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. But Woods award, however insufficient, was not ineffectual. Brandon Hall Plantation, built ca 1856 by Gerard Brandon, U.S. 61, Washington. All Rights Reserved. For them, the money Henrietta Wood demanded for her enslavement made a long-lasting difference. All rights reserved. Mailing Address: Brandon Hall Plantation 1213 Hwy 61 North Natchez, MS 39120 Cobbler and corn bread with another host. From 1914 until the present, Brandon Hall Plantation has had ten owners. She has learned to weave and is well satisfied your brother[-in-law] says. See Gerard B. Rickey and Alan C. Rayne, ed., I Will Write if I Have to Use a Stick: Letters from HomeCornelia Jane Shields Letters to her Children, 1864-1865 (University Park, Tex. On April 17, 1878, 12 white jurors entered a federal courtroom in Cincinnati to deliver the verdict in a now-forgotten lawsuit about American slavery. The Boone Hall Plantation, located in Mt. The first plantations in the Americas of sugar cane, cocoa, tobacco, and cotton were maintained and harvested by African slaves controlled by European masters. Brandon is an historic plantation located on the south shore of the James River in Prince George County, Virginia. Brandon owning 287 horses, cattle, sheep & miscellaneous property, valued at $2120, and no real estate. PIN IT Sharing is caring! Perfect for an unforgettable. Begins November 2 & 3 entry, attends a public sale of someones effects. She finally returned to Cincinnati in 1869, a free woman. By the 1850s, the interstate slave trade was booming, and the Whites saw dollar signs whenever they thought of Wood. It was four years after the Confederate surrender before Wood was able to return up the river, where she tried to locate long-lost members of her family in Kentucky. Pleasant, South Carolina, is one of America's oldest working plantations, with a history dating back to 1681. His overseers are John Lyle (born in Kentucky) and William Hurley (born in Scotland, accompanied by his wife Rose). The bulk of his papers are in several collections at Historic Natchez Foundation. In the eyes of Kentucky law, Wood was a slave. I wanted to really know. 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. A native Kentuckian who had recently moved to Covington, just across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, Ward became a deputy sheriff in 1853. She had not forgotten Ward and sued him the following year. This was good for me, however. She was suing him for $20,000 in reparations. Nearly every one of the negros were satisfied as they were bought by people in the country mostly, going ahead of the prices given by the traders, Cabell wrote his wife. When possible, I have also noted the dates of Brandons entries. By 1878, white Northerners were retreating from Reconstruction. Today, it remains virtually unknown, even as reparations for slavery are once again in the headlines. Finally, they announced a verdict that few expected: We, the Jury in the above entitled cause, do find for the plaintiff and assess her damages in the premises at Two thousand five hundred dollars.. 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. We sold all the negros 43 in number at astonishingly large prices the whole amounting to $32016. On July 1, 1863, just days before the U.S. Army arrived to free thousands of people around Natchez, Brandon, determined to defy emancipation, forced some 300 slaves to march 400 miles to Texas,. The ghost of a woman whose fiance died before they could be . Improve this listing Property amenities Documents citing slaves go back to the 1690s: Thats when slavery starts to grow fast in Virginia and other English colonies, Levengood said. His wife Charlotte (39) and children Elmina (16), James (14), Charlotte (12), Sarah (9), Agnes (9), Mary (5), and Alice (4) are listed a fellow members of the household. Wood suffered another, unexpected setback in 1874 when her lawyer was murdered by a clients husband in an unrelated divorce case. 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. Friends visit from Waco. Today, it remains virtually unknown, even as reparations for slavery are once again in the headlines. A crowd of locals very much excited about the news and declared that the negroes . More on Mandys child. The letter continued: Jane and three children brought $2795. Swing also told the jurors to focus on Woods kidnapping in assessing the case, and the vast majority of freed people could not show, as Wood did, that they had been re-enslaved. It wasnt 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. Starts with Sandy for Col. Robertson at Salado (see Elijah Robertson). Thats the kind of things that owners did with slaves. 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. These searches were performed by Christina via HeritageQuest as part of her RA Assignments.4. The other refers to Sandys desire, like his, to hear from home. This inventory lists the names, ages and capabilities of Arnold's newly . It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.[1]. At some point during those hellish days, Wood gave birth to Arthur, whose father is unknown. See Goodspeeds entry on the Brandon family. Updated Amateur genealogist Crasty Johnson of Richmond said she hopes the sites will help her trace her roots back to the 1800s. | READ MORE. (The plantations were part of his wife's dowry.) She was later removed from the cotton fields and put to work in Brandons house. My father gave $25. A copy was made, 6 October 1804. The building is an example of the fast-disappearing service structures that once were a ubiquitous feature of the Southern agrarian landscape. Varina Banks Howell, dau of William & Margaret Howell, married Jefferson Davis on Feb 26, 1845 in the parlor of The Briars. Brandon kept her enslaved on a cotton plantation until well after the war. Sanford Poole & Sandy had gone to kill a deer. Middleton arrives, and he gets a package from home. Begin August 20 entry. Cirode returned to France in 1844, abandoning his wife, Jane, who eventually took Wood with her to Ohio, a free state. Buttermilk at Robertsons. Even the judge who presided over Woods case, Phillip Swing, viewed it narrowly. The Agricultural census of 1860 shows 250 improved acres, 450 unimproved, valued at $10,000. This structure still exists as the "basement" of the present house known as Brandon Hall. Brandon Hall Plantation was built in 1856 outside of Natchez. Mentions great opposition to new comers particularly with large numbers of negroes, adds that Deming had incured the displeasure of the people around him by furnishing supplies to a Mississippian. Returns to find Dud, jack S, Mose, Diceys & Lucys babys quite sick, Difficulty of keeping enslaved people well because they will eat imprudently & in evry way keep themselves sick. Celebrates Christmas with Graves and Dr. 