Carter said the original documents digitized on the site will help her uncover more of her own familys history in Virginia, as well as help her students learn about the era. For them, the money Henrietta Wood demanded for her enslavement made a long-lasting difference. Slave traders met the demand by buying slaves in Virginia, Kentucky and Maryland and selling them in the cotton states. The value of his real estate was $170,000 and his personal estate was $400,000. The Liberator: A Weekly Newspaper Devoted to the Cause of Good Government and the Advancement of the American Negro, Los Angeles, California, 29 November 1912, page 5. The postwar constitutional amendments that abolished slavery and extended national citizenship to ex-slaves enabled Wood to pursue Ward in federal court. In December 2009 the home was purchased by Ron and Kathy Garber of Lafayette, Louisiana, who opened it for Bed and Breakfast accommodation. Her captors' destination was Lexington, Kentucky, where prices for slaves had risen with the Southern cotton economy. Now she watched nervously as the 12 jurors returned to their seats. The building is an example of the fast-disappearing service structures that once were a ubiquitous feature of the Southern agrarian landscape. Begins December 27 entry. Elsewhere in the database is a stark description of the sale of slaves and goods in a February 11, 1858, typed letter from slaveholder William Daniel Cabell of Benvenue in Nelson County, Virginia, to his wife, Elizabeth Nicholas Cabell. 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. They carried cane knives (used . All rights reserved. He helped Wood file a lawsuit in Cincinnati against Ward, now a wealthy man living in Lexington. This site contains affiliate links to products. W.?) Theyll be able to take it and grow from that.. Then, in 1848, Jane Cirode went to a county courthouse and registered Wood as free. By the 3rd he paid $53 for a ferry at Trinity, Louisiana (likely to cross the Black River), and then paid $38 to cross Little River on the 7th. Whether she succeeded in that quest is unknownbut she did find a lawyer, Harvey Myers. Celebrates Christmas with Graves and Dr. Saving Slave Houses Project Preservationist Jobie Hill gave a tour of the Brandon Plantation in southern Virginia and talked about her Saving Slave Houses project and read more Report. Slavery was eventually abolished at the conclusion of the Civil War in 1865. Prince George County: Brandon. Anyone who knows me well knows that my imaginary dream house is a Spanish villa or a Colonial period house. When he died in 1951, after a long career as a lawyer, he left behind a large clan of descendants who were able to launch professional careers of their own, even as redlining and other racially discriminatory practices put a chokehold on the South Side neighborhoods where they lived. He says he has made some rough notes of incidents to share with her and intended to send them with Jim (his son) but cannot well do without the book., Based on his diary of the trip, Brandon left in early summer 1863. She would one day recall that period of her life as a "sweet taste of liberty.". Has dinner with a woman who is hard on all who were not in the army, two soldiers from Vicksburg also critical of Mississippians. Poole gone to the field. Homesick thoughts, trying to read his Bible. But Wood's name never made it into the history books. The Boone Hall Plantation, located in Mt. That means many American families with slave ancestors could have roots in Virginia, Levengood said. It reaches across all of the slave South, Levengood said. Henrietta Woods story began two centuries ago with her birth in northern Kentucky. Stayed at a house in which the Ladies (3) of the house washed their feet (in our presence) in the common wash pan. Gerard Brandon (1818-1874) was the Mississippi planter who purchased Henrietta Wood and then took her to Robertson County, Texas, during the Civil War. Wood secretly told her story to a sympathetic innkeeper who followed her to Lexington, where a lawsuit was filed on her behalf asserting that she was free. Captivating Houses, CNNs Athena Jones reported from Richmond, Virginia and Michael Martinez contributed from Los Angeles. She is described as the familys faithful colored servant Henrietta. It once belonged to Captain Isaac Ross, who freed his slaves at the time of his death. Captivating Houses is NOT a real estate company, it is an opinion-based blog and does NOT represent any property or agency. A native Kentuckian who had recently moved to Covington, just across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, Ward became a deputy sheriff in 1853. Wards lawyers stalled, claiming that her failed antebellum suit for freedom proved his innocence. In the eyes of Kentucky law, Wood was a slave. Advertising Notice The letter continued: Jane and three children brought $2795. 1872 - The plantation was sold to Henry Horlbeck's two sons, Frederick Henry Horlbeck and John S. Horlbeck ( 7 ). Wood suffered another, unexpected setback in 1874, when her lawyer was murdered by a client's husband in an unrelated divorce case. She was suing him for $20,000 in reparations. The traders put Wood up for sale at Natchez's infamous Forks of the Road slave market. The antique papers turned out to mention slaves. See Gerard Brandon, The Brandon Family, ed. In 1834, the teenager was bought by a merchant in Louisville and taken from her family. This database is a compilation of information on over four thousand slaves from Louisiana who were involved in manumission (the formal emancipation from slavery) between 1719 and 1820. "I sowed the cotton, hoed the cotton, and picked the cotton. More information can also be found at brandonhallplantation.com. Ward's lawyers stalled, claiming that Wood's failed antebellum