Property, Capital, and Race: Rural Capitalism and Racialized Landscapes in Nineteenth-century Massachusetts

Abstract

Historical archaeologists utilize data from the documentary record, and deeds in particular. Property records allow archaeologists to define site boundaries and place people in time and space, facilitating the connection of people with the material record they created in the past. Deeds also can provide details about people’s integration into the networks of collective life in a community and access to marketplaces of financial capital. As such, deeds hold the potential to make visible the race, class, and gender lines of the past. This exploratory study, centered at the W. E. B. Du Bois Homesite in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, presents an attempt to use the property records of the Burghardt family—Du Bois’ ancestors and owners of the property for over a century—to more deeply examine African-American life in rural New England. I also examine the Burghardt family members’ interactions with finance capital and how they negotiated the post-emancipation color line in western Massachusetts.