A Tale of Two Plantations

Richard S. Dunn

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9780674745063
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Latin American & Caribbean History
• Index: History

Forty years ago, after publication of his pathbreaking book Sugar and Slaves, Richard Dunn began an intensive investigation of two thousand slaves living on two plantations, one in North America and one in the Caribbean. Digging deeply into the archives, he has reconstructed the individual lives and collective experiences of three generations of slaves on the Mesopotamia sugar estate in Jamaica and the Mount Airy plantation in tidewater Virginia, to understand the starkly different forms slavery could take. Dunn's stunning achievement is a rich and compelling history of bondage in two very different Atlantic world settings.From the mid-eighteenth century to emancipation in 1834, life in Mesopotamia was shaped and stunted by deadly work regimens, rampant disease, and dependence on the slave trade for new laborers. At Mount Airy, where the population continually expanded until emancipation in 1865, the "surplus" slaves were sold or moved to distant work sites, and families were routinely broken up. Over two hundred of these Virginia slaves were sent eight hundred miles to the Cotton South.In the genealogies that Dunn has painstakingly assembled, we can trace a Mesopotamia fieldhand through every stage of her bondage, and contrast her harsh treatment with the fortunes of her rebellious mulatto son and clever quadroon granddaughter. We track a Mount Airy craftworker through a stormy life of interracial sex, escape, and family breakup. The details of individuals' lives enable us to grasp the full experience of both slave communities as they labored and loved, and ultimately became free.

1

Mesopotamia versus Mount Airy: The Demographic Contrast

WHEN PHILIP CURTIN PUBLISHED The Atlantic Slave Trade in 1969, he boldly discarded previous estimates that fifteen million or more Africans had been shipped to the New World. Instead, he postulated that a total of 9,391,000 African slaves were landed in the Americas, with 4,683,000 coming to the Caribbean islands and 399,000 to North America.¹ Critics insisted that Curtin’s total of less than ten million was far too low, but what struck me when I read his book was the revised shape that he gave to the distribution of the transatlantic slave trade. He was one of the first historians to emphasize that in the grand scheme of things the shipment of African captives to what is now the United States was relatively small, and that the importation to the Caribbean sugar islands was a great deal larger. In the forty-five years since Curtin published his book, investigators have vastly improved our understanding of the transatlantic slave trade, and Curtin’s figures still look pretty good. In 2001, after analyzing the records of 27,000 slave voyages, David Eltis calculated that 9,468,000 Africans were landed in America, with 4,371,100 coming to the Caribbean and 361,100 to North America.² By 2013 the editors of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, having analyzed 35,000 slave voyages, arrived at a larger total, estimating that 10,702,656 Africans landed in the Americas, with 5,065,117 coming to the Caribbean and 388,747 to North America.³ With these revisions, the proportion of African captives landed in the Caribbean dropped from Curtin’s 49.8 percent to 47.3 percent, and the North American proportion also dropped from Curtin’s 4.2 percent to 3.6 percent, leaving the relation between the two destinations much the same. It is now indisputable that twelve or thirteen African slaves were brought to the Caribbean for every one African slave brought to North America.

The reason for this huge disparity is demographic. The Africans who were landed in North America expanded their numbers through natural increase, whereas the Africans brought to the Caribbean died off and were continually replaced with new slaves. Thus, the slaves in Jamaica and Virginia—the two largest American slave societies established by the British—had dramatically different population histories. Approximately 1,017,000 slaves were imported from Africa to Jamaica between the English conquest in 1655 and the close of the slave trade in 1807.⁴ Some 210,000 of these people were reexported to the Spanish colonies, but the rest—over 800,000 African slaves—were sold to the Jamaican planters.⁵ Despite this huge importation, the attrition rate in Jamaica was so high that in 1807 there were only about 385,000 people of African origin living on the island: 355,000 slaves and 30,000 free colored. In Virginia, by contrast, about 101,000 slaves were imported from Africa between 1607 and 1778, and then the Virginia state government prohibited further importation of slaves because they had as many African slaves as they wanted.⁶ Indeed, the Virginia slave population quickly quadrupled through natural increase, and in 1807 the Old Dominion had a larger population of African origin than Jamaica: 380,000 slaves and 30,000 free blacks.

