Enslaved Population Research Articles

A Family Affair: Black Family Networks and the 1822 Vesey Conspiracy

Abstract: In 1822, white authorities in Charleston, South Carolina, discovered a major uprising among the city's free Black and enslaved population. After more than 100 people were arrested for their roles in the putative plot, sixty-seven people were convicted and either executed or banished from the country. While the episode, known as the Denmark Vesey conspiracy after the uprising's ringleader, is well-known to historians more generally, we know much less about how it affected the lived experiences of Black Charlestonians and how it influenced Black family networks. Although we know that women and sometimes children participated in slave insurrections like Vesey's conspiracy, we do not know how rebels used kinship ties to mobilize their resistive movements or what kind of precise impact violent resistance strategies had on Black communities in early America more broadly. Yet when analyzed through Black family networks, the conspiracy reveals how people used familial connections to spread insurrection and protect themselves from enslaver violence. Notwithstanding the use of these relationships to protect against chattel slavery, the conspiracy itself became another obstacle to their fight for freedom.

Centering Slavery in the Age of Abolition: Insights from the Saint Lucia Register of Plantation Slaves, 1815

Abstract: Scholars have used a range of sources, including oral histories, written accounts, and plantation inventories, to reconstruct the lives of people subjected to slavery in the Atlantic world. Yet in contested colonies such as Saint Lucia, the experiences of enslaved people remain little known. Attention to a seemingly static, bureaucratic document—the 1815 Register of Plantation Slaves—provides details about all 12,726 individuals who were enslaved on estates in Saint Lucia just one year after France ceded the island to Great Britain. This, in turn, facilitates the reconstruction of life histories and genealogies of people who labored on the plantation frontier of the British Empire during the age of abolition. As one of 671 such documents created throughout the empire in the decades after Great Britain's 1807 abolition of the transatlantic slave trade, the 1815 Saint Lucia Register of Plantation Slaves illustrates the potential for such documents to significantly enlarge current understandings of slavery. The register testifies to the importance of regional trafficking and the role of reproductive labor in giving rise to a creolized enslaved population in Saint Lucia, and it poignantly illustrates how these phenomena affected enslaved individuals and families.

Alabama Black Belt Politics: Promise and Peril, 1890-1935

This thesis examines African Americans in Alabama’s Black Belt—the majority constituent in the region—and their centrality in Republican and Communist Party voter campaigns. The Black Belt, originally named for the geological conditions of the soil, was home to a large enslaved population in the nineteenth century. As African Americans became the largest settled community across the belt’s counties, they were seen as useful constituents, first by Alabama politicians in the early twentieth century, and then, by the Communist Party in the 1930s. Both hoped to mobilize African American voters to bolster support for their own parties. These instances reflect a consistent trend of disregarding Black Belt residents as independent political actors. This thesis shows that despite earlier failures by the Republican Party to politically incorporate African Americans, the Communist Party would later create a mutually beneficial relationship. African Americans worked within the party to advocate for their own needs. This self-advocacy by African Americans is often overlooked in regional histories of the area. 

Ending slavery in imperial peripheries: Ottoman abolitionist policy in Trablusgarp and Benghazi provinces (1857–1911)

When Istanbul prohibited the trade of enslaved Africans in 1857, the Ottoman local authorities expanded efforts to curb human trafficking throughout the imperial realm. These endeavours also included Libya, which lies at the frontiers of the Greater Sahara, a major slave-raiding zone in the nineteenth century. The historiography devoted to modern Libya maintains that the Porte took action to curb slavery only in response to British pressure. In this article, I seek to situate the prohibition of human trade in Libya within the larger scope of the end of slavery in the imperial realm. I argue that the Ottomans conducted an abolitionist policy in Libya that was embedded in the reforms undertaken in these peripheral provinces, namely, to foster the Porte’s sovereignty at its imperial frontier. I further argue that the enslaved population gained agency in the manumission process and in their integration into Ottoman society after their liberation. This bottom-up approach to the end of human bondage reveals the entanglement of old and new patterns of manumission in the era of abolition as well as the social integration of these emancipated slaves into Ottoman society during the Reform period.