suit for freedom proved his innocence. A Brief History of the Salem Witch Trials. So using a $100,000 corporate grant from Dominion, one of the nations largest producers and transporters of energy, society researchers began examining some of its 8 million manuscripts that Virginia residents have been giving to the historical society since its founding in 1831. The plantation, founded in 1681, is one of the oldest working plantations in the US. The Robertson County Tax Rolls for 1866 show him with 25 horses and no real estate. And when the carriage finally rolled to a stop outside of Covington, Wards men were waiting. On April 17, 1878, twelve white jurors entered a federal courtroom in Cincinnati, Ohio, to deliver the verdict in a now-forgotten lawsuit about American slavery. The Agricultural census of 1860 shows 250 improved acres, 450 unimproved, valued at $10,000. The bulk of his papers are in several collections at Historic Natchez Foundation. Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, a New Orleans native who has devoted much of her life to the study of slavery, spent 15 years in the courthouses of Louisiana, as well as in archives in Spain, France and. The mill is out of fix, & too bad to get up a beef and all hands are on short rations. Thoughts of home. The advanced search fields include the slaves first name or last name; gender; occupation; owners last name; date range; and record type. But Woods award, however insufficient, was not ineffectual. Robertson offers him use of land, offers to put the deal in writing in Belton. how Texas has been over stated. Now, she watched nervously as the 12 jurors returned to their seats. I first learned of Wood from two interviews she gave to reporters in the 1870s. It would be 16 years before Wood set foot in Ohio again. 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.. Thats when you have to be creative.. "My mistress gave me my freedom," Wood later said, "and my papers were recorded." Ward planned to make Wood the latest victim of this trade, but she resolved to fight. Photograph: Jessica Crawford. Begins September 28 entry. She must be about 85 years old now. Cirodes daughter and son-in-law, Josephine and Robert White, still lived in Kentucky and disagreed with Jane Cirodes manumission of Wood; they viewed her as their inheritance. Over 700 Black men and women were enslaved on this plantation. 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. Begins October 3 entry. Suggest edits to improve what we show. Wood secretly told her story to a sympathetic innkeeper who followed her to Lexington, where a lawsuit was filed on her behalf asserting that she was free. 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. Sometimes its a real detective work. Today, many reparations advocates look to legislation, targeting governments for their complicity in slavery and white supremacy. 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. Most slaves were by their owners design and eventually by law forbidden to learn how to read and write, so they didnt leave us material that so many figures in the past did, Levengood said. 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. 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. Begins August 3 entry at came near Dr.Milners Spring. Unfortunately Charlotte Brandon Stanton Merrill had little time to enjoy her undivided ownership of Brandon Hall because on January 27, 1914 the plantation, house and land, was sold at auction to one George Hightower as a result of default on promissory notes held by the First Natchez Bank. This inventory lists the names, ages and capabilities of Arnold's newly . Brandon was one of many Refugees to Texas who took Refugeed Slaves there to escape emancipating Union armies. If you are interested in a house, all information, including: price, status, neighborhood, condition, etc., must be independently verified. A NCGenWeb Special Project Documented Slave Plantations of North Carolina is a comprehensive database of various plantations derived from a variety of information mediums. 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. Begins August 11 entry. Her official freedom papers, at a courthouse in Cincinnati, had been destroyed in an 1849 fire, and her kidnappers had confiscated her personal copy. They note that disfranchisement and segregation only worsened the racial wealth gap, which was established under slavery and remains today. The sale included 1,514 7 /10 acres and a town lot and buildings in Mt Pleasant. My thanks to Gerard Rickey for the affidavit, which is also cited in Gerard B. Rickey and Alan C. Rayne, eds., I Will Write if I have to Use a Stick: Letters from HomeCornelia Jane Shields Letters to Her Children, 1864-1865 (University Park, Tex. The plaintiff was Henrietta Wood, described by a reporter at the time as "a spectacled negro woman, apparently 60 years old." ( photo) Brandon House , ca. Between 1820 and 1860, nearly one million people were sold down the river.. The whole country bleeds and is in mourning. Gerard Brandon, one of the largest slaveholders in the South, bought Wood and took her to his house, Brandon Hall, on the Natchez Trace. 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. . 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. Brandon was a very rich man, Wood later said. 2. Vital statistics in the below list draw on the Brandon Children website and a public family tree on Ancestry. The defendant was Zebulon Ward, a white man who had enslaved Wood 25 years before. Wood was an early contributor to a long tradition of formerly enslaved people and their descendants demanding redress. did desi arnaz jr have a stroke; moose tracks vs cow tracks ice cream This was the most valuable property they owned, and they wanted to make sure it was recorded. (She is still living this October 6, 1932. When possible, I have also noted the dates of Brandons entries. #ResearchRoadTrip pic.twitter.com/7lk820jLbt. The Week is part of Future plc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. The unfolding of our country's history with slavery, at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and its surrounding streets, is critical for all Americans to understand. 