Moses and Sarah, bought and sold by Joseph Duncan ~ A Friend of Friends Friday

I recently spent a couple days at the library in Jonesborough, TN reviewing some of their microfilm records. I was startled to find two bills of sale recorded at the same November 1810 Session that involved a Joseph Duncan buying and selling two slaves. Duncan (either the Joseph born in 1751 or his son, Joseph, born 1788) purchased a man, Moses, and and woman, Sarah, in November 1809 and sold them two months later to Elias Bowman. The Duncans were closely associated with the Allison family, though I do not have Frank Allison listed in my database. Joseph the younger was married to Polly Allison, a daughter of Robert Allison.  

It is not a surprise the Duncans owned slaves. They appear in census records as slave holders. But they also signed a petition around the same time as these sales asking the State Legislature to abolish or reform the slave laws. Here they appear more as slave traders. 

November Sessions 1810

A Bill of Sale from Joseph Duncan to Elias Bowman for a Negro man named Moses and a Negro woman named Sarah, dated the 22d day of January 1810  Acknowledged in open court by Joseph Duncan & recorded            50  

November Sessions 1810

A Bill of Sale from Frank Allison to Joseph Duncan for two negroes a man named Moses and a woman named Sarah, dated 23 day of November 1809  Acknowledged in open court by Frank Allison & recorded          


Sources
      Washington, Tennessee, Quarterly Court Minute Books Minute Feb 1809-Jan 1826: 90, Joseph Duncan Bill of Sale, 22 Jan 1810; Washington County Library Roll No. 130_Washington. 

      Washington, Tennessee, Quarterly Court Minute Books Minute Feb 1809-Jan 1826: 93, Frank Allison Bill of Sale, 23 Nov 1809; Washington County Library Roll No. 130_Washington. 

(A Digital) Treasure Chest Thursday: Tennessee Abolitionists

If I write that the best job I ever had actually paid me to sift through documents at the University of Michigan Archives (my heart still pounds at the memory), or that my favorite site to see in Chicago is the Newberry Library you will have some inkling of what a library rat I am.  Genealogy is really just an excuse to dig into those stacks.

One of the glories of the internet is that I can do some of that digging at home.  More and more universities, state archives and historical societies are scanning and posting some of their documents online.  I've mentioned before that the Library of Virginia's Chancery records have been enormously valuable in my research.  Another site that has yielded some wonderful finds is the University of Tennessee's website Tennessee Document History 1796-1850 which includes transcriptions and images of 2,000 documents.  There I found a 19th c. petition to abolish slavery from residents of Washington County signed by three of my great-grandfathers (one 4x and two 5x) as well as several other distant cousins and in-laws (shown below).  Several of the signers were slave owners themselves.

19th c. petition to abolish slavery, page 1

My great-grandfathers' signatures are on the second page (below), in the bottom half of the right column - Jos Duncan Sen, Isaac Mulkey and Jonathan Mulkey. I'd claim the James Duncan in the first column as another great-grand, but there were at least two James Duncans in the area at the time. I got a chill when I first saw this - something about seeing their actual handwriting. The petition is undated and while the website dates it as about 1800, it was probably written a few years later. Isaac Mulkey was born in 1788. It's unlikely he signed this when he was 12 years old.

It's not quite the same as being able to handle the documents themselves, but far more convenient.  Seeing these images, reading these documents puts my great-grands into an historical context that is far richer to me than birth or death dates. Finding that context is my greatest joy as a researcher.

page 2
This work is the property of the Special Collections Library, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching, and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text.  Published with permission.

Slaves listed in 1860 Washington County, Tennessee Census: An Update

In my earlier post about slaves being enumerated in the 1860 Washington County, TN census I decided to review the entire census to determine how many slaves were enumerated by given name.  In a cursory review of the census pages on Ancestry.com I found about 545 slaves enumerated and then crossed out and listed in the Slave Schedule.  This happened in 10 of the 19 districts Ancestry.com shows.  Only the named districts had slaves enumerated on the census.  There were none in the numbered districts.  There were also about 230 free African-Americans listed in the census.  They lived in 17 of the 19 districts.

