II, p. 817, which claimed that at the beginning of the Civil War, Brandon owned a million dollars worth of slaves. Brandon Hall was formally a large working cotton plantation located on the scenic Natchez Trace. Your Privacy Rights The family plans to occupy the. 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,. In 1834, the teenager was bought by a merchant in Louisville and taken from her family. A letter Cornelia Jane Shields to James Brandons wife states that Mr. 1850 - According to the District Census, Boone Hall was producing 4,000,000 bricks per year using 85 slaves . Advertising Notice By the 1850s, the interstate slave trade was booming, and the Whites saw dollar signs whenever they thought of Wood. Today, it remains virtually unknown, even as reparations for slavery are once again in the headlines. Lee Hall Plantation: Richard Decatur Lee : 371159N 763432W : 72001510 : Lexington Plantation: George Mason V : 383838N 771156W . Begins August 3 entry at came near Dr.Milners Spring. "My mistress gave me my freedom," Wood later said, "and my papers were recorded." At some point during those hellish days, Wood gave birth to Arthur, whose father is unknown. 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. It went through a number of owners before becoming an inn and event venue. However, at the height of the slave era (1830-1860), only a few thousand masters owned as many as 300 people. The Boone Hall Plantation, located in Mt. Begins November 2 & 3 entry, attends a public sale of someones effects. Reprinted with permission from Smithsonian Enterprises. As laid out in McDaniel's book, in 1840, Mississippi accounted for nearly a quarter of all. She was later removed from the cotton fields and put to work in Brandon's house. The plantation, founded in 1681, is one of the oldest working plantations in the US. It reaches across all of the slave South, Levengood said. must be sold out of this section, or hung, or I must move, as my negroes might be the cause of all the negroes being dissatisfied and many a man might loose his property by my coming here. 1872 - The plantation was sold to Henry Horlbeck's two sons, Frederick Henry Horlbeck and John S. Horlbeck ( 7 ). The traders put Wood up for sale at Natchezs infamous Forks of the Road slave market. The postwar constitutional amendments that abolished slavery and extended national citizenship to ex-slaves enabled Wood to pursue Ward in federal court. You can explore lives and stories of these slaves at the 9 slave cabins in the plantation where the Black History in America Exhibit is displayed. Discusses leaving Poole with a power of attorney, and one with Bennett if Poole becomes indisposed. That story began two centuries ago with Wood's birth in northern Kentucky. Parole denied for RFK assassin Sirhan Sirhan, Ship that sank in 1894 discovered in Lake Huron, Why Fox News pushed Trump's bogus election claims, Tennessee governor says photo of him in skirt and wig irrelevant to drag show ban, Jurassic-era insect discovered at Arkansas Walmart, Why space experts want to establish a lunar time zone. Varina Banks Howell, dau of William & Margaret Howell, married Jefferson Davis on Feb 26, 1845 in the parlor of The Briars. 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. Brandon Hall was formally a large working cotton plantation located on the scenic Natchez Trace. Brandon was originally a vast land grant to John Martin, companion of Captain John Smith, on his first voyage to America. The corn we sold yesterday brought 3.15$ per barrel. whole race. Our brave participants started in a near-pitch black maze through the auditorium. Thinks about people at home. Prince George County: Brandon. Boone Hall was built on the backs of black slaves, who harvested cotton and pecans and produced brick on its grounds. She finally returned to Cincinnati in 1869, a free woman. All rights reserved. List of troubles: screw wormshow many of them there are. 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.. After her suit, she moved with her son to Chicago. She must be about 85 years old now. The Virginia Historical Society finds 3,200 slaves named in private documents, The unpublished documents are from Virginians' attics, basements and desk drawers, "We sold all the negros 43 in number at astonishingly large prices," an 1858 letter says, One user of the society's free database of slaves finds the owner of his great-great-great-grandfather. Researching black folk is difficult, so anytime you can find a new resource its always good to investigate, he said. Lists his route, expenses, and ferriage for the trip back home. Its an incredibly complicated and tragic institution that were just beginning to understand the dimensions of, Levengood said. All accommodations at this luxury home have private in-room (not shared) bathrooms. Phoebe is living with a good family for her food and clothing only. 1841, d. 1859 in the, Elizabeth Elmina C. Ella Brandon (b. It will not be held responsible or liable for its use and accuracy. Brandon kept her enslaved on a cotton plantation until well after the war. The Unknown No Longer: A Database of Virginia Slave Names website is the first online resource listing slaves names across all of slaveholding Virginia, the nations oldest state which had the largest enslaved population, numbering a half million people, at the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, society officials said. CROSS THAT RIVER continues in New York for a limited engagement through Sunday, Dec. 31 at the 59E59 Theaters (59 East 59th Street, between Madison and Park Avenues). 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. Brandon told me that Mr.Poole was offered $2000 in gold for Phoebe on his way to Texas, but he was on ahead of wagons and negroes and did not hear of it until too late. 