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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. THE SLAVES' STORY:

INTERPRETING NINETEENTH-CENTURY SLAVE HISTORY AT SHIRLEY PLANTATION

by

Jennifer Page Ley

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of the University of Delaware in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Art in the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture

Spring 1995

Copyright 1995 Jennifer Page Ley All Rights Reserved

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Number: 1375147

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. THE SLAVES' STORY:

INTERPRETING NINETEENTH-CENTURY SLAVE HISTORY AT SHIRLEY PLANTATION

by

Jennifer Page Ley

Approved: Pauline K. Eversmann Professor in charge of thesis on behalf of the Advisory Committee

Approved: Jamefe Curtis, Fhd. Chairman of the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture

Approved: ______r\t"\---- Carol E. Hoffeckeapi/^h.D. Associate Provosr for Graduate Studies

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

There are many people and institutions to whom I

owe a debt of gratitude for their help and support

throughout this project. Without them, this thesis would

never have become a reality.

The owners and guides of Shirley Plantation

deserve tremendous thanks for their encouragement and

motivation, and Charles Carter in particular is

responsible for inspiring me through his abiding love, and

endless knowledge, of his home. I would like to also

thank the library staff at the Colonial Williamsburg

Foundation, in particular Gail Greve, who graciously

endured wild goose chases and my incessant questions.

At Winterthur, my advisor Pauline Eversmann

deserves the credit for keeping me focused on this

project, and for keeping me smiling throughout it. She

will never know how much her support meant to me.

iii

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. This thesis is dedicated to my parents, without whom nothing in my life would have been possible, and whose support and love mean everything to me. Thank you.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF FIGURES ...... vi ABSTRACT ...... vii

INTRODUCTION ...... 1 THE S L A V E S ...... 14 INTERPRETING THE STORY ...... 51 CONCLUSION ...... 66

APPENDIX: 1858 LIST OF SLAVES ...... 68 NOTES ...... 70 BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 78

v

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Shirley Plantation, front view ...... 2

Figure 2: Shirley Plantation and courtyard ...... 2

Figure 3: M ap of p l a n t a t i o n ...... 10

Figure 4: Slave cabin, front view ...... 27

Figure 5: Slave cabin, side v i e w ...... 27

Figure 6: Plan of c a b i n ...... 29

Figure 7: Runaway slave advertisement ...... 37

Figure 8: Army b r o g u e ...... 40

Figure 9: Kitchen, exterior ...... 58

Figure 10: Kitchen, interior ...... 58

Figure 11: Map of walking t o u r ...... 63

vi

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ABSTRACT

This thesis seeks to examine the material lives of

the slaves at Shirley Plantation, Charles City County,

Virginia during the years 1815-1865, when Hill Carter

owned the plantation and its slaves. The purpose of the

research is to develop an interpretive plan that will

incorporate information regarding slave life at Shirley

into the current tour given to the plantation's visitors.

In order to best complete this thesis, I am

utilizing a variety of resources. Primary documents

generated by Hill Carter in the running of the plantation

provide the bulk of information, but are supported by

Shirley's extant slave landscape and by secondary sources

relating to slavery in Tidewater Virginia. The

interpretive plan grows out of a study both of

interpretation theory and practice, and of programs about

slavery run by various museums in Virginia.

The slaves themselves, rather than their owner

Hill Carter, are the main focus of both the research and

the interpretive plan. The main purpose of secondary

sources is to gather information about aspects of slave

vii

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life that are only partially revealed in Hill's documents.

The current house tour at Shirley can be easily

modified to integrate the black populace of the

plantation, and will be the basis for the interpretive

plan laid out in this thesis. While these house tour

modifications will be the focus of my discussion, more

ambitious programs of interpretation will be suggested as

well.

There is an entire population that has been

neglected in both museums and in classrooms for too long,

and interpretations of historic sites need to adapt in

order to include that population. This thesis will

explore the African-American past of Shirley Plantation

and will prepare Shirley's guides to answer the questions

of an increasingly curious audience.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. I. INTRODUCTION

Shirley Plantation, located on the James River in

Virginia, has been open since 1952 as a historic house

museum privately operated by descendants of wealthy

Virginian Robert "King" Carter (Figures 1 and 2). In the

nineteenth century, the plantation was owned by Hill

Carter, an active and well-known participant in Virginia

politics and society. This thesis explores the lives of

the unknown population at Shirley while Hill was in

residence, the Carter's slaves, and seeks ways in which to

incorporate the story of those lives into the overall

history of the property.

As a historic house museum, Shirley's history and

the interpretation of that history is intimately linked to

that of historic houses in general. Therefore any

discussion of Shirley must be prefaced by an examination

of the issues and purposes of historic house museums in

general. Why is it necessary to save and to interpret

these houses? Why do people visit, and what do they hope

to learn while they are there? Finding the answers to

these questions and others is crucial to any understanding

of the importance of historic houses in general, and of

Shirley Plantation in particular in today's society.

1

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Figure l Shirley Plantation. Front view of mansion.