I'm not guaranteeing my counting skills - especially since the second time I looked at the Slave Schedules I counted just under 1270 slaves versus the 953 I mentioned earlier.  Once I run out of fingers and toes my counting can get a little dicey. 

Fortunately someone with much better counting skills has already researched and written about this census in an article published in the National Genealogical Society Quarterly.  In her 2005 article “In Praise of William H. Crouch: The Enumeration of Slaves in the 1860 Census of Washington County, Tennessee” (Vol. 93, pp. 52-64) Suzanne Murray examines the census and its value for researching slave ancestry. 

Murray counted 617 slaves in nine districts.  Her article includes a table listing the number of slaves by surname (usually the owners’ names).  She found about 12% of the slaves listed in the 1860 census appeared in the 1870 Washington County, TN census under the same name.  She did not examine whether they appear under different surnames or suggest migration routes, but does suggest the extreme violence of the Civil War in East Tennessee may have impacted the numbers.  Finally, she included an example of using this census in conjunction with other census records to trace one slave family. 

It’s a wonderful article.  I’m so delighted she wrote it.  I did examine the 1870 census for any of the five McAdams slaves listed in 1860.  Only Charles McAdams, age 13 appears.  In 1860 he was enumerated in the household of my Thomas's brother, Samuel B. McAdams as one of three slaves.  No age was given.  Also listed were Sarah (age 24) and Hannah. 

1860 U.S. census, Washington Co., TN

Ten years later he is enumerated in the household of Ebenezer Barkley as a farm worker.  He is indexed on Ancestry.com as Carles McAdams.

1870 U.S. census, Washington Co., TN

I strongly suspect the McAdams slaves were inherited though the wives.  Samuel and Thomas McAdams each married daughters of slave owners.  Their parents were not slave owners, nor was Thomas a slave owner on earlier censuses.  Samuel did appear owning one slave in the 1850 Greene County, TN census.  Samuel McAdams married Ann Duncan, a daughter of Joseph and Polly Allison Duncan, on 3 Feb 1831 in Washington County.  His brother Thomas C. McAdams married Cynthia Stephenson, a daughter of John and Elizabeth Cloyd Stephenson, on 16 Jan 1835.  If I were to continue researching the McAdams slaves I would examine the Duncan and Stephenson in-laws.

Follow Friday: More than name studies

Two of my favorite websites share name study research done by meticulous researchers. Each is far, far more than a name study. Both include hundreds (or thousands) of abstracted deeds and legal records sorted by location that provide information about neighbors and extended family links. Both websites can be easily searched using Google or the find feature on your web browser.

Mary Ann Dobson, aka The Genealogy Bug, has posted her Duncan Research Files, which include a massive collection of abstracted records she has collected over decades of Duncan family research. Included is a 1991 revision of her book Some Duncan Families of Eastern Tennessee before 1800. For those researching in East Tennessee it's one-stop shopping - especially since there were several large Duncan families living there. Their marriages, land records and estates link them to dozens, if not hundreds of other families. Her notes, sources and website organization are superb and her work covers far more than East Tennessee. She has Duncan files for every state except Hawaii. Wonderful, generous work.

Carl Lawson, administrator for the Lawson Surname DNA Project, has organized his Lawson research into beautifully laid out timelines for 45 Virginia counties, emphasizing Colonial and Early Federal records. The Lancaster County Timeline, for example, includes hundreds of abstracts from 1648-1847. A quick search yields 8 references to Merediths and 7 references to Conways. There are also timelines for three North Carolina counties. Lawson, too, gives clear source information. I've found the timeline presentation so useful that I've adopted his timeline organization for my personal research log adding columns for source information and notes. Another generous researcher.

Hats off to Dobson and Lawson for sharing the fruits of their labors.