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. He had cautioned the jurors against an excessive award, claimingfalselythat many former slaveholders already regretted slavery. 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. The antique papers turned out to mention slaves. The plaintiff was Henrietta Wood, described by a reporter at the time as a spectacled negro woman, apparently sixty years old. The defendant was Zebulon Ward, a white man who had enslaved Wood 25 years before. All the while, however, there were people conspiring to take her freedom away. All accommodations at this luxury home have private in-room (not shared) bathrooms. A Warner Bros. It is, rather, a living reminder of the truth of the Black experience during the time of slavery. The society Saturday held the first of four community workshops on how to use the online database at the organizations headquarters in Richmond, Virginia. Wipple preach. He was sent a bottle of wine, jelly cake, & pies. This list is by no means complete. Many of the slaves had been forgotten to the world until the Virginia Historical Society received a $100,000 grant to pore over some of its 8 million unpublished manuscripts letters, diaries, ledgers, books and farm documents from Virginians dating to the 1600s and began discovering the long-lost identities of the slaves, said society president and CEO Paul Levengood. On July 1, 1863, just days before the U.S. Army arrived to free thousands of people around Natchez, Brandon, determined to defy emancipation, forced some 300 slaves to march 400 miles to Texas, far beyond the reach of federal soldiers. 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. One Sunday afternoon in April 1853, Boyd tricked Wood into taking a carriage ride across the river. Begins November 10 entry. Robertson offers him use of land, offers to put the deal in writing in Belton. As one put it, Wood's award was "not a liberal equivalent for the loss of liberty" she had suffered, but it would "be applicable to a great many cases yet untried.". This property has much more to offer. Sometimes its a real detective work. 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. Brandon kept her enslaved on a cotton plantation until well after the war. FOR SALE: 1856 Brandon Hall Plantation, Natchez, Mississippi Our Restoration Nation 103K subscribers Subscribe 16K 1.4M views 1 year ago Have you ever wanted to own your own historic mansion. 1864/1865, d. 1935), Adams County, Mississippi: 154 enslaved people are listed under Gerard Brandon. Captivating Houses, Grain and food were raised for local use. In January 1914, the plantation, house, and land was sold to George Hightower as a result of a default on a promissory note, thus ending an 81-year chain of ownership by the Brandon and Hoggatt families. Some pictures of the Brandon cemetery are on Flickr. Negro slave owners were listed in 29 Kentucky counties (see below). 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. I am captivated by their character and charm! Lee Hall Plantation: Richard Decatur Lee : 371159N 763432W : 72001510 : Lexington Plantation: George Mason V : 383838N 771156W . All rights reserved. A Note to our Readers : Pelican Publishing Company, Inc., 2007), 92. I whippped him a little. Anthony has the money. Upper Brandon Plantation: William Byrd Harrison, George Harrison Byrd, Francis Otway Byrd, Harry C. Thompson, Fred E. Watkins, Jim Justice The postwar constitutional amendments that abolished slavery and extended national citizenship to ex-slaves enabled Wood to pursue Ward in federal court. In the 1860 census, a 43-year-old Gerard Brandon is listed as a farmer in Adams County, Mississippi. After 1815, as white settlers rushed into the lower Mississippi River Valley, many looked to purchase slaves to cultivate the regions most profitable crop. The 1860 slave census shows 52 slaves on Fish Haul. Wagons and wheels being fixed. The $2,500 verdict, the largest ever of its kind, offers evidence of the generational impact such awards can have. She must be about 85 years old now. 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. If he followed the road from San Augustine to Crockett pictured on Texas Map (1865), then he likely passed through Nacogdoches as well. Im going to use this not only personally, but professionally, she said. Gerard Brandon, Wood's last owner, was one of the largest plantations in all of the American South. Her official freedom papers, at a courthouse in Cincinnati, had been destroyed in an 1849 fire, and her kidnappers had confiscated her personal copy. 1845, d. 1909), Charlotte Lottie Brandon (b. Before the Civil War, large Southern rice and cotton plantations depended on enslaved African Americans to operate successfully. did desi arnaz jr have a stroke; moose tracks vs cow tracks ice cream 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. Goes Friday to see after some negroes I had hired in Falls Co. Stays with H. L. Bennett. Begins August 24 entry: no beef as yet now for four days. Slaves dissatisfied. Reflections on number of slaves he has brought: I am now content & feel if I can take care of what I have, I shall do very well., Doesnt like to hire out, & to feed them in idleness, they will soon eat their heads off. Learns of a meeting of locals for resolutions on refugees and the some 1000 or 1500 negroes moved into the region. Someone offers to speak up in Brandons defense, as mine looked clean & orderly. Williams has sent a ham, bucket of butter, & three water mellons. Begins August 29 entry: demands from persons wanting to hire negroes.. Janes husband exclaimed just as she was knocked out to his master Glory to God on high, peace and good will to men on earth and it seemed to pop from his very soul. Returns from Salado to reports of death, including Henrietta has just come to say Diceys little boy is dead. After moving to Ables, All at Home for the war. 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