Figure 2 Shirley Plantation. Rear view of mansion, with surrounding courtyard.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 3

Historic house museums have been a part of the

American landscape since 1856, when a patriotic ladies'

association banded together to save Mount Vernon. The

mission of those women was to preserve the home of George

Washington exactly the way it had been when he was alive,

in order to present an eternal "tribute to public

integrity and private virtue."1 Historic houses can be

preserved, as was Mount Vernon, as documentary sites

focusing on a specific person or event, or they can be

presented as representative sites, dealing with a more

general aspect of the past. Both types of house museums

are crucial to the telling of American history because of

the unique perspective which they allow on that history.

At any historic house museum, visitors are

confronted with "the Thing itself."2 Whether the guests

are third-graders reading a history textbook, or adults

who read that same textbook thirty years ago, the historic

house museum affords them opportunities beyond the scope

of that textbook: the chance to see and to feel the past

through artifacts directly relating to that past. The

stories that are so much a part of American history become

much more memorable and significant when they can be

connected to a chair, a parlor, or a garden. It is not

enough, though, for the historic house museum, however

important, to stand alone. Interpretation, either by

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guided tours, or by labels and maps, has to be a part of

any historic house. It is only through this

interpretation that the connections between textbook

events and personages and personal belongings and spaces

can be made effectively.

Interpretation also facilitates another important

type of connection, that between the history of the

historic house and the visitor himself.' It is this

connection between the past and the present that visitors

are searching for as they enter any historic house.

Whether they are seeking knowledge about their ancestors

and the way they lived, or whether they simply want to

walk where George Washington walked, visitors want to feel

a "tangible link with the past"3 and with the people of

that past that textbooks can never give them.

Interpreters can be much more effective if they keep this

desire for connection in mind. A discussion of the

difficult decisions Jefferson had to deal with in his life

will be absorbed and appreciated by an audience who can

first be allowed to feel a connection to Jefferson

himself. Once visitors can relate Jefferson as a human

being to themselves, they are more likely to try to

understand his actions and circumstances as a historical

figure, and can begin to analyze those actions with

responses like "what would I have done?."4

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Traditionally, visitors to historic houses have

only had the opportunity to connect to a very small

percentage of the people and events that make up the

American past. Visitors to a patriot's home would hear

about the politician, his life and his circumstances, but

not about the same details in the lives of that patriot's

wife, children, or slaves. If historic houses are to

retain their importance as supplements to textbooks, and

as pieces of history, that situation needs to change.

Charles Montgomery stated in a 1959 article that "the

[historic] house becomes an historical document which will

stand forever as truth."5 If that is indeed the case,

museums such as Shirley have a greater responsibility than

simply interpreting their buildings as a unique type of

historical evidence. They must also use that evidence as

completely and as accurately as possible in order to

legitimately become a document that can "stand forever as

truth." This truth, in today's society, must include not

only the widely accepted white male history, but also the

less accessible histories of women, children, and

minorities.

Interpreting the histories of any of these

previously neglected groups in American society can be

difficult at best, and, at worst, cause opposition and

unease in visitors, in interpreters, and in the community

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surrounding the historic house museum. It becomes

particularly difficult when educators are attempting to

introduce the history of African-American slaves. Both

white and black visitors can feel alienated, uncomfortable

or offended by a discussion of slaves and their white

owners. Therefore, any interpretation of slavery must

take into consx deration not only the facts that are

necessary to any interpretation, but also some element of

diplomacy and tact. Without compromising the truth

surrounding the lives of slaves, and slavery itself,

interpreters need to realize that their goal is not to

intimidate or offend visitors, but to open them up to, and

make them familiar with, the multiple viewpoints inherent

in any historic interpretation.

Should every historic house attempt a multi­

faceted interpretation of the past, considering how

difficult those interpretations can be? No, not every

site can or should "shoulder the weight of our

contemporary concerns"6 about multiculturalism. Even

those sites that can interpret the history of a previously

ignored segment of the American people should be careful

not to overburden their story with information that cannot

be supported by their historic house. All sites are by

nature only incomplete pieces of the American past, and

interpreters should not attempt to overcome that nature by

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trying to tell a universal story. A house occupied

throughout the nineteenth century by a single family, for

example, could not have been involved in every aspect of

the political, economic, and social events and currents of

that time period. It would be impossible then, to try to

interpret every one of those events and currents at that

same house today. Instead, an historic house should study

its own history and determine which aspects of the

American culture and its multicultural history can

appropriately and effectively be expressed using the house

and its artifacts.

Shirley Plantation is one of many historic houses

that has artifacts and documents that could support the

interpretation of the history of slaves on the site.

Resources are available to uncover pieces of the lives of

slaves on the plantation both in the eighteenth and the

nineteenth centuries. Should Shirley, then, incorporate

those slaves in an interpretation of the house? Most

definitely. But what Shirley cannot and should not do is

attempt to interpret an entire portrait of slavery in

general, or even of slavery in Virginia. Instead,

interpretation at the plantation should focus on the

specific information available about Shirley Plantation

slaves, and use that partial story in its presentation to

the public. Leaving gaps in the history of slavery at

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Shirley can be more evocative of the nature of that

slavery than could filling in the history with general

information not supported by evidence found at Shirley.

Visitors will realize that pieces of slaves' lives and of

slave culture are lost forever because of the very nature

of slavery.

