Often there was a human connection, and they grew up with these people, and they recorded their birth dates and deaths. 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. On November 15** went ot hear a Mr. Most rural enslaved people were owned by masters who had 10-20 enslaved people, who often were housed in closer proximity to masters, perhaps sharing housing, and perhaps having access to closer relations with their masters than plantation slaves had. I worked under the meanest overseers, and got flogged and flogged, until I thought I should die.. 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 today's terms. In the 1870 census, a 52-year-old Gerard Brandon is listed as a planter in Adams County, Mississippi. 2023 Smithsonian Magazine The first plantations in the Americas of sugar cane, cocoa, tobacco, and cotton were maintained and harvested by African slaves controlled by European masters. Goes Friday to see after some negroes I had hired in Falls Co. Stays with H. L. Bennett. The park like setting, private walking trails, and stocked pond allow for a secluded get-away. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.[1]. In the eyes of Kentucky law, Wood was a slave. The gang located Wood's employer in Cincinnati, a boardinghouse keeper named Rebecca Boyd, and paid her to join their scheme. Cold front. 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. According to scarborough2003, p. 432, Brandon owned 706 enslaved people on plantations in Adams County (512), Concordia Parish (113) and Tensas Parish (81) in the 1860 Census, making him the tenth largest slaveholder in Scarborough's sample for 1860, even though he does not appear on Scarborough's sample of planters with over 500 slaves in 1850. The society Saturday held the first of four community workshops on how to use the online database at the organizations headquarters in Richmond, Virginia. Harriss said many architectural features were kept true to the original design when the house was renovated in. W. Caleb McDaniel is a professor of history at Rice University. 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. Her official freedom papers, at a courthouse in Cincinnati, had been destroyed in an 1849 fire, and her kidnappers had confiscated her personal copy. (The plantations were part of his wife's dowry.) She would one day recall that period of her life as a sweet taste of liberty.. On July 1, 1863, just days before the U.S. Army arrived to free thousands of people around Natchez, Brandon, determined to defy emancipation, forced some 300 slaves to march 400 miles to Texas, far beyond the reach of federal soldiers. MORE VIRGINIA SLAVERY RESOURCES. must be sold out of this section, or hung, or I must move, as my negroes might be the cause of all the negroes being dissatisfied and many a man might loose his property by my coming here. This property has much more to offer. In 1889, he was one of the first African-American graduates of what became Northwestern Universitys School of Law. Brandon was the eldest son of the Mississippi Governor Gerard Chittocque Brandon (1788-1850) and Margaret Chambers. For them, the money Henrietta Wood demanded for her enslavement made a long-lasting difference. The search for enslaved ancestors requires research in the records of slaveholding families. They carried cane knives (used . They and their heirs farmed it successfully until 1720 when it was sold to Nathaniel Harrison. 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. "I sowed the cotton, hoed the cotton, and picked the cotton. It is believed that the name Brandon came from the family name of Martin's wife . Her captors' destination was Lexington, Kentucky, where prices for slaves had risen with the Southern cotton economy. After 1815, as white settlers rushed into the lower Mississippi River Valley, many looked to purchase slaves to cultivate the regions most profitable crop. Her captors destination was Lexington, Kentucky, where prices for slaves had risen in tandem with the Southern cotton economy. With help from his mothers court-ordered compensation, Arthur bought a house, started a family and paid for his own schooling. (She is still living this October 6, 1932. The trial began only after eight years of litigation, leaving Wood to wonder if she would ever get justice. $$$ info@brandonhallplantation.com Closed now 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM She spent the first nights of her captivity locked inside two roadside inns. Brandon Plantation, one of the nation's oldest working farms along the James River in Prince George County, was sold to a family in Florida for $17.8 million. Brandon Hall was formally a large working cotton plantation located on the scenic Natchez Trace. Reprinted with permission from Smithsonian Enterprises. An 1858 runaway slave ad for Elijah, who said Gerard Brandon was his owner, is in the Runaway Slaves in Mississippi project, edited by Douglas Chambers and Max Grivno, on p.536. Its an incredibly complicated and tragic institution that were just beginning to understand the dimensions of, Levengood said. 