To get a firsthand sense of what population decrease meant for the Jamaica slaves and what population increase meant for the Virginia slaves, we can compare the demographic history of Mesopotamia in western Jamaica with the demographic history of Mount Airy in Tidewater Virginia. At Mesopotamia there were 331 more recorded slave deaths than births between 1762 and 1833, and the owners—Joseph Foster Barham I (1729–1789) and his son Joseph Foster Barham II (1759–1832)—continually brought in new slaves in order to keep the place going. At Mount Airy there were 293 more recorded births than deaths between 1809 and 1863, and the owners—John Tayloe III (1771–1828) and his son William Henry Tayloe (1799–1871)—took full advantage of this population growth. They moved their surplus laborers to new work sites or made money by selling them. The demographic contrast between these two plantations epitomizes the most fundamental difference between Caribbean and Old South slavery.

Compounding the demographic disparity was another very important underlying difference: the role of the slaveholding owners on these two plantations. The Barhams, along with a great many other British Caribbean planters, were absentee proprietors who lived in England. They delegated the management of Mesopotamia to attorneys in Jamaica who hired and fired the overseers and other white staff members and had very little direct knowledge of their slaves. The scene at Mount Airy was a world apart. Here the Tayloes were hands-on managers, like almost all southern slaveholders. They lived among their slaves and knew them personally.

Mesopotamia

The detailed Mesopotamia inventories dating from 1762 to 1833 that the two Joseph Foster Barhams received in England record a total slave population of 1,103 males and females. Appendix 1 tabulates the population changes under the elder Barham during the years 1762–1789, followed by the changes under his son’s management during the years 1790–1833. The birth and death figures drive all of the other numbers. During this seventy-two-year span there were 420 recorded births (5.8 per annum) as against 751 deaths (10.4 per annum). These totals are by no means complete. Though the Barhams’ bookkeepers kept slave birth and death registers, they never reported abortions or miscarriages and only occasionally reported stillbirths, and they seem to have omitted a large number of infants who died within a few hours or days after birth. The true birth total was undoubtedly much higher than 420, which would make the true death total equally higher. The bottom line was the same—331 more deaths than births.

To sustain their Mesopotamia workforce, the Barhams bought 415 new slaves between 1762 and 1833—137 directly from the African slave ships and 278 from other estates in Jamaica. The first Joseph Foster Barham had a slave population of 268 in 1762 that dipped to a low of 238 in 1769, stabilized at around 260 throughout the 1770s, then climbed to 303 in 1786. The second Joseph Foster Barham made major purchases that expanded the population to a peak of 383 in 1792 and to a higher peak of 421 in 1820, after which he stopped buying and the total shrank year by year down to 329 in 1833. Though a great many slaves ran away temporarily, there was very little permanent movement out of the estate. Only seven slaves escaped for good, another four chronic runaways were sold for transportation off the island, and twelve mulattoes (all fathered by the white men who managed the estate) were manumitted. A particularly interesting feature of the Mesopotamia population is the gender balance, which kept shifting. A female majority in the earliest Mesopotamia 1727 inventory morphed into parity in 1736 and into strong male dominance in the inventories from 1751 to 1762. The males continued firmly in the majority through the 1790s, then gender parity was briefly reestablished in 1807–1810, after which (except for the year 1825) the females held the majority during the final twenty-four years of slavery.