The use of a partial history, as suggested above,

can be very effective as a teaching tool, but many

scholars and interpreters have avoided it, simply because

it is more complicated and abstract than the stories of

famous leaders and wealthy planters, whose lives can be

precisely inventoried. Without the stories of women,

African-Americans, and others, however, no history of

those wealthy, famous Americans can be anything but

partial itself. This thesis will bring together

information about the lives of the slaves at Shirley

Plantation under the ownership of Hill Carter, and will

apply that uncovered history, however partial, to a new

interpretation of the plantation that will extend beyond

the life of the wealthy planter. This new interpretation

will provide visitors to Shirley with a multicultural

perspective, and allow them to examine, and to become

familiar with, the events, currents, and relationships of

the plantation more completely than ever before.

Shirley Plantation commands an impressive view of

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. the James River in the Tidewater region in Virginia, and

has served as a residence for the members of the Hill-

Carter family for eleven generations (see Figure 3 for

map). Edward Hill III, grandson of Captain Hill, who

first received the grant of Shirley land from the English

throne, built the main structure and many of the

outbuildings that stand today as a wedding gift for his

daughter Elizabeth. Elizabeth's husband, John Carter, was

a son of wealthy Virginian Robert 'King' Carter, and was

the first of the Carters to inhabit the plantation.7

Under the care of John and his descendants, Shirley became

a thriving farm, making up an important part of the Carter

family's agricultural empire that extended throughout

Virginia.8

During the eighteenth century, Shirley, like the

majority of large Tidewater plantations, focused its

energies on the production of tobacco. Secondary profits

were derived from cattle, corn and wheat as well as from

the operation of a grist mill on a connected property

known as Hardens. Also like the other plantations,

Shirley suffered hardships toward the end of the century

when soil became exhausted from overuse in the cultivation

of the tobacco cash crop, and when the prices offered for

the plant fell.9 Both the economy and the soil of the

plantation were revived in the early years of the

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KEY

A. Main House ACRr.r, B. Garden C. Stables D . Bakehouse E. Barn F. Spring G. Great Quarter w

Figure 3 Map of Plantation. Taken from 1820 survey map by Ladd, in Shirley Plantation Research Collection. Slave cabins built later in the nineteenth century are not shown.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 11

nineteenth century, and the house and outbuildings were

brought out of disrepair and improved.

The revival of Shirley's fortune was accomplished

by Hill Carter. Hill, the great-grandson of John Carter,

took over the operations of the plantation in 1816. Under

his guidance, Shirley's agricultural production turned

away from tobacco, and focused instead on more

economically stable crops, including corn and wheat that

had been grown previously, as well as on crops such as soy

beans, clover, oats, and cotton. Hill used innovative

agricultural techniques, including irrigation and crop

rotation, to revive the exhausted soil of the plantation,

and expanded the tillable acreage of the property by

filling in swampy tracts surrounding the plantation.10

Hill's domain at Shirley included not only the land and

structures he worked so hard to improve, but also the

enslaved workers who cultivated that land and cared for

those structures. It is Hill's role as slaveowner, and

his careful notation of his slaves and of their treatment,

that make him the focus of this thesis. Hill owned

approximately 200 slaves, scattered on quarters throughout

his substantial Virginia holdings.11 Over 100 of these

slaves were housed at Shirley and its satellite property

Hardens, because of Shirley's role as the home plantation;

Hill and his family were based there, and most of the food

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for family and slave consumption was produced on Shirley

lands. By 1858, Hill had enlarged Shirley's boundaries

extensively, and the total acreage surrounding the house

was 1081 acres.12

Hill Carter, because of his extensive land and

slave holdings, was an extraordinary planter in

nineteenth-century Virginia, and should be remembered as

such, and not taken as an example of an average southern

slaveowner. Shirley itself, with its grand mansion and

outbuildings, was a rarity in the southern landscape of

the nineteenth century, when visitors wrote of being

"frequently astounded at the great number of wealthy men

they found living in miserable dwellings.1113 Statistics

compiled by John Michael Vlach of plantations in 1860 also

demonstrate Hill's unique position in southern society.

Only twenty-four percent of white southerners were owners

of slaves, and only twelve percent of those slaveholders

could be considered planters.14 Owning over 100 slaves,

as did Hill, was a plausible option for only two percent

of slaveholding families.15

Hill was not only one of the most wealthy planters

on one of the grandest plantations in Virginia, but was

also successful and influential in many diverse aspects of

the aristocratic Virginia society. It is important to

acknowledge some of his accomplishments and activities in

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order to better understand Hill as a slaveholder, as well

as the overall environment of Shirley, which served as

Hill's base of operations.

"The little red-headed midshipman"16 served in the

United States Navy during the War of 1812 immediately

before assuming control of Shirley; he again applied his

abilities to military service during the Civil War,

fighting, with his six sons, on the side of the

Confederacy. Hill also served Virginia during the

nineteenth century as a member of the state senate.

Hill's agricultural pursuits were as well known and

respected as were his military ones. His innovative

farming techniques were influential, passed along mainly

through articles Hill wrote in agricultural journals such

as the Farmer's Register. Hill's writing also included an

article detailing the appropriate treatment of slaves, and

providing today an indispensable glimpse into Hill's mind

as a slaveholder.