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. A couple walks through the grounds of the Boone Hall Plantation in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. Few white Americans wished to dwell on those evils. Gerard Brandon, one of the largest slaveholders in the South, bought Wood and took her to his house, Brandon Hall, on the Natchez Trace. On April 17, 1878, 12 white jurors entered a federal courtroom in Cincinnati to deliver the verdict in a now-forgotten lawsuit about American slavery. Though a fraction of what Wood had asked for, the amount would be worth nearly $65,000 today. 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. Nonetheless, I have always been conflicted about plantation-style homes. (In fact, free black Northerners had been kidnapped for years before the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.) With numerous slaves and landholdings in Mississippi and Louisiana, Brandon was one of the wealthiest planters in Natchez when the Civil War began. 1845, d. 1909), Charlotte Lottie Brandon (b. At some point during those hellish days, Wood gave birth to Arthur, whose father is unknown. As one put it, Woods award was not a liberal equivalent for the loss of liberty she had suffered, but it would be applicable to a great many cases yet untried.. 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. Brandon Hall would make a wonderful family estate. The defendant was Zebulon Ward, a white man who had enslaved Wood 25 years before. ( photo 1; photo 2 ) Thats when you have to be creative.. Improve this listing Property amenities Free parking Eats well on the road. By 1878, white Northerners were retreating from Reconstruction. erath county rant and rave; springfield, mo jail inmates; essex county hospital center jobs; blanching vs non blanching erythema; star trek next generation cast salaries Arranges situation for Phoebe.11 Feels gloomy, homesick. Researching black folk is difficult, so anytime you can find a new resource its always good to investigate, he said. Begins September 29 entry. 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. 3:10 PM EST, Mon February 6, 2012. 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). This inventory lists the names, ages and capabilities of Arnold's newly . Construction on the home began in 1853 and it was completed in 1856.3, Slave schedules for the 1860 Census confirm Brandons large slaveholdings. In December 2009 the home was purchased by Ron and Kathy Garber of Lafayette, Louisiana, who opened it for Bed and Breakfast accommodation. The tract was known as Martin's Brandon. He helped Wood file a lawsuit in Cincinnati against Ward, now a wealthy man living in Lexington. This mansion on the outskirts of Natchez was once the centerpiece of a large cotton plantation located on the Natchez Trace. 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. The Brandons were harvesters of cotton, sugarcane, and indigo and owned 700 slaves. Unsure of his next steps, whether to visit home and be on the dodge all the time, the great fear I have is being sent to a northern prison.. Smithsonian magazine participates in affiliate link advertising programs. Theyll be able to take it and grow from that.. When she died in 1912, her suit was already forgotten by all except her son. Brandon strictly instructs them not to trade with anyone. If he followed the road from San Augustine to Crockett pictured on Texas Map (1865), then he likely passed through Nacogdoches as well. Discovery Company. Begin August 20 entry. Notations on page 5 of his pocketbook indicate that on July 1, he first paid $140 for a ferry at Quitmans (a reference to a contemporary place in Adams County known as Quitmans Landing and referred to in papers and military records of that time; it was north of Natchez). Sanderson hung back in Natchez. 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. I wanted to be able to see and connect the dots.. S. Able who owns 3500 acres on the John Welch and Joseph Welch grants.6, This confirms that Brandon settled most of the enslaved people he brought to Texas in the northwestern corner of Robertson County, somewhere between Hammond and the Brazos River.7. 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. Gerard Brandon (1818-1874) was the Mississippi planter who purchased Henrietta Wood and then took her to Robertson County, Texas, during the Civil War. Elijah informs of threats from a woman about tresspassing on her pasture and pulling down her fence. In order to identify records of interest, you must first examine the genealogy of slaveholding families. When she died in 1912, her suit was already forgotten by all except her son. In 1833 Chew sold the property to Nathaniel Hoggatt, a successful planter whose daughter Charlotte inherited the land after his death. Wood was an early contributor to a long tradition of formerly enslaved people and their descendants demanding redress. His ancestors were slaves here, but the longtime math and science teacher at McComb High School felt no anger or bitterness. 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. 1841, d. 1859 in the, Elizabeth Elmina C. Ella Brandon (b. Has dinner with a woman who is hard on all who were not in the army, two soldiers from Vicksburg also critical of Mississippians. In the first half of the 19th century, there were as many as 85 slaves working at the plantation. 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 Natchez Trace was Henrietta Wood demanded for her enslavement made a long-lasting difference Brandon... 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