The Performance and Appearance of Confidence Among the Enslavers of South Carolina and Cuba

ABSTRACT For decades the public and private documents of enslavers have been examined to produce seminal studies of slavery. This article explores the interval between public and private, exposing it as a liminal space of emotional direction for the enslaving elite of nineteenth-century South Carolina and Cuba. Consulting confidential correspondence, periodicals, and published proclamations gathered from archives across Cuba, Spain, and the U.S., this study focusses upon instances when enslavers strategized as to how their violence, words, architectural surroundings, legal codification, and press should best buttress what they regarded as the necessary emotional balance for maintaining their dominance: white confidence and Black fear. Analyzing these words and actions using History of the Emotions methodologies and principles including emotionology, emotional regimes, and the emotional politics of slavery, this article contributes the theorization of the ‘confidence script’, a performative narrative style deployed by proslavery elites to publicly assert unalloyed white composure regardless of tangible unrest among the enslaved population, or furtive admissions of slaveholder dread. Its conclusion asserts that the silences and proclamations surrounding racialised white fear and performative confidence in Cuba and the U.S. continue to propagate and justify nefarious white violence and injustice against Black Cubans and Americans today.

Medicine, Reproduction, and Women’s Health at the Orange Valley Plantation, Jamaica

ABSTRACT This article explores the role of hospitals constructed for enslaved people in pre-emancipation Jamaica as inherently conflicted spaces, where health care was provided to the sick and injured while, at the same time, the horrific system of human bondage was reproduced. Hospitals for the enslaved were sites of conflict in terms of their vision, their practices, and the materia medica they employed. We explore these practices and argue that the result was a therapeutic regime and a blended health care experience, provided by free and enslaved health care providers. They employed European, Indigenous, and Afro-Caribbean medicines, which provided a measure of medical assistance, while also serving to increase the enslaved population, and assuage the guilt of white plantation owners. Disturbing as these historical conclusions are, profound health care inequities persist today and disproportionately affect the reproductive health of women of African descent in the Americas.

The Black American Revolution: The American Revolution as Experienced by African Americans

This paper focuses on how the American Revolution mobilized the enslaved and free black population in a way that constitutes a "Black American Revolution." In particular, the enslaved population engaged in multiple efforts for freedom, ranging from fighting in the Revolutionary War to writing petitions to state legislatures. First, I present how the "slavery metaphor" propagated by white Loyalists indicates the inherent differences in how the white and black populations experienced the Revolution. There is an overall discussion of the various methods the enslaved used in their attempts to gain freedom: military service, slave petitions, freedom suits, and escape. I also examine the surge of free black communities as a result of the Revolution, helped by white abolitionist allies. Additionally, the impact the Revolution had on slavery as an institution is assessed in both the North and South. Finally, the overall success of the Black American Revolution is determined.

Precarious Freedoms: Intergenerational Divisions within the Black Family in Postcolonial Córdoba, Argentina

Abstract: This article explores the intergenerational dynamics within the Black family in postcolonial Córdoba, Argentina. It delves into the difficult reality that Black emancipation did not define freedom. Instead "free" status remained a precarious existence to which some free and free(d) Black parents clung by differentiating themselves from the enslaved population. Through the examination of marriage dissent court cases that featured African-descended families as plaintiffs and defendants, this article demonstrates that the maintenance of a social hierarchy that discriminated against the enslaved did not only emanate from external influences, such as governing authorities and policies, but the African-descendant population also internalized and upheld it.

Sonic Domination and the Politics of Race in Southern Antebellum Hymnody

AbstractReligious music served a political function in the southern United States during the antebellum period. This article examines catechisms and hymnbooks used by white evangelical missionaries and slaveowners in the antebellum South, arguing that the planter elite deployed hymns as a medium to assert white supremacy. The term sonic domination identifies processes whereby sound functioned as a social tool to maintain discipline and order among the enslaved population. Black and white people sang hymns in church, at interracial revivals, and during civic services; they were also heard on bells and cited in poetry. English texts and tunes included in slave catechisms and white portrayals of Black singing highlight the role of evangelical hymns in maintaining plantation order in the Old South. At the same time, enslaved Black Christians found creative ways to circumvent the oppressive power of the white elite through song. African Americans employed English hymns in their own religious rituals and used them to convey hidden meanings on the plantation. Both genres, which interacted and ultimately influenced each other, contributed to an eventual codification of American evangelical hymnody.

What fraction of antebellum US national product did the enslaved produce?