Hill Carter's military, political, and

agricultural pursuits made him a well-respected, very

wealthy member of the Virginia aristocracy. But his

position in that society, and his success in the world

economic market, was based largely on the labor performed

in the background, by the slaves he owned. Slaves on each

of Hill's plantations were responsible for the sowing and

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cultivation of crops, and for the care of livestock. The

slaves housed at Shirley, because of its role as the

Carter's home plantation, had the added task of caring for

the family and the residence. These slaves were the force

that made Hill's lifestyle as a planter, a host, a

statesman, and a provider possible.

IX. THE SLAVES

In the overarching history of the United States

and its people, the life experiences of many of the more

'ordinary' Americans fade into the background, and

threaten to disappear altogether. Fortunately, there are

occasions in which someone's words or records, or

someone's craftsmanship will survive and provide some

pieces of those life experiences. That survival has

happened in the case of the slaves living on Shirley

Plantation in the nineteenth century. Their owner, Hill

Carter, left detailed records about their births and

deaths, their rations, and their family structure. Hill,

along with these plantation journal records, also wrote an

article published in an 1834 farmer's periodical

concerning his beliefs about slavery and his feelings for

his slaves in particular. These documents, together with

a nineteenth-century slave cabin still standing near the

plantation, afford a glimpse into the lives of over twenty

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slave- families living in the quarters surrounding Shirley

Plantation. But it is a glimpse that cannot be taken simply

at face value. The purpose of this section is to examine

the meanings behind the available documents, and to

construct a narrative history, however incomplete, of

Shirley's slaves that can be used an interpretation of the

plantation.

Hill, in his article written for the Farmer's

Register, described slaves as "generally grateful for

favors, have the strongest local attachment, endure fatigue

and hardship with great patience, are very contented and

cheerful."17 In this one statement, Hill recognizes the

"hardship" that the slaves endure, yet also falls prey to

the stereotypes of his contemporaries towards blacks: always

smiling and cheerful, happy - for what they receive. At

Shirley, how much did Hill's slaves receive? Were they

happy and cheerful? How many hardships did they have to

endure? If all of Hill's documents were written with this

stereotypical happy slave in mind, is it possible to uncover

some of the real past of his slaves, or will there remain

in his words only a romanticized image of the slave

community? It is possible to answer these questions only

by carefully examining each of the pieces of the evidence,

and peeling back Hill's words and records to find the

slaves' reality underneath.

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The first element of slave-master relationships

that Hill discusses in his article is that of punishment.

Slaves "should understand that real faults will not go

unpunished; but. . .it is the certainty of punishment, and

not its severity, that deters misconduct." Did Hill live

by this rule in his own relationship with his slaves? In

his article Hill stated that he preferred to "use a little

flattery sometimes instead of stripes", and only once does

he write in his plantation records about any sort of

punishment meted out. In 1841, two of Hill's male slaves

were caught stealing hogs from a neighboring plantation.

As punishment, Hill "sent up to Richmond Billy Tanner,

wife and child, Billy Jackson, wife and child to be

sold."18 This punishment indicates two things. In his

dealings with his slaves, Hill seemed, as suggested in his

article, to avoid beating or whipping those at fault for

theft or another crime. Hill also sold each man with his

"wife and child." It appears from this notation that not

only was he trying to keep families intact, but he also

recognized the slave marriages that had taken place. It

is not possible to know whether Billy Tanner and Billy

Jackson left behind other children or relatives when they

were sold, nor is it possible to determine whether this

policy of keeping families intact was always followed.

But from this instance of punishment, it appears that

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Hill's slaves were treated fairly, and were respected at

least to some extent as human family members.

Hill's records provide other evidence that he

recognized slave families and tried to maintain them. In

meat rations lists for the years 1858 and 1861, Hill lists

all of his Shirley slaves and the rations each is

permitted.19 However, it is not a list of 138 slaves. It

is instead a list of twenty-two families, whose

compositions change only by birth or death between the two

years of the lists. What were these families like? What

can this rations listing reveal about the rhythms and

patterns of life in Shirley's slave community?20

The first thing that becomes evident from

examining the rations lists is that there was not a

'typical' slave family in the Shirley quarter. Hill seems

to have recorded the families by age, listing the head of

the household first, then other adults, and finally

children and infants.21 Of the twenty-three families on

the list in 1861, fifteen were headed by an adult male.

Of those fifteen, all but one of them was living with an

adult female and her children, suggesting that they were

members of a fairly stable family group. The remainder of

the family units were headed by women, and each of these

units consisted mainly of the woman's children. Several

of the households, however, included more than two

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generations of slaves. William Buck's household consisted

of his partner Betsy, her eight children, and one of her

grandchildren. Phillis lived in a household with her four

children, including Susan. In 1858, both Phillis and her

daughter Susan had infants living in the house with them.