To put the population figures of 1762–1833 in perspective, we need to look back to the early days of this estate. In the 1670s Edmund Stephenson staked out 540 acres on the Cabarita River and named his plantation Mesopotamia (“land of rivers”), in evocation of the ancient region watered by the Tigris and Euphrates.⁷ Stephenson quickly entered into sugar production. A detailed map of Jamaica, published in 1684, identifies his sugar works on the Cabarita River, one of only seven sugar estates at this date in the Westmoreland plain.⁸ We know nothing about Edmund Stephenson’s sugar making, but he must have been working his crop with slave laborers. There is rather more information about his son Ephraim, who expanded operations at Mesopotamia. Ephraim Stephenson added 2,000 acres along the Cabarita River to his father’s property between 1695 and 1705. When he died in 1726 at the age of sixty, his estate (exclusive of land and buildings) was valued at £5,669. His most valuable asset was a cadre of ninety slaves.⁹

Ephraim Stephenson’s probate inventory, taken in August 1727, lists the slaves he held at Mesopotamia by name and value, but unfortunately not by age. Only the two drivers, a distiller, a carpenter, and the ten house servants were identified by occupation. There were forty-one “Negroe” men and boys, forty-eight “Negroe” women and girls, and one nameless “Indian Girle.” The list is crude, but circumstantial evidence indicates that these slaves were young, healthy, and durable. Only two men were identified as “old.” Sixty-seven of these people reappear on the next surviving Mesopotamia inventory, taken in 1736, and forty-two on the 1744 inventory; and twenty-two of them show up thirty-five years later on the 1762 inventory—the first Mesopotamia listing to assign ages to the slaves.

Several of Ephraim Stephenson’s slaves were still living at Mesopotamia well beyond 1762. Parry was listed as a driver of a field gang in 1727, and according to his 1762 age statement he was then about twenty-five years old. Parry was identified in subsequent Mesopotamia inventories as a driver in 1736, 1743, 1744, 1757, and 1762 (when he was said to be sixty years old). He stopped working in 1764 but lived to November 1783, when he died at about eighty-two. Kickery, a field hand about twenty years old with an unidentified baby in 1727, became a domestic and then a midwife; she was said to be fifty-five in 1762 and was still working as a midwife when she died at about seventy-two in May 1779.¹⁰ Love, a girl of about fifteen in 1727, apparently had numerous children, none of whom are identified in the records. She worked in the field gang for some forty years, was a nonworker for another thirty years, and died at about eighty-three in December 1794.¹¹ Primus, a boy of about ten in 1727, was a mule man in 1736, and from 1744 to 1780 he worked as a distiller; he was said to be forty-five in 1762 and died in February 1795 at about seventy-eight. Phillis, a girl of about five in 1727, was a forty-year-old field hand in 1762 who was disabled by illness in most years from 1764 to 1801; she died at about age eighty. Ralph, the younger brother of Primus and Love, was also a child of about five in 1727; he became successively a field worker, a driver, and a watchman, and died at about eighty-one in March 1802.

The careers of these six Stephenson slaves demonstrate that despite the very high death rate it was possible to survive past age seventy, or even past eighty. We will meet numerous other long-lived Mesopotamians. All of the six except Phillis had active working careers of at least forty years, which was not unusual. All of them except Kickery spent many years in nonworking retirement, another fairly common pattern at Mesopotamia. Primus became blind in old age; Parry was incapacitated for twenty years, Phillis for twenty-two years, and Love for thirty years. Parry, Phillis, and Love were unusually long-term invalids, but it should be emphasized that the Mesopotamia workers who escaped early death often experienced protracted debility in old age.