This article evaluates the high-profile claim that enslaved African-Americans produced over 50 percent of US national product in the pre-Civil War period. The accounting exercise shows the fraction was closer to (and indeed likely slightly below) the share of the population, that is, about 12.6 percent in 1860. The enslaved population had higher rates of labor force participation, but they were also forced to work in sectors–agriculture and domestic service—with below average output per worker. The economic surplus generated by the enslaved was due chiefly to the low value of the very basic consumption bundle provided rather than to exceptionally high values of production per capita.

‘The People of All Kinds Who Walk Along the Lines’: The Precarious Mobilities of Unfree Workers on Cuba's Early Railroads

ABSTRACT This article explores the spatial politics of unfree Africans and their descendants who constructed Cuba's pioneering first railroads, and their interactions with those who inhabited the changing landscapes through which the lines ran. Railway workers and local enslaved populations collectively constructed ‘counter-maps’ of the worlds of the lines, repurposing slaveholder-designed spaces and infrastructures in ways that held rich, multiple social significances. While sources on railway construction often focus on male workers, the article explores how we can read between and beyond such documents to reveal women's specific spatial practices. Creative, contestatory forms of movement entwined closely in unfree people's lives with the profound racialised and gendered vulnerability to which mobility exposed them, and with their constant exposure to coerced movement. These tensions, the article argues, produced what we can call ‘precarious mobilities’.

Seeger Lecture, Society for Ethnomusicology Virtual Meeting 2021

Seeger Lecture, Society for Ethnomusicology Virtual Meeting 2021

ТЛХУКОТЛИ-ПШИТЛИ В СОСЛОВНОЙ СТРУКТУРЕ ЧЕРКЕССКОГО ОБЩЕСТВА

The dependence of various groups of the enslaved population of feudal Circassia had a significant gradation. The article analyzes the Circassian historical terms related to the estate of tlhukotli-pshitli (beslen-pshitl / pshi-una-ogg, ogg, lagunapyt, laguna-pshi, unaut), their correspondence to Russian historical terms peasant, serf, serf is revealed. The legal status of various categories of Tlhukotl-Pshitli is characterized on the basis of the analysis of the norms of Adyghe Khabze, their characteristics are given from the point of view of belonging to various categories of Pshi-Works, Azat and Ogg. The effect of the norms of Adyghe Khabze in relation to Tlhukotl-Pshitl is illustrated by information from narrative sources.

Securing the Southwest: The Northern Pursuit of Texas, New Mexico, and California

Securing the Southwest:The Northern Pursuit of Texas, New Mexico, and California Daniel J. Burge (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution This image humorously depicts the Democratic Party's strategy to win the election of 1844. Northern Democrats saw the annexation of Texas as a winning partisan issue to use against their Whig rivals and a development that would be beneficial to the whole nation, not just the South. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, https://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/cph.3a15078/ [Dec. 21, 2022]. [End Page 416] In September 1847 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Vice-President George Mifflin Dallas delivered an address on the U.S.–Mexico War defending President James K. Polk. After arguing that Mexico was to blame for starting the conflict, Dallas explored another question: "If, upon the conclusion of a treaty with Mexico, we should come into possession of one-half or two-thirds of her territory—what are we to do with it?" Although the outcome of the war was uncertain, Dallas remained confident that the United States would be able to seize a portion of Mexico—indeed that the United States was destined to obtain most of Mexico. "Of one thing we are quite certain," Dallas declared, "—the Yankees will in time overrun that portion of their territory; and though there is much Mexican blood upon it, we may look to the period . . . when a number of large States, stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific ocean, will be distinguished in the constellation of our Union."1 Dallas was a northern man, speaking to a northern audience who believed that the future United States would include territory stretching from the Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico. Although historians have spent a great deal of time examining why antebellum southerners dreamed of acquiring what became the American Southwest, they have not adequately explained why northerners held similar views. On the rare occasions when historians have examined northern expansionists, they have generally [End Page 417] studied Stephen Douglas and the Young America movement.2 In contrast, then, this essay explores expansionists from New York and Pennsylvania who were not allies of Stephen Douglas or affiliated with Young America. By focusing on prominent northern expansionists such as George Mifflin Dallas, Daniel Dickinson, and James Buchanan and drawing on New York and Pennsylvania newspapers, this essay shows that not only did enthusiasm for territorial expansionism exist outside of the South, it was also to be found among older members of the Democratic Party. Indeed, it was the men whom the Young Americans would deride as "Old Fogys" who helped shepherd through the annexation of Texas and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and who would introduce popular sovereignty into political discourse.3 Northerners played a key role in securing the Southwest for the United States, but they embraced expansionism for different reasons than their southern peers. First, northern Democrats such as James Buchanan and George Mifflin Dallas routinely stressed the economic benefits to be gained from expansion. Northern manufactures, they argued, would find new markets if the United States acquired the lands stretching from Texas to California. In addition, they denied that expansion would empower enslavers. Texas, they argued, would weaken the institution of slavery, as it would drain the enslaved population out of the border states. A few years later, these same northern expansionists cobbled together the idea of popular sovereignty and argued that slavery, even if permitted in territories seized from Mexico, would never flourish. Linking expansion to national greatness, they believed the United States could gobble up territory without increasing sectional tension. These northern Democrats were not "northern men with southern loyalties," or "doughfaces," but were rather [End Page 418] traditional Jacksonian Democrats who believed in the beneficial effects of territorial expansion. Unwilling to accept that North and South would ever come to blows over slavery, they unwittingly propelled the United States toward a conflict by helping to vastly expand the boundaries of the young nation. Nobody championed expansion more earnestly than Robert John Walker.4 Born and raised in Pennsylvania, Walker came from a well-connected family and graduated from the University of...