While most of the households listed consisted of

at least one adult and a number of children, the size of

the families varied greatly. The smallest multi-member household was three, the largest eleven. Three families

in 1858 were just starting out, and, like the household of

Jim Green, Abbey, and baby Dandridge, consisted of only an

adult male, his young partner, and an infant or young

child. Two of the three families had added another member

by the 1861 rations listing, and another family, the

Jeffersons, had started out. The family of eleven seems

to have been more unusual, being one of the three-

generational families, but by 1861 had not been subdivided

into separate households, all of them still living

together. The size of households in the Shirley quarter

varied widely, but the average number of people listed in

one household was, in both years, six adults and children

living together, an average that seems to have been quite

normal in black slave families in nineteenth-century

Virginia.22

The composition of these 'average' households,

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however, even between the two years of the rations lists,

was constantly changing. Babies were a regular occurrence

in a family. Young slave women at Shirley began to have

children between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five, with

the average age of the first childbirth being almost

nineteen.23 These slave mothers then gave birth to an

average of three to four children apiece, although actual

numbers of children to each mother ranged anywhere from

one to ten. Since the average distance between each birth

was two years, a slave mother could conceivably spend

twenty years of her adult life caring for infants while

still providing labor in the Carters' fields.

The 1858 and 1861 rations lists suggest a

relatively stable family composition, a suggestion not

necessarily expected in a slave community constantly

threatened with family separations. However, another clue

within Hill's records suggests that these family units

were not so concrete. Many of Hill's slaves were listed

on various records with a last name. More men than women

were listed this way, but many females and children were

recorded with last names. This by itself seems to suggest

that Hill was more sympathetic to his slaves than other

planters; not only did he recognize slave partnerships,

but also their chosen last names.

None of the Shirley slaves chose to take on either

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Carter or another family last name, a pattern that,

according to Eugene Genovese, is fairly typical.24

Instead, the most often used last names were Buck,

Jefferson, Short, Green, Lyons, Tin, How, Scott, Pride,

Brown, Sampson, Washington, and Jackson. Many of these

last names can be seen in Hill's documents as early as

1820, so it is probable that a small number of families

formed a close-knit slave community at Shirley throughout

the nineteenth century. In 1858, for example, three

households carried the name Buck, and three held members

of the Pride family. However, this close knit community,

made up of the descendants of a small pool of slaves,

sometimes fell prey to problems with which a white

community would never have to deal. Sally Scott, for

instance, lived in 1858 with Peter. Only one of her

children living with her was listed with a last name,

Washington? the others had no last name. At the same

time, several children born to Sally Scott lived in

another household, one run by Jinny and John Washington,

but only one of them had the last name Washington. In

Hill's birth records, he only recorded the name of the

mother and the child. In many instances, the mother

carried a last name different from her baby. This pattern

of last names may suggest women forced into several

marriages, or partnerships, because of the sale of a

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spouse, or it may simply mean that the mothers did not

take on the names of their partners, while their children

sometimes did.

There was another factor at work within the

Shirley Plantation slave community that, along with the

last names, speaks to an underlying instability in the

lives of slave families. Hill, in several records, lists

not only slave names and ages, but also their occupations

as either "house servant" or "out slave."25 There seems

to have been no clear division between these two groups of

slaves. At least four of the slave families had one

member working as a house slave, while the rest of the

family spent their days in the fields. These disparate

occupations would have kept these families from spending a

great deal of time together, and a mother working in the

house wasn't likely to be able to take care of her child

in the quarter.26

In the case of both last names and occupations,

the records Hill left cannot be considered complete at

face value. They demonstrate instead that the family

units so clearly laid out in 1858 and 1861 were not so

clear, and that not only were the boundaries between

families in the quarter easily blurred, but also that

families listed together on a document were not

necessarily allowed to always be a coherent unit.

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Several slaves, all "out slaves," were not listed

as members of any household unit, and seem to have been

given their own cabin. While there is no evidence in

other records that the men listed singly, John Short,

Thomas Jefferson, Frank, and Cimcn, were provided with

their own dwellings, Hill does record building single

cabins for favored workers in the early nineteenth

century.27 It seems probable wiidt these later workers

inhabited those single cabins. At least two of these four

men were purchased as adults for large sums of money, 28

suggesting they were skilled in some trade. Frank, bought

in 1850, cost Hill $825, while Jefferson, listed in fact

as a blacksmith, was purchased in 1852 for $1475.29

Skilled workers were the most likely to have their own

dwellings. Jefferson married into the Shirley slave

community sometime between the 1858 and 1861 rations

lists, and his wife and child in 1861 were listed with him

in his household.

Along with single slaves that were permanent

members of the Shirley slave community, the quarters were

home to many single slaves hired by Hill Carter as

temporary additions to the slave work force. Between 1823

and 1851, Hill recorded the hire of ten different men and

one woman, Sally, slaves that presumably lived with and

worked alongside the Shirley slaves while not totally

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becoming a part of their community.30 Hill generally

hired slaves for the period of one year, and paid a wide

range of prices to the slaves' owners. Amos was hired in

1850 for only fifty dollars, whereas Hartwell, hired the

next year, cost Hill $123. Napolion appears on Hill's

records for both 1848 and 1849, and his skills as a

carpenter allowed his owner to charge Hill $130 for his

hire. Like Napolion, Hartwell, and Amos, Matt and Billy,

hired in 1824, and Tom and Jack, hired in 1827, only

remained at Shirley for short periods of time. None of

these slaves stayed long enough to marry into the local

slave families, nor even to become a true member of the

community. However, Hill does record the hire of one

slave, Billy Gardener, each year from 1826 to 1844.

