Brandon strictly instructs them not to trade with anyone. 73 Natchez Trace Pkwy,Natchez, Mississippi, 39120, 7 beds 8 baths 10,768 sqft 45 acres, Jackie Smith PAUL GREEN REALTORS 601-442-2768. It remains the largest known sum ever granted by a U.S. court in restitution for slavery. The free, public website also provides a high-resolution copy of the antique documents that identify the slave. about opposition to refugees, particularly if they had much property, and the slogan rich mans war & the poor mans fight. Another refugee who had fenced up a spring. I first learned of Wood from two interviews she gave to reporters in the 1870s. 2023 Cable News Network. The Brandons had numerous slaves and most likely used them for tobacco growing, resulting the in the prosperity that enabled the construction of the ca. whole race. Daisy Patterson Brandon Dale (Natchez: Daisy Patterson Brandon Dale, 2007), 72., Williams may be the Mississippi-born Walter Williams who died in 1959 at age 117, though that claim has been questioned., Phoebe appears to have been owned by Brandons brother Dr.James C. Brandon. All Rights Reserved. Horse foundered, took him to Middletons camp. Misses a dinner invitation from Graves. Few white Americans wished to dwell on those evils. Report of a Mrs. But Woods name never made it into the history books. Brandon mentions his diary in a letter to his daughter Ella, dated October 21, 1863, and found in the Vonkersburg Family Collection at the Historic Natchez Foundation. Brandon kept her enslaved on a cotton plantation until well after the war. Louisiana, U.S., Slave Manumission Records, 1719-1820. 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. Hover over the town names to trace her tortuous path from slavery to freedomand back. 2. One Sunday afternoon in April 1853, Boyd tricked Wood into taking a carriage ride across the river. 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. 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. Eats water melons at Joness, drinks a mint julep, has dinner with good soup & a peach cobbler. On Monday (August 17?) Not everyone agreed with the verdict, but the facts of her horrific story were widely accepted as credible. She spent the first nights of her captivity locked inside two roadside inns. Reynolds and Lively got married at Boone Hall Plantation in Mount Pleasant, which features nine slave cabins, referred to as "Slave Street." The move was criticized at the time, but came under . Slavery in Virginia is not just a Virginia story. Even "Juneteenth," the day in June 1865 when Union soldiers arrived in Texas to enforce emancipation, did not liberate Wood. Brooding about home. 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. More information can also be found at brandonhallplantation.com. Your effort and contribution in providing this feedback is much 1872 - The plantation was sold to Henry Horlbeck's two sons, Frederick Henry Horlbeck and John S. Horlbeck ( 7 ). Thats when you have to be creative.. After her suit, she moved with her son to Chicago. 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. 33 slave dwellings were also noted. Gerard Brandon, Wood's last owner, was one of the largest plantations in all of the American South. Terms of Use Brandon was the eldest son of the Mississippi Governor Gerard Chittocque Brandon (1788-1850) and Margaret Chambers. In 1834, the teenager was bought by a merchant in Louisville and taken from her family. Set in 19th century Louisiana, Smith portrays a runaway slave who embarks on a treacherous journey to Baton Rouge while thwarting off violent plantation owners. II, p. 817, which claimed that at the beginning of the Civil War, Brandon owned a million dollars worth of slaves. He owned 700 to 800 slaves on several plantations, and he put me to work at once in the cotton field, she said. Sanderson is also listed in weaver1945, 109, as a Mississippi planter who owned around $222,000 worth of property in Louisiana., Could be a reference to Henrietta Wood. The society Saturday held the first of four community workshops on how to use the online database at the organizations headquarters in Richmond, Virginia. Arranges situation for Phoebe.11 Feels gloomy, homesick. One half illegible. When the Horlbeck family bought the plantation in 1817, they opened up a brickyard and began producing bricks using the clay from the nearby Wampacheone Creek. She was later removed from the cotton fields and put to work in Brandon's house. Though a fraction of what Wood had asked for, the amount would be worth nearly $65,000 today. Even the judge who presided over Woods case, Phillip Swing, viewed it narrowly. p.4: Some more deaths; notes about wagon loads, presumably of cotton bales; ferriage and tolls on the route to Texas, pp. 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. Ella Brandon Stantons daughter, Charlotte Brandon (1866-1936), married Dunbar Surget Merrill. 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. Swing also told the jurors to focus on Wood's kidnapping in assessing the case, and the vast majority of freed people could not show, as Wood did, that they had been re-enslaved. Over 700 Black men and women were enslaved on this plantation. Two hundred and five years ago, on the night of January 8, 1811, more than 500 enslaved people took up arms in one of the largest slave rebellions in U.S. history. Many newspapers described Woods suit as an old case or a relic of slavery times, consigning stories like hers to a fading past. Slave traders met the demand by buying slaves in Virginia, Kentucky and Maryland and selling them in the cotton states. 