Peculiar Institution? The Legacy of Slavery and Prison Expansion in the United States, 1970–2015

Despite a long line of scholarship on race and social control, evidence that incarceration can be connected to slavery is difficult to provide. This study evaluates whether slavery had long-term effects on growth in state incarceration rates by focusing on two key theoretical indicators: the size of the enslaved population prior to the Civil War and demographic changes during the Great Migration. Results reveal that states that historically had larger enslaved populations and those that acted as destinations for southern migrants experienced increased growth in incarceration between 1970 and 2015. Mediation analyses show that both variables have indirect effects on change in incarceration rates through contemporary demographic composition and public opinion. These findings lend support to theoretical claims that link slavery to mass incarceration and shed light on the mechanisms that enable racial histories to map onto current criminal punishments.

The People of Rose Hill: Black and White Life on a Maryland Plantation by Lucy Maddox

Reviewed by: The People of Rose Hill: Black and White Life on a Maryland Plantation by Lucy Maddox Whitney Nell Stewart (bio) The People of Rose Hill: Black and White Life on a Maryland Plantation. By Lucy Maddox. ( Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2021. Pp. 244. Cloth, $54.95.) Scholarly consensus of what defines a plantation has often focused on the estate's number of laborers or the type of crop they harvested, yet we know that these sites were about far more than agriculture. They were workplaces, but also homeplaces. They were shaped by the individuals who lived there and by the relationships, both imposed and chosen, those individuals formed. And they were structured by a violent, oppressive system that denied so much to Black southerners for the benefit of white enslavers. What makes plantations fascinating, then, is that they can reveal to us big stories of deeply ingrained structural inequality and small stories of personal experience. In The People of Rose Hill, Lucy Maddox attempts the difficult task of telling both the macro and micro of plantation life in the U.S. South, giving us an engaging deep dive into a single estate on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Maddox provides a history of Rose Hill and, with the plantation mistress's diaries as her primary account, extracts an impressive amount of information about dozens of plantation residents, their work, and their relationships. The narrative is, for the most part, chronologically structured and focused on the first half of the nineteenth century. Maddox reveals how, in this transformative time, a Maryland plantation could embody the simultaneous stability of the plantation model and its capacity to quickly change, emphasizing for the reader just how contingent, unexpected, yet drearily repetitive life could be on an antebellum plantation. Long before the sectional crisis came to full civil war, most Maryland enslavers recognized that slavery was on the decline in their state. However, in the particular area where Rose Hill sat—the Eastern Shore—planters such as Rose Hill owner Thomas Forman refused to believe it. Historians Ira Berlin and Barbara Jeanne Fields have noted that peculiar stubbornness among Eastern Shore planters before; yet Maddox's single plantation [End Page 119] focus allows her to dig deeper into the particularities that produced a different kind of Maryland enslaver and plantation. The tobacco industry had collapsed in the Chesapeake by the late eighteenth century, eventually leading to the rampant selling or emancipating of enslaved Marylanders throughout the state in the nineteenth century. Yet Rose Hill was relatively stable economically, maintaining its enslaved population of roughly thirty to forty throughout the first four decades of the nineteenth century. Rose Hill had adjusted, focusing on sustainable agriculture, selling such household products as butter, and reaping profits from Forman's other properties in Delaware. Rose Hill is not necessarily representative of a southern plantation or even of a Maryland plantation. But its history reiterates the flexibility and longevity of slavery and capitalism even in a time and place in which many believed the institution was floundering. Maddox is not only interested in the enslaving, plantation-owning Forman family, however. She weaves together stories of Black and white folks, enslaving and enslaved people, hired hands and wealthy visitors to reveal the array of experiences at Rose Hill. The short biographical vignettes of Rose Hill's enslaved residents found throughout the book are especially key in decentering enslavers and showing diversity within the shared experience of plantation slavery. At the heart of The People of Rose Hill is Maddox's investigation of the complicated, difficult, and often destructive relationships between the various individuals and groups that made up the plantation. For instance, the analysis of Thomas and Martha Forman's relationship is balanced and persuasive, painstakingly comparing two different versions of Martha's diary to illuminate the tension between a husband and wife's ideals of marriage, manhood, and womanhood on a southern plantation. Indeed, Maddox's work in recovering these contemporaneous diaries, both written by Martha but one with the editorial oversight of Thomas, is an important reminder of why careful archival research is so necessary. Maddox is especially clear about what her main source—Martha...