Gardener does not appear to have been specially trained in

any craft that would have accounted for such a long period

of hire. Why then did Hill continue to hire Gardener at

an average of sixty dollars a year rather than purchase a

new slave? The answer may lie in Gardener's owner. For

the first few years, Hill's receipts record Gardener's

owner as Ann Hill Carter Lee, Hill's aunt, and the

remainder of the receipts are signed by Ann's son, Robert

E. Lee. Gardener, then, might have been given to Ann as

part of her dowry from the ranks of her father's slaves at

Shirley.31 If this was indeed the case, Hill's reason for

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hiring Gardener back every year becomes one of compassion.

If Gardener were a part of the Shirley quarters, his

family was most likely there, and his hire would enable

them to stay together.

The households that have been uncovered in these

rations lists, both multi-member family units and single

men living on their own, as well as the more temporary

units of hired slaves, were dependent on Hill Carter to

provide them with all of the basic necessities of

existence. The most important of these needs was shelter.

Where did all of these families live? How much space, and

what kind of space, were each of these family units

allowed? One way to answer these questions is to study

maps of the plantation as well as to examine the remains

of one of the nineteenth-century cabins Hill had built for

his slaves.

Shirley Plantation, having used slave labor on its

fields for many generations, had a well-developed slave

quarter. From maps of both eighteenth- and nineteenth-

century locations, it appears as though the Shirley

quarter was divided in two. Seven cabins, built sometime

in the nineteenth century, were located approximately a

mile from the main house, on a straight line from the

house into the fields. A path connected those cabins with

at least two other cabins also built in the nineteenth

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century that were located farther away from the house and

off the main axis of the plantation. At least five new

cabins were built in 1825,32 two more in 1840,33 and others

at various times throughout the century. It is possible

that the cabins of the single men were closer to the small

creek that runs behind the closer set of cabins; in his

plantation journal entry for 1828, Hill states that he

"moved Tom Sampson's house to the river."34 The location

of domestic slave quarters, which were fairly typical on

large plantations, cannot be determined; it is possible

that there were rooms for the cook in the kitchen

building, and there is mention of two quarters being built

in 1832 "at Bake House,"35 which was located much closer

to the house than the other quarters. It is also

possible, however, considering that family units from the

meat ration lists of 1858 and 1861 combined house and out

slaves into the same households, that there were not many

separate quarters for the domestic help, and that some

slaves daily made the trip up to the house from the field

quarters. If the Bake House quarters were intended for

domestic help, they did not appear to be any more

elaborate than the cabins of field slaves; slave

carpenters were responsible for their construction, just

as they were for the field cabins, and the construction

materials were the same in both locations.

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Within this widely dispersed quarter, the cabins

built for families seem to all have been very similar.

Archeological studies of the plantation completed by

Theodore Reinhart and students from the College of William

and Mary found only the remains of chimneys and the bare

outlines of the cabins located in a direct line from the

house.36 The most complete remains were found around an

extant, double hearthed, brick chimney, and indicated a

cabin of "sill and pier, frame construction", that was "a

20-by-4O-foot structure, with the central double-hearthed

chimney dividing the interior into two 20-foot-square

living units."37 Shadows on the chimney revealed "the

height of the cabin to be a story and a half," meaning a

main floor and a loft.38 The dimensions and appearance of

this archeological remnant were identical to those of an

extant cabin found in the more remote part of the Shirley

quarter (Figures 4 and 5). This remaining cabin can,

then, serve as a representative example of the living

conditions and surroundings of each slave family in the

quarter at Shirley.

The standing cabin, like the excavated shadows, is

a rectangular structure of twenty-by-forty feet, divided

into two living spaces with a central double-hearthed

chimney in the center of the building (Figure 6) ,39 Each

living space consists of a main level with a plank

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Figure 4 Slave cabin. Front view.

Figure 5 Slave cabin. Side view.

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floor, and a half story loft, reached by way of a corner

staircase.40 The cabin has three doorways, a central one

on the north side, and two on the south side, each

entering into one of the living spaces. Inside the

central door, board and batten siding was added to

separate the two living spaces. Anyone entering the cabin

from the north side would, then, step into a sort of

entrance hall which had interior doors leading into each

living area. Each living space also has two windows, one

each on the east and west sides, and one on the north

side. While these windows are quite large, the cabin's

interiors remain dim.

What does this cabin have to say about the way

that Shirley's slaves lived and about how they were

treated by their owner? What can be uncovered from these

bare rooms about the lives that went on inside them? From

maps, it appears that in the nineteenth century there were

at least nine double cabins in the quarter, and most

likely, several single cabins for single workers, as well

as possibly one or two cabins left from Shirley's

eighteenth-century quarter. These numbers are close to

the number of family unit divisions found on Hill's

rations lists of 1858 and 1861. With twenty-two families,

it would appear as though there were eleven double cabins,

with one family living on each side of every double-

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SOUTH ELEVATION— (SHEO ANO MANGER OMITTEO)

A UP UP

O 5 10 FT. © F b H = H = d FRAMING CONVENTIONS: FIRST PERlOO ■ SECOND PERlOO □ THIRD PERIOD 8 DOWN BRACES:

Figure 6 Flan of cabin. Measured floor plan and architectural drawing. Courtesy of Edward Chappell, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

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hearthed chimney. If this belief is correct, then the

living conditions of Hill's slaves differed greatly

depending on the size of their household. For families

such as the Hows, with just Tom, his wife Betsy, and their

three children, the space provided in one side of a double

cabin, a space eguivalent to the size of a small

apartment, was adeguate. However, for the Bucks, or the

Washingtons, whose families had ten or eleven members, the

same amount of space becomes cramped and grossly

inadequate.