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). Mandys child died. 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. Wood suffered another, unexpected setback in 1874 when her lawyer was murdered by a clients husband in an unrelated divorce case. Brandon Hall Briars Plantation: Senderson Brighton Plantation :Mosby Brighton Woods Browmers Prissint: Adams Buckhunt Plantation: Mercer Canowa Plantation (on the Mississippi River): McAlroy, Metcalf Canowa Plantation (at Gaillards Lake): Ligon Carthage Plantation: Minor Cherry Grove Clermont Plantation: Nevitt Clifford Plantation Cliffs Plantation W. Caleb McDaniel is a professor of history at Rice University. Wood was an early contributor to a long tradition of formerly enslaved people and their descendants demanding redress. She spent the first nights of her captivity locked inside two roadside inns. An affidavit provided by Brandon in a later lawsuit indicates he departed on July 1.5. We sold all the negros 43 in number at astonishingly large prices the whole amounting to $32016. After Brandon and his wife died, the property changed hand numerous times, and with each sale, the vast acreage diminished. Those Virginia families found the old, handwritten papers in attics, basements or desk drawers, Levengood said. Slaves from West Africa were first brought over to grow rice. She was suing him for $20,000 in reparations. This article originally appeared in Smithsonian Magazine. His wife Charlotte (age 49) and his children Mary (15) and Charles (5) are listed as fellow members of the household. More critical talk from his dinner partners about rich planters, whose negroes are dressed better than Texas soldiers. Brandon feels it unfair but holds his peace. I wanted to be able to see and connect the dots.. Starts with Sandy for Col. Robertson at Salado (see Elijah Robertson). He owned 700 to 800 slaves on several plantations, and he "put me to work at once in the cotton field," she said. Brandon Hall in Natchez, MS was built by Gerard Brandon and his wife Charlotte (Hoggatt). 1890 ( photo) The Briars , (aka Briers), built 1814-18 possibly by John Perkins, Natchez. All they needed was someone to do the dirty work of enslaving her again. Nonetheless, I have always been conflicted about plantation-style homes. One is hiring negroes to go 300 miles west for the government. Brandon sends 40. Even "Juneteenth," the day in June 1865 when Union soldiers arrived in Texas to enforce emancipation, did not liberate Wood. Ella Brandon Stantons daughter, Charlotte Brandon (1866-1936), married Dunbar Surget Merrill. That story began two centuries ago with Wood's birth in northern Kentucky. In 1809 the property was sold at public auction to William Lock Chew for the sum of $7,000. They also said that Wards alleged crimes had occurred too far in the pasta recurring argument against reparations. Harriss said many architectural features were kept true to the original design when the house was renovated in. 2023 Smithsonian Magazine : Estate of Sara Brandon Rickey, 2000), 63n6., Thanks to Will Jones for locating Brandons name in the county tax rolls as part of his RA Assignments for Fall 2015., See Map of Robertson County, Portal to Texas History., Sandersons 72 slaves, valued at $64,800 appear in the Freestone County Tax Roles for 1864. Reprinted with permission from Smithsonian Enterprises. Cirode returned to France in 1844, abandoning his wife, Jane, who eventually took Wood with her to Ohio, a free state. Gerod Brandon appears on the 1864 County Tax Rolls for Robertson County with no real estate, but 270 slaves valued at $108,000, as well as $5000 in Confederate Notes and $6,125 in horses, cattle, and other property. Terms of Use She was soon sold again, to a French immigrant, William Cirode, who took her to New Orleans. Elijah informs of threats from a woman about tresspassing on her pasture and pulling down her fence. Wipple preach. He was sent a bottle of wine, jelly cake, & pies. After her suit, she moved with her son to Chicago. My children must thank me for the attempt to save [?] Report of a Mrs. Construction on the home began in 1853 and it was completed in 1856.3, Slave schedules for the 1860 Census confirm Brandons large slaveholdings. 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. Begins December 24 entry. and Mimy and three children $2505. They led me to archives in nine states in search of her story, which I tell in full for the first time in my new book, Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America. 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! It remains the largest known sum ever granted by a U.S. court in restitution for slavery. 33 slave dwellings were also noted. Bowens was born at Drayton in 1908, and returned to Charleston from Chicago in the 1970s. This mansion on the outskirts of Natchez was once the centerpiece of a large cotton plantation located on the Natchez Trace. Wood was never allowed to testify, however, and Ward denied her claims. I really sometimes wish the war was ended, & would rejoice to hear the glad tidings of peace. Begins August 30 entry awakened by a fuss about eggs & a chicken and a slave who has robbed a hen house of a neighbor last night. Learned of others who had been to a poor mans house to beg bread & meat, another robbery of rye to make coffee. Brandon vexed, curses. 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