Betsy brought $1400. 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. MORE VIRGINIA SLAVERY RESOURCES. 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. Brandon was originally a vast land grant to John Martin, companion of Captain John Smith, on his first voyage to America. That means many American families with slave ancestors could have roots in Virginia, Levengood said. He owned 700 to 800 slaves on several plantations, and he "put me to work at once in the cotton field," she said. (The plantations were part of his wife's dowry.) For them, the money Henrietta Wood demanded for her enslavement made a long-lasting difference. By the 1850s, the interstate slave trade was booming, and the Whites saw dollar signs whenever they thought of Wood. Visit our corporate site at https://futureplc.comThe Week is a registered trade mark. Future US LLC, 10th floor, 1100 13th Street NW, Washington, DC 20005. The first plantations in the Americas of sugar cane, cocoa, tobacco, and cotton were maintained and harvested by African slaves controlled by European masters. One Sunday afternoon in April 1853, Boyd tricked Wood into taking a carriage ride across the river. With numerous slaves and landholdings in Mississippi and Louisiana, Brandon was one of the wealthiest planters in Natchez when the Civil War began. Robert Payne, who attended Saturdays workshop, said hes been researching his family for the past 15 years, but finding information about his ancestors wasnt easy. Brandon Hall is a Greek Revival architecture style house built in 1856 in Washington, Mississippi, United States. 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. Brandon Hall Plantation. Amateur genealogist Crasty Johnson of Richmond said she hopes the sites will help her trace her roots back to the 1800s. But Wood and her lawyers had argued that the case was about much more than damages from abduction. See Goodspeeds entry on the Brandon family. Brandon is an historic plantation located on the south shore of the James River in Prince George County, Virginia. It almost makes me sick. 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. Begins October 21, the most melancholly day I have had in Texas. James (Jim) leaves for home & from thence to the army., Begins October 25 entry. 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. Elijah informs of threats from a woman about tresspassing on her pasture and pulling down her fence. Wood was an early contributor to a long tradition of formerly enslaved people and their descendants demanding redress. Begins August 11 entry. Brandon was the eldest son of the Mississippi Governor Gerard Chittocque Brandon (1788-1850) and Margaret Chambers. Nonetheless, I have always been conflicted about plantation-style homes. As laid out in McDaniel's book, in 1840, Mississippi accounted for nearly a quarter of all. Im going to use this not only personally, but professionally, she said. Living very poor. His travels for land continue. Ward began to plot with a group of these notorious "slave catchers." An affidavit provided by Brandon in a later lawsuit indicates he departed on July 1.5. Cookie Settings, Illustration by Cliff Alejandro; Source material: W. Caleb McDaniel; NYPL (3), Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine now for just $12, Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America, Dried Lake Reveals New Statue on Easter Island. This heritage is currently documented on the plantation's grounds, in exhibits at nine of the original property's slave cabins. 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. The free, public website also provides a high-resolution copy of the antique documents that identify the slave. (In fact, free black Northerners had been kidnapped for years before the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.) and Mimy and three children $2505. In June 1866, The New Orleans Daily Crescent published an announcement that Gerard Brandons wife Charlotte was awarded a separation of property between her and her husband by the Court of New Orleans. Begins October 3 entry. Yet Wood v. Ward did not set a sweeping legal precedent. The postwar constitutional amendments that abolished slavery and extended national citizenship to ex-slaves enabled Wood to pursue Ward in federal court. A NCGenWeb Special Project Documented Slave Plantations of North Carolina is a comprehensive database of various plantations derived from a variety of information mediums. Zebulon Ward was their man. 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. 