Were these cabins, allowing families a hearth on

which to cook, a loft, and a twenty-by-twenty main living

area, particularly small for Virginia plantations? Or

were they rather an example of the 'good' treatment Hill's

slaves could expect from an owner who considered them "a

most valuable class"?41 In his book Back of the Big

House, John Michael Vlach describes cabins like those at

Shirley as "double-pen" cabins, and quotes a nineteenth-

century visitor to Virginia as seeing "well-made and

comfortable log cabins, about thirty feet long by twenty

wide, and eight feet tall, with a high loft and shingle

roof. Each divided in the middle, and having a brick

chimney. . .was intended to be occupied by two

families."42 The size of those observed cabins were a bit

smaller than those at Shirley, but otherwise very similar.

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Chimneys in Virginia slave cabins could be located either

in the middle of a double pen structure, or at either

end.43 The brick construction of chimneys at Shirley

indicates more care than was taken in many other quarters;

a nineteenth-century observer claimed "the chimney is

sometimes of brick, but more commonly of lath or split

sticks. . .plastered with mud."44 The construction

materials of the cabins themselves, however, seem to fit

closely with most other Virginia slave housing. Only an

occasional slave quarter, like the domestic slave quarters

at the Lee's Stratford Hall, boasted stone or brick

structures. Hill's quarters reflected the standard wood

frame materials. However, simply the fact that the cabin

still stands indicates that Hill's carpenters took a great

deal of care in putting those standard materials together.

Hill, though, seems to have provided more light and

comfort in his standard than did other owners; while two

windows still leaves the cabin interior in constant semi­

darkness, many slave cabins were "pierced only by a door

and a few square holes for windows, if there were any

windows."45 The Shirley cabins had not only glass-paned

windows, but also shutters. Neither were the plank floors

in evidence in the extant cabin a universal characteristic

of slave housing in nineteenth-century Virginia. Even

Thomas Jefferson's slaves, living in housing built at the

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turn of the nineteenth century, had only earthen floors.46

The cabins were only a part of each family's

living environment. Although there is no evidence

remaining on the plantation for the appearance of the

exterior surroundings of the Shirley quarter, Hill, in his

article for the Farmer's Register, states that "Negroes

should have some of the luxuries of life, . . .such as

fowls, eggs,. . .a garden and fruit trees." It appears,

then, that each family, in addition to being allotted a

twenty-by-twenty living space, was also allowed a garden

in which to grow vegetables for themselves or for market,

as well as fruit trees and laying hens. These plots would

not only "serve to attach them to their homes," as Hill

suggested in his article, but would also provide slaves at

Shirley with a small sense of independence and an ability

to earn cash with which they could purchase their own

goods at local markets. Although there is no way of

knowing what happened to their small profits, it is

possible that Shirley slaves used the money to decorate

their living space in various ways. Some Virginia slaves

were even able to purchase inexpensive prints for their

walls from "picture men who [came]. . .through the

country."47 Whatever the slaves at Shirley chose to do

with their cash, they were given more by their owner than

were many of their contemporaries; they were allowed some

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choice in how to organize their living environment,

however small and insignificant that choice may seem

today.

The presence of gardens, fruit trees and laying

hens in the Shirley quarters indicates not only a small

amount of freedom for Hill's slave families, but also that

slaves living at Shirley were not restricted in their diet

to the rations that Hill meted out to them each week.

However, without those rations, none of the slaves under

Hill's care would have been able to survive. In a note

written on the back of an 1861 slave list, Hill outlined

the amount of food given weekly to each of his slaves.48

Men were allowed the most food, receiving two pounds of

meat, either beef or pork, five herring, a peck of meal,

and a pint of molasses. Women and children were given the

same amounts of meal, herring and molasses, but rations of

meat were respectively a pound-and-a-half and a half-

pound. These rations, together with the garden-grown

vegetables, which in Virginia would have included peas,

beans, and potatoes, would have provided the slaves with

a basic diet that met bare nutritional requirements.