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. Yes, Boone Hall Plantation did have slaves right from the time it was established in 1681. The Whites lived in Covington, too, and in the spring of 1853 they persuaded Ward to pay them $300 for the right to sell Wood and pocket the proceeds himself provided he could get her. Cirode returned to France in 1844, abandoning his wife, Jane, who eventually took Wood with her to Ohio, a free state. If he followed the road from San Augustine to Crockett pictured on Texas Map (1865), then he likely passed through Nacogdoches as well. The tract was known as Martin's Brandon. This is a list of plantations and/or plantation houses in the U.S. state of Virginia that are National Historic Landmarks, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, other historic registers, or are otherwise significant for their history, association with significant events or people, or their architecture and design. It reaches across all of the slave South, Levengood said. Starts with Sandy for Col. Robertson at Salado (see Elijah Robertson). A letter Cornelia Jane Shields to James Brandons wife states that Mr. Hes hoping his 12 grandchildren can benefit from his work. Smithsonian magazine participates in affiliate link advertising programs. H. Weir of Centerville, who hit me a dig.. 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. The first plantations in the Americas of sugar cane, cocoa, tobacco, and cotton were maintained and harvested by African slaves controlled by European masters. An R. A. Morgan is also listed on the immediately preceding line, with seven slaves valued at $5600. The antique papers turned out to mention slaves. All Rights Reserved. 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. Brandon married Charlotte Smith Hoggatt in 1840 in Adams County, Mississippi. But Wood's award, however insufficient, was not ineffectual. In the same tax rolls is a J. Advertising Notice Drayton Hall's African American history interpretation began with Richmond Bowens, who was descended from enslaved African Americans at Drayton Hall. Wood suffered another, unexpected setback in 1874 when her lawyer was murdered by a clients husband in an unrelated divorce case. 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. By 1878, white Northerners were retreating from Reconstruction. I created this site because I have a passion for old houses! 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 . A copy was made, 6 October 1804. 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.. Sanderson to Texas.8 While at Morgans, he is introduced to Oliver Carter near Fairfield, who put him in touch with a Mr.Deming, who had a too-small place for sale, and not until January 7. (That route is supported by a notation on page 5 of his journal showing that he paid a toll at Neches on July 21.). Did you encounter any technical issues? Ward's lawyers stalled, claiming that Wood's failed antebellum suit for freedom proved his innocence. This article is a selection from the September 2019 issue of Smithsonian magazine. Today, many reparations advocates look to legislation, targeting governments for their complicity in slavery and white supremacy. If you know of any others send the information to me. Begins December 26 entry, very rainy. Not only business operations and day-to-day labor routines, but family affairs, the roles of women, racial attitudes, relations between masters and slaves, social and cultural life, the values shared by members of the planter class, and 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). It is currently used as a successful wedding venue and bed & breakfast. They also said that Wards alleged crimes had occurred too far in the pasta recurring argument against reparations. "My mistress gave me my freedom," Wood later said, "and my papers were recorded." Includes elegant balconies, walkways, gazebo, pond, 2 guest cottages and a 3,438 sqft reception hall. 1847, d. 1885; married Joseph C. Pierce, Agnes Brandon (b. June 29, 1851, d. January 19, 1862; see, Sarah Brandon (b. June 29, 1851, d. December 13, 1862; see, Charles Gerard Brandon (b. Wood was never allowed to testify, however, and Ward denied her claims. Yet Wood v. Ward did not set a sweeping legal precedent. The ghost of a woman whose fiance died before they could be . At some point during those hellish days, Wood gave birth to Arthur, whose father is unknown. Wood's victory briefly made her lawsuit national news. 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. If you are interested in a house, all information, including: price, status, neighborhood, condition, etc., must be independently verified. With numerous slaves and landholdings in Mississippi and Louisiana, Brandon was one of the wealthiest planters in Natchez when the Civil War began. Charles S. Darden Some pictures of the Brandon cemetery are on Flickr. 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. 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. You have to read between the lines: Oh, they mention Amy in a letter, and then you have to read another letter in the collection to realize that Amy is a slave and not a family member, Levengood said. Her horrific story were widely accepted as credible one of the Brandon cemetery are on Flickr the war! She has learned to weave and is well satisfied your brother [ -in-law ] says as brandon hall plantation slaves spectacled negro,. To be creative.. after her suit, she moved with her to... Wood later said, `` and my papers were recorded. and were! 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