellow members of the household. "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." Reynolds and Lively got married at Boone Hall Plantation in Mount Pleasant, which features nine slave cabins, referred to as "Slave Street." The move was criticized at the time, but came under . Cirode returned to France in 1844, abandoning his wife, Jane, who eventually took Wood with her to Ohio, a free state. Then, in 1848, Jane Cirode went to a county courthouse and registered Wood as free. Boone Hall was built on the backs of black slaves, who harvested cotton and pecans and produced brick on its grounds. 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. Poole gone to the field. Homesick thoughts, trying to read his Bible. Then the crops of choice became cotton and indigo. ] stream. Begins September 28 entry. By 1878, white Northerners were retreating from Reconstruction. 3:10 PM EST, Mon February 6, 2012. MORE VIRGINIA SLAVERY RESOURCES. A copy was made, 6 October 1804. Maintained by Deloris Williams Note that some of the slave listings are under the Counties from which the families were originally living, including now extinct Counties. He sends some wine to Graves, and she sends cake & pies, which Sanford and I am eating as I write. Begins December 30 entry, hunting deer. The Week is part of Future plc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. Black men and women were first brought . Slaves from West Africa were first brought over to grow rice. The land on which Brandon Hall now stands first passed into private ownership as a royal grant from the Spanish King Carlos III in 1788. Over 700 Black men and women were enslaved on this plantation. Hes hoping his 12 grandchildren can benefit from his work. Brandon is an historic plantation located on the south shore of the James River in Prince George County, Virginia. It would be 16 years before Wood set foot in Ohio again. 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. Bowens was born at Drayton in 1908, and returned to Charleston from Chicago in the 1970s. His ancestors were slaves here, but the longtime math and science teacher at McComb High School felt no anger or bitterness. 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. Known as the Robintation Tree, it is said to have been quite feared by the slaves of the plantation. Louisiana, U.S., Slave Manumission Records, 1719-1820. appreciated. Went to pay for some corn. By the 1850s, the interstate slave trade was booming, and the Whites saw dollar signs whenever they thought of Wood. The building is an example of the fast-disappearing service structures that once were a ubiquitous feature of the Southern agrarian landscape. They carried cane knives (used . Sanderson is also listed in weaver1945, 109, as a Mississippi planter who owned around $222,000 worth of property in Louisiana., Could be a reference to Henrietta Wood. Whether she succeeded in that quest is unknownbut she did find a lawyer, Harvey Myers. "And I know some people might think that's strange," says Belton, 76.. This site should be used for informational and entertainment purposes only. Brooding about home. In 1987 the home was completely renovated and restored, perfectly duplicating the original construction. How many [illegible] I have doctored & sick negroes, swelled feet & legs, swelled stomachs, dyptheria, fever, seems to me nearly all man is heir to, but all well this morning & I am thankful it is no worse. Medicine nearly out. 1841, d. 1859 in the, Elizabeth Elmina C. Ella Brandon (b. One Sunday afternoon in April 1853, Boyd tricked Wood into taking a carriage ride across the river. Her captors' destination was Lexington, Kentucky, where prices for slaves had risen with the Southern cotton economy. When the United States banned the importation of slaves after 1807, Virginia became the largest provider in the nations internal slave trade, Levengood said. 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.) Nonetheless, I have always been conflicted about plantation-style homes. That story began two centuries ago with Wood's birth in northern Kentucky. Its a database for the ones that are coming up. The antique papers turned out to mention slaves. The plantation, founded in 1681, is one of the oldest working plantations in the US. After years of trials and tribulations, a group of 300 of Ross' slaves were transported to Africa, where they founded Liberia. Zebulon Ward was their man. Absence of farm animals on the list indicates strongly oriented cotton plantation. (The plantations were part of his wife's dowry.) Harriss said many architectural features were kept true to the original design when the house was renovated in the mid-1980s, apart from closets, bathrooms, and the closed in porch. Pleasant, South Carolina, is one of America's oldest working plantations, with a history dating back to 1681. By 1878, white Northerners were retreating from Reconstruction. A historical society in Virginia, where slavery began in the American colonies in 1619, has discovered the identities of 3,200 slaves from unpublished private documents, providing new. they are the dirtiest people I ever saw or heard of & come nigher living out doors than any others., Begins November 27 entry. Again in the 1970s lawyer, Harvey Myers in Prince George county,.. Part of his wife & # x27 ; s why, at the beginning of the Civil,! Also an investment: purchased children and adults may or may not know you have ancestors! A lawyer, Harvey Myers to hear from home located on the South shore of the most historically significant in! 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