When the owner of Mesopotamia, Ephraim Stephenson, died in 1726, he had no living children and willed all of his property to his widow, Mary. This lady needed a husband in order to operate Mesopotamia, and by August 1727 she had married a man named Heith. When Heith also died, Mary took a third husband in early 1728, a Jamaica physician named Dr. Henry Barham (1692–1746).¹² Barham was the son of a naturalist also named Henry Barham who was an intellectual of some note. The elder Barham wrote a treatise about Jamaican flora and fauna, corresponded with Sir Hans Sloane, and was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1717.¹³ The younger Barham was a more pragmatic type who owned Spring Plantation, adjacent to Mesopotamia, and rose to wealth by marrying well. After marrying Mary Stephenson Heith and acquiring control of Mesopotamia, Barham borrowed money from several Kingston merchants between 1728 and 1736 to buy additional land, and he greatly expanded the Mesopotamia labor force.¹⁴ We have no record of when and where Barham acquired his new slaves, nor how much they cost, nor how much money he was making from sugar and rum sales during the 1730s. But the doctor was doing well enough that he could think about retiring from direct management and living in England. He had strong motivation for doing so, because in 1731 his sister Elizabeth died at Mesopotamia, and in May 1735 his wife Mary and her sister Sarah Arcedeckne both died at Mesopotamia.¹⁵ Henry determined to get away from the unhealthy Westmoreland climate before the same thing happened to him. So in April 1736 he departed for England, never to return.

Just before leaving Jamaica, Henry Barham took an inventory of his 248 Mesopotamia slaves—nearly triple the number in 1727.¹⁶ There were 124 males and 124 females listed by name and occupation. Seventy-four of these people were still living at Mesopotamia in 1762, and they form the nucleus of the population we will be examining. Ages are not stated, but this population—like the Mesopotamia population in 1727—must have been young and vigorous. Most of the adults had been purchased between 1727 and 1736, and if they came from Africa they would have been in their teens or twenties on arrival at Mesopotamia. All the slaves had occupations except for twenty-six boys and thirty girls who are described as “not yet fitt to work.” If this statement is taken literally, it means that 23 percent of the Mesopotamia slaves in 1736 were under the age of seven or eight—the age at which children were routinely put to work on Jamaican sugar estates. And the statement may be literally true. Twenty-one of these “not yet fitt to work” people were still living at Mesopotamia in 1762, and when their stated ages are projected backward, it turns out that fifteen of them would have been seven or younger in 1736, and eighteen would have been under age ten. So it seems quite likely that there were a great many young nonworking children in 1736—an indicator of natural population increase, and a situation that would soon change.

After 1736 the Mesopotamia slaves very rarely saw their masters. Dr. Henry Barham retired permanently to England, leaving the management of his Jamaican property to his medical colleague Dr. James Paterson. As soon as he reached England, Barham married again, this time to a wealthy widow he had known in Jamaica named Elizabeth Smith Foster Ayscough.¹⁷ This lady had a large family by her first husband, John Foster, who died in 1731 leaving five Jamaica sugar plantations staffed by 768 slaves, valued at £33,958.¹⁸ Her second husband, another Jamaica planter named John Ayscough, died in 1735 or 1736. Barham became stepfather to Elizabeth’s children, five Foster boys and two Foster girls, and he kept a town house on Grosvenor Street in London and a country seat at Staines for his new family. He took a special interest in his youngest stepson, Joseph Foster, whose Jamaican inheritance—a newly settled sugar plantation named Island in St. Elizabeth parish—was considerably smaller than the older Foster boys’ portions.¹⁹ Barham had no children of his own, so he bequeathed his Mesopotamia estate to Joseph on condition that the boy adopt the surname Barham, with the further stipulation that Joseph’s mother have lifetime income from the property.²⁰ Joseph complied with these requirements. Thus, when Henry Barham died in 1746, his widow, Elizabeth Barham, took over the estate, and Joseph became the putative owner in 1750 when he reached his majority and the full-scale operator six years later at his mother’s death in 1756.

Joseph Foster Barham I is a central figure in our story, the first of the four slaveholders who compiled the records upon which this book is based. Unfortunately, most of his personal papers have not survived, so a great many aspects of his life are unknown. Furthermore, the Jamaica correspondence that he did preserve is very one-sided. Unlike his son, Joseph I almost never made copies of the letters he wrote to his attorneys and overseers, though he did keep a good many of their replies. In order to get at his thoughts and motivations, we have to puzzle out his views from the responses that his Jamaica correspondents sent to him. Thus, Joseph I is a more shadowy personage than Joseph II or than either John Tayloe III or William Henry Tayloe....