Why Rara Burns Judas during Lent: Rethinking the Origins of Catholic Elements in Haitian Culture from an Afro-Iberian Perspective

AbstractUntil the 1980s, Catholic elements in Haitian culture tended to be interpreted exclusively in connection to the forced conversion of the enslaved population under French rule. This changed following John Thornton's groundbreaking research into the development of Christianity in early modern Africa—Kongo in particular—and the awareness that a significant number of enslaved Africans already identified as Christian before their arrival in Saint-Domingue. This article's goal is to go beyond Thornton's research by showing that we can acquire a better understanding of Catholic elements in Haitian culture if we start our analysis in late medieval Iberia. To illustrate this, the article focuses on one of Haiti's most enigmatic cultural traditions, known as Chariopié, Lwalwadi, or, most commonly, Rara. Although this performance has received abundant scholarly interest, questions relating to the origin of its Catholic elements have remained largely unanswered. This is regrettable considering that Rara parades follow the liturgical calendar of Lent and intensify in frequency during Holy Week. Moreover, a key element of Rara consists of the destruction of an effigy of Judas Iscariot, in accordance with the Biblical account of the Easter story. Using a comparative analysis, this article presents a number of remarkable parallels between Rara and late medieval Iberian Lent traditions. To explain these parallels, it claims that enslaved Africans who were familiar with Iberian practices prior to their arrival in the Caribbean established, by their own initiative, a network of mutual aid and burial societies modeled on Afro-Iberian Catholic brotherhoods.

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE STAFFING OF UKRAINIAN NATIONAL SELF-DEFENSE UNITS (JULY‒AUGUST 1943)

The proposed material outlines the general trends in the staffi ng of tactical units of the military-training structure, which arose from the initiative of the «revolutionary» wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN(b)) in Galicia in the summer of 1943 – Ukrainian People’s Self-Defense. The components of the algorithm of mobilization eff orts of the OUN(b) underground in a certain chronological period are characterized. The elements of the organizational structure that were directly responsible for the implementation of mobilization activities are generally presented. The process of formation of armed units of the nationalist wing of the national liberation movement of the Resistance in the region is considered in comparison with the policy implemented in relation to the enslaved population, and in particular to that part of it that was suitable for military service by the Nazi occupation administration. When analyzing the recruitment of personnel, the challenges faced by the leadership of the OUN(b) in general, as well as the direct organizers of the UNS in particular, in the form of the commander and representatives of the headquarters, are presented in general terms. At the same time, the methods used to prevent, and in some cases to overcome, negative manifestations of the mobilization process are characterized. Keywords armed forces, resistance movement, Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, Ukrainian Peopleʼs Self-Defense, Ukrainian independent conciliar state.