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. Learns that some have been plotting to start off for Miss. Her official freedom papers, at a courthouse in Cincinnati, had been destroyed in an 1849 fire, and her kidnappers had confiscated her personal copy. Their son Dunbar Merrill had a daughter named (Ruth Britton) Dunbar Merrill Flinn (1926-2006), whose attic contained many Brandon family papers before they were donated to the Historic Natchez Foundation.2. Enough to make a man gloomy. Reads Ellas letter. Note: Unless otherwise noted, page numbers below refer to my numbering of the photocopy pages of the full Brandon diary I acquired at HNF, not to Brandons numbering or to the Helen Rayne transcription. 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. Old Mr. S. Turner bought Jane and children. Updated Buttermilk at Robertsons. And when the carriage finally rolled to a stop outside of Covington, Ward's men were waiting. Slave traders met the demand by buying slaves in Virginia, Kentucky, and Maryland and selling them in the cotton states. 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. He helped Wood file a lawsuit in Cincinnati against Ward, now a wealthy man living in Lexington. The first part is an inventory of stores taken on the first day on which Forster Clarke entered on the management of the Estate (11 July 1803). Whether she succeeded in that quest is unknown but she did find a lawyer, Harvey Myers. The Whites lived in Covington, too, and in the spring of 1853 they convinced Ward to pay them $300 for the right to sell Wood and pocket the proceeds himselfprovided he could get her. When African slavery was largely abolished in the mid-1800s, the center of plantation agriculture moved from the Americas to the Indo-Pacific region where the indigenous people . Zebulon Ward was their man. Copyright 2023, All Rights Reserved. They and their heirs farmed it successfully until 1720 when it was sold to Nathaniel Harrison. Did you encounter any technical issues? Negro slave owners were listed in 29 Kentucky counties (see below). Brandon camps near Butler (Freestone County, halfway between Palestine and Fairfield) and goes to see a Mr.Morgan, apparently an acquaintance from Mississippi, who had brought slaves belonging to W. S. (or S. Brandon Hall C1856. 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. Discovered that several men (Isaac, [Matt] & Charley) had been in the hog business, cost me $30 (noted in ledger on p.9, Brandons page 14); medicine scarce; Oh! The traders put Wood up for sale at Natchez's infamous Forks of the Road slave market. Cirode returned to France in 1844, abandoning his wife, Jane, who eventually took Wood with her to Ohio, a free state. Black men and women were first brought . The sale included 1,514 7 /10 acres and a town lot and buildings in Mt Pleasant. 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. Destructive 'Super Pigs' From Canada Threaten the Northern U.S. Did an Ancient Magnetic Field Reversal Cause Chaos for Life on Earth 42,000 Years Ago? See scarborough2003, p.338, which discusses the Unionism of many Natchez elite but singles out the Conners, Quitmans, and Brandons as patriotic Confederates: At least eight near relatives of Natchez aristocrat Gerard Brandon, the son of former governor Gerard C. Brandon, served in the military. Robertson offers him use of land, offers to put the deal in writing in Belton. Then, in 1878, jurors ruled that Ward should pay Wood for her enslavement. The Prospect Hill Plantation is without a doubt one of the most historically significant sites in the state. Grain and food were raised for local use. Wood suffered another, unexpected setback in 1874 when her lawyer was murdered by a clients husband in an unrelated divorce case. But these people were writing down their inventory as if you would for insurance purposes. In view of all this he is satisfied he brought as many slaves as he ought to have done, (for sometimes I have regreted [sic] I did not bring more) for after hiring out a good lot I have now more than I can find work for & am feeding on an expense which will in one or two years (if the war continues that long, but I sometimes wish it was over now) will make them cost very high. He goes down the Brassos on Thursday to get corn, sees some fine plantations, the people look more like home folks, but Texas shows out, viz. 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. Today, many reparations advocates look to legislation, targeting governments for their complicity in slavery and white supremacy. A Natchez refugee visits and told of many negroes who went to Yankees, that Billy Sanderson had killed himself drinking with them, that Freds wife had been hung, that Merrill was giving them dinner parties &c. but had heard never a word of my family. Feelings of worry and suspense. 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 search for enslaved ancestors requires research in the records of slaveholding families. "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. The trial began only after eight years of litigation, leaving Wood to wonder if she would ever get justice. Historic house in Mississippi, United States, U.S. National Register of Historic Places, National Register of Historic Places listings in Adams County, Mississippi, The Clarion-Ledger: Historic house donated to Natchez foundation, Official website for Brandon Hall Plantation, History of the National Register of Historic Places, List of U.S. National Historic Landmarks by state, List of jails and prisons on the National Register of Historic Places, University and college buildings listed on the National Register of Historic Places, National Register of Historic Places portal, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Brandon_Hall_(Washington,_Mississippi)&oldid=1090743436, Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Mississippi, National Register of Historic Places in Adams County, Mississippi, Articles using NRISref without a reference number, Short description is different from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 31 May 2022, at 03:54. 1842 wing of the residence. 