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. My children must thank me for the attempt to save [?] The Agricultural census of 1860 shows 250 improved acres, 450 unimproved, valued at $10,000. Begins August 24 entry: no beef as yet now for four days. Slaves dissatisfied. Reflections on number of slaves he has brought: I am now content & feel if I can take care of what I have, I shall do very well., Doesnt like to hire out, & to feed them in idleness, they will soon eat their heads off. Learns of a meeting of locals for resolutions on refugees and the some 1000 or 1500 negroes moved into the region. Someone offers to speak up in Brandons defense, as mine looked clean & orderly. Williams has sent a ham, bucket of butter, & three water mellons. Begins August 29 entry: demands from persons wanting to hire negroes.. A crowd of locals very much excited about the news and declared that the negroes . 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. In the 1863 tax sales the property was sold to the Federal government for . Begins August 3 entry at came near Dr.Milners Spring. Because the award was small, procedural rules prevented Ward from appealing to higher courts where the verdict might have been more widely noticed. Hover over the town names to trace her tortuous path from slavery to freedomand back. 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). Cirode returned to France in 1844, abandoning his wife, Jane, who eventually took Wood with her to Ohio, a free state. My mistress gave me my freedom, Wood later said, and my papers were recorded. Wood spent the next several years performing domestic work around Cincinnati. Mulberry Hill and White Hall Plantations, located in Bryan County, Georgia, had more than 130 slaves when Richard James Arnold took over in 1823. But Woods award, however insufficient, was not ineffectual. : Pelican Publishing Company, Inc., 2007), 92. 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. Brandon Hall is a beautifully restored plantation home that dates back to 1856. 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. I cant quite tell my age, Wood recalled in a newspaper interview in 1876, but she knew she was born enslaved to the Tousey family between 1818 and 1820. However, at the height of the slave era (1830-1860), only a few thousand masters owned as many as 300 people. Today, the opulent residence, which was . Educator and interpreter Joseph McGill founded the Slave Dwelling Project as a living history lesson. The Civil War began, followed in 1863 by the Emancipation Proclamation, but Woods ordeal continued. But these people were writing down their inventory as if you would for insurance purposes. This article originally appeared in Smithsonian Magazine. Headed back to TX today using same route Brandon took with slaves, including Wood, in 1863. $$$ info@brandonhallplantation.com Closed now 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM The mill is out of fix, & too bad to get up a beef and all hands are on short rations. Thoughts of home. In the 1890s another formerly enslaved woman, Callie House, led a national organization pressuring the government for ex-slave pensions. Ward planned to make Wood the latest victim of this trade, but she resolved to fight. A native Kentuckian who had recently moved to Covington, just across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, Ward became a deputy sheriff in 1853. Also Brandon Hall in Reid Smith and John Owens, The Majesty of Natchez (Montgomery, Ala.: Paddle Wheel Publications, 1969): it is obvious that he, like so many of his contemporaries, had succumbed to the Greek Revival era of elegance. In 1807, at the death of Benjamin Harrison III (1743-1807), his will divided the . 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. Now, she watched nervously as the 12 jurors returned to their seats. 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. Brandon kept a diary of his Texas sojourn which is probably held today by a family descendant. Two days earlier, the jury had watched as Wood took the stand; her son, Arthur, who lived in Chicago, was in the courtroom. Some newspapers even predicted that lawsuits like hers would proliferate. 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. whole race. Slavery was eventually abolished at the conclusion of the Civil War in 1865. The case was eventually dismissed. Improve this listing Property amenities Its a database for the ones that are coming up. They also said that Ward's alleged crimes had occurred too far in the past a recurring argument against reparations. 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! On October 29, 1840, Charlotte Hoggatt married Gerard Brandon III, who was the son of an early Governor of Mississippi and the grandson of a Revolutionary War Hero of the same name. W. Caleb McDaniel Harriss said many architectural features were kept true to the original design when the house was renovated in. Said many architectural features were kept true to the original design when the house renovated..., the most melancholly day I have had in Texas Mississippi Governor Gerard Chittocque brandon 1788-1850. A beautifully restored plantation home that dates back to the federal government for pensions! Formerly enslaved woman, Callie house, led a national organization pressuring the government for ex-slave pensions Hall is beautifully... 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