Quantitative similarities between the banjo and a diverse collection of West African lutes

The banjo entered world musical culture through the ingenuity of communities of enslaved Africans in the Caribbean. The banjo is rooted within the lute-playing traditions of West Africa, where several remarkably banjo-like instruments and playing styles exist today. The banjo is a creation of the Black diaspora, however, and has no obvious single ancestor among extant West African lutes. Understanding the relative similarities between extant West African lutes and the gourd banjo may shed light on the cultural context of banjo origins. This study examines structural similarities between the gourd banjo and 61 West African lutes using two quantitative approaches for measuring and representing similarity among entities (UGPMA and NeighborNet). The banjo groups with a cluster of lutes from peoples in the Senegambia region speaking Bakic languages, which includes the Jola ekonting, an instrument that has garnered considerable recent attention as a banjo relative, but also shows similarities to lutes from the Niger Basin. This suggests that the relatively egalitarian social context of lute playing seen in Bakic language-speaking cultures may have been especially influential on the development of the banjo among enslaved populations in the Caribbean, but that the banjo draws on heterogeneous cultural influences and that more attention should be paid to the influence of eastern Sahel musical cultures on the evolution of the instrument.

The Kentucky Origins of Three Michigan Rescues

The Kentucky Origins of Three Michigan Rescues Hillary Delaney (bio) In the 1840s, the wealth of enslavers decreased markedly as Underground Railroad activity in the borderlands of Kentucky surged. The banks of the Ohio River, which separated Kentucky’s northernmost counties from the free states of Indiana and Ohio, became ground zero as slave hunters and patrollers attempted to thwart freedom seekers. Despite these efforts, the enslaved population continued to decrease with each successful escape.1 In 1847, Kentuckians made forays into Michigan to capture those who had fled northward; Michigan’s citizens intervened on behalf of freedom seekers in dramatic fashion. The exciting details and resulting legal decisions were widely covered in the press and had significant impacts on the rights of all involved entities.2 This helped to build a narrative of those at the center of the disputes, most often beginning with the escape and what followed. To give agency to these individuals and to gain a fuller understanding of their lives and what led to these incidents, it is important to learn of their lives in Kentucky. Ferreting out details of the lives of enslaved people requires a familiarity with the communities in which they were held. It is also crucial to understand the slaveholding families—their complicated relationships with those they held in bondage, and their connections to other enslavers and organizations. An approach employing genealogical research methods, an understanding of local records, and a grasp of the social and physical aspects of the community can often provide a much fuller story. [End Page 9] Adam Crosswhite At the center of one of the dramatic 1847 episodes was a man named Adam Crosswhite. Crosswhite and his family made their way from Kentucky to freedom in Marshall, Michigan, in 1843. A few years later, they found themselves facing re-enslavement when agents of their slave holder, Francis Giltner, came to Michigan to claim them.3 The dramatic details of their rescue and the political fallout it prompted have been committed to history, but most early accounts have little detail of Crosswhite’s life prior to his escape.4 Adam Crosswhite was born to an enslaved mother around 1799 in either Bourbon or Clark County, Kentucky. His father is presumed to have been his original enslaver, Isaac Crosthwait.5 Isaac Crosthwait was about seventy-five years old when Adam was born, a detail that invites scrutiny.6 Crosthwait’s age does not completely invalidate his paternity, but other possibilities can be explored. Enslaved women held by Crosthwait were accessible to his nearby male family members and cannot be ruled out. Multiracial children born to enslaved mothers could receive both the favor of a White father and the ire of the White mistress. Their status could also complicate relationships with others in the community of the enslaved.7 These complexities must be considered while researching Adam Crosswhite’s life as an enslaved person. Isaac Crosthwait’s Last Will and Testament was filed on January 28, 1811, in Clark County, Kentucky. At the time of his death, Crosthwait enslaved nine people—only two of whom were identified by name in the will. Ben was set apart for Crosthwait’s daughter, Nancy, as payment for work her husband had done for his father-in-law. Adam was allotted to Crosthwait’s unmarried daughter, Frances, who was to reside in the family’s home inherited by her older brother, William. Both transfers were to occur after the death of Isaac’s wife, Elizabeth. The remaining seven enslaved people were referred to only as “the rest.” This acknowledgement of Adam by name and his bequest within the family as a “gift” are unique within the whole of Crosthwait’s enslaved people.8 [End Page 10] Isaac’s son, William, was named the administrator of his mother’s estate upon her 1816 death.9 An auction notice was soon placed in the newspaper announcing the sale, which included “a number of likely young negroes.”10 The appraisal of Elizabeth’s assets included five enslaved people: Adam, George, Jane, Ann, and a second Adam. The only thing distinguishing the two men named “Adam” was their $550 and $600 appraisal amounts.11 At auction, all...