468 Filed Under: Mississippi Natchez Natchez Most rural enslaved people were owned by masters who had 10-20 enslaved people, who often were housed in closer proximity to masters, perhaps sharing housing, and perhaps having access to closer relations with their masters than plantation slaves had. Went to pay for some corn. This article is a selection from the September 2019 issue of Smithsonian magazine. W.?) Zebulon Ward was their man. and Mimy and three children $2505. I whippped him a little. Anthony has the money. It wasn't 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. He then traveled on to Texas via these stops, according to a list on an unnumbered page of his journal: If he followed marked roads out of Alexandria to the Sabine River, then he would have gone through Natchitoches, but that road would have taken him to Milam, Texas, not Sabinetown. Ward began to plot with a group of these notorious "slave catchers." 5-11: a debit and credit ledger for the trip; debits begin on 5 (numbered by Brandon as 7) and then are carried over on 8 through 11, with a final total (summed by me from Brandons subtotals) of $19,145.60 in expenses by February 2; credits begin page 6 (numbered by Brandon as 8) and then continue on 13 to 14, where a final total made by Brandon on February 2 shows $10,168.25 in credits, Begin August 1863 entry. (The plantations were part of his wife's dowry.) I sowed the cotton, hoed the cotton, and picked the cotton. 1845, d. 1909), Charlotte Lottie Brandon (b. Descendants identify the man in this photograph, found on Ancestry.com, as Brandon. From 1914 until the present, Brandon Hall Plantation has had ten owners. In 1809 the property was sold at public auction to William Lock Chew for the sum of $7,000. 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." Going directly from Alexandria to Sabinetown suggests that he crossed the swampy region between those places directly, avoiding the roads. Stayed at a house in which the Ladies (3) of the house washed their feet (in our presence) in the common wash pan. Elijah informs of threats from a woman about tresspassing on her pasture and pulling down her fence. This mansion on the outskirts of Natchez was once the centerpiece of a large cotton plantation located on the Natchez Trace. 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,. Sometimes its a real detective work. Eats well on the road. : Estate of Sara Brandon Rickey, 2000), 79, available at Historic Natchez Foundation., In 1872, Brandon was still in a legal dispute over an assumption of debt on a plantation he purchased in Tensas Parish (LA) from Hughes, who moved to Texas in 1862 or 1863. I suffer much mentally.. p.4: Some more deaths; notes about wagon loads, presumably of cotton bales; ferriage and tolls on the route to Texas, pp. 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. | READ MORE. She had not forgotten Ward and sued him the following year. Poole gone to the field. Homesick thoughts, trying to read his Bible. Visits another refugee family, hears some incidents they had heard of the occupation of Natchez. Legal trouble with Hughes.12 Talks to lawyer A. It would be 16 years before Wood set foot in Ohio again. I first learned of Wood from two interviews she gave to reporters in the 1870s. Headed back to TX today using same route Brandon took with slaves, including Wood, in 1863. The study found 3,777 Negro slave owners in the United States. Slavery in Virginia is not just a Virginia story. Evangeline Wayne is seated near the center, in a cream-colored coat. I created this site because I have a passion for old houses! For them, the money Henrietta Wood demanded for her enslavement made a long-lasting difference. Able. He strikes new deal with Able to settle on his land: he could let me heave as much land as Col. R. had offered, with 300 acres in cultivation, 2 cabins, & corn in the ground at $1 per barrel, and let me have the use of a mill , would charge $5 an acre for the cleared land & let me pay for it by picking cotton at $1 per 100 pounds. Brandon agrees. He had cautioned the jurors against an excessive award, claiming falsely that many former slaveholders already regretted slavery. Sanderson hung back in Natchez. is brandon hall plantation haunted? The first plantations in the Americas of sugar cane, cocoa, tobacco, and cotton were maintained and harvested by African slaves controlled by European masters. The Robertson County Tax Rolls for 1866 show him with 25 horses and no real estate. Harriss said many architectural features were kept true to the original design when the house was renovated in. Arranges situation for Phoebe.11 Feels gloomy, homesick. Some counties mentioned in Brandons diary, cropped from Texas County Map (1860), Vicksburg veterans continue their critiques of planters who stay at home to take care of our negroes. They hoped to hear of evry planter there losing everything they had, for they had done but little to deserve success.. In 1809 the property was sold at public auction to William Lock Chew for the sum of $7,000. ), so Poole (overseer) left, presumably with slaves. I worked under the meanest overseers, and got flogged and flogged, until I thought I should die.". Travels to Belton in buggy. 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. In the first half of the 19th century, there were as many as 85 slaves working at the plantation. Some pictures of the Brandon cemetery are on Flickr. The letter continued: Jane and three children brought $2795. 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. Meat at Bulls but so hard & dry no one could eat it. Meats Esquire Jones, an opponent of secession who fears the postwar. If you are interested in a house, all information, including: price, status, neighborhood, condition, etc., must be independently verified. They lived in this original dwelling until 1853, when they began construction of Brandon Hall which was completed in 1856. It remains the largest known sum ever granted by a U.S. court in restitution for slavery. 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. It once belonged to Captain Isaac Ross, who freed his slaves at the time of his death. The "finest" house at the Brandon Hall Plantation, for example, was built by the enslaved. Yet Wood v. Ward did not set a sweeping legal precedent. Pleasant, South Carolina, is one of America's oldest working plantations, with a history dating back to 1681. 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.

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