Free Black Populations of the Southern Appalachian Mountains: 1860

Abstract

The Black population of southern Appalachia has been overlooked by most of the people who have studied the region. Although several studies have dealt with the rapidly growing White population of the pre-Civil War period, little has been written about the size and diversity of the region's Black population. Black persons began to arrive in the mountain region about the same time as Whites. Before the first federal census in 1790, there was very little information about the Black Appalachian population. In the 1790s, as local records became more formalized, free Black people made their presence evident by being counted, buying property, making wills, and getting hanged. Free Black persons soon began to play a significant role in a number of mountain communities. Only four states are included in this survey of free Black populations in southern Appalachia: Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. The area includes 158 counties as they existed in 1860. It is roughly the same as that defined by Vance (1962) for these states plus 11 counties along the western edge of Vance's territory. The addition of these counties makes the western boundary of the area correspond roughly to Campbell's (1921) western boundary. ' All of the population and agricultural data are taken from materials published by the U.S. Census Office (1 864a, 1864b, 1872). Consequently, the limitations of census data must be kept in mind when examining the statistical information presented in this