According to archeological remains, Shirley's slaves

supplemented this diet with fish, possum, and squirrel,

all easily caught in nearby rivers and woods.49

Occasionally, Hill also provided luxurious supplements to

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his slaves' diet; on several dates, he purchased sugar

and coffee specifically "for [his] negroes."50

Hill was responsible not only for providing food

and shelter "for his negroes", but also for buying them

clothing and shoes. Most often, clothing receipts

indicate that Hill purchased fabric for his slaves that

was then made into sets of work clothes by the women of

the plantation. In this task they were aided by the

mistress of the house, Mary Carter, who in a letter of

1852 describes "cutting out the peoples' clothes for all

my servants."51 In 1819, however, Hill hired William

Griffin to help with these duties, paying him "ten dollars

for cutting out clothes for Negroes."52 Hill acquired

many of his textiles from a merchant in Richmond, Thomas

R. Price and Co., who advertised "the best styles of

American cottons, coarse woolens, and other materials for

servants."53 The materials Hill purchased for his slaves

both from Price and from other sources was generally of

lesser quality and plainer than anything he ordered for

his own family members,54 a distinction that seems to have

been common in slaveholding states beginning in the

eighteenth century. In South Carolina, a law was passed

in 1740 that prohibited slaves from "wearing anything

finer, other, or of greater value, than negro cloth,

duffils, kerseys, osnaburgs, blue linnens, check linen, or

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course garlix, or calicos, checked cottons or scotch

plaids."55 Whether or not there was a law in each county

of the south, it is clear that there was a strict

separation made between cloth considered appropriate for

blacks, and that used by their owners.

Many of the materials listed in the 1740 South

Carolina legislation were also among those ordered by Hill

to be used at Shirley. The most frequently mentioned of

these materials was osnaburgs, a coarse, plain cotton

fabric.56 Also appearing on clothing orders were kersey,

another coarse cotton cloth, and "domestics," a plain,

utilitarian cotton most often used for shirting and

sheeting. On a bill from late November of 1832, two

additional materials were listed: linsey, a heavier woolen

fabric, and flannel.57 Once Hill purchased all of these

different fabrics, what kinds of items did his slave

women, or a hired tailor, make from them?

In notes on the back of one of these clothing

bills, Hill designates osnaburgs as "negro clothing for

summer."58 Captain Basil Hall, a visitor to the South in

1827 and 1828, also recognized "the stuff called

Osnaburgs. . .for summer dress."59 It was typical for

slave owners to provide yearly allowances of clothing,

both in summer and winter weights. According to one

planter, "the proper and usual quantity of clothes for

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plantation hands is two suits of cotton for spring and

summer, and two suits of woolen for winter," and by the

mid-nineteenth century, most planters handed out

allowances similar to these,60 spending an average of

seven to ten dollars a year on outfitting each adult

slave.61 While there is no evidence of exactly how much

clothing was allotted to each Shirley slave, it is evident

from his note about osnaburgs that Hill gave out both

summer and winter clothes.

Whether of summer or winter weight, slave clothing

worn by the members of Shirley's slave community would

have been simple and functional. Osnaburgs were most

often made into shirts, and indeed, the 1829 runaway

advertisement Hill placed in the Richmond Enquirer

indicates that the men ran away wearing "cotton clothes

and new oznaburg shirts (Figure 7)." Those men, whose

descriptions provide the only clue as to what Hill's

slaves wore, also left with "old blue coats, jackets and

pantaloons, white cotton or linen shirts, and other Sunday

clothes, as they call them."62 The women would most

likely have been provided with dresses, and the children

with long shirts.63 Underclothing was also a part of each

slave's allotment; on one plantation, slave women received

a chemise, petticoat, and pantaletts.64

However uniform these clothing rations might seem,

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$00 REWARD TTITILL he Riven by the subscriber for the apprehension of ? V his negroes, JO E LYONS, J O H N SA M P S O N , W M . SAMPSON, BILIYTANNKR, SAM it CHARLES SMITH Joe is a stout at*d : alher fat, black man, with a soiiliog coun*. tpiiance, and wlii e teeth. John iti of middle height, and rathet slim make, t ot very black, witbl a slick face and white teeth. William « olerahiy tall and stoat,-of a tawny color, and stutters a.littli. Billy is rather -lower than the common height, is a mulatto, aud has one or j two of his front teeth brok^rrpartly off. f »n is a low, stout made black mao. Charles tsjafher tall and s !im, black, has hqrap* in his face. They generally took with them napt cotton j clothes and* new ornn- hurgshirti; someci these also took with them old bine cojjj, jackets and paiitalo ms, white cotton or lioen shirts,and other Suudsy clothes, as they call them. | The above men, after committing a- rohhs ry in the neighbourhood, ran off on the 7tb insti and are proba >ly lurking about Richmond,' Petersburg, Norfolk, Hanover c nuthouse, or the Piping Tree, King Woi. county. I-will give the above' reward for the apprehension of all,' j or StO fcr eac l negro. ' HILL GA R TER. ‘ April ft. ' ' Itt-tf.

Figure 7 Runaway slave advertisement. Placed in the Richmond Enquirer in April 1829 by Hill Carter.

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there was one variation that appears throughout Hill’s

documents. House servants working in the daily presence

of the family and their guests were given clothing of a

very different nature. Unlike those made on the

plantation for field slaves, some of the suits worn by

house servants were purchased already made. In 1831, Mary

Carter received a bill for a "coat and waistcoat for

servant," whom she noted on the reverse was named

Anthony.65 Although there is no evidence that these

ready-made suits were uniforms or livery, which some

planters did order,66 they were obviously made to look

more presentable for Hill and his guests. Female house

servants also received special clothing, even though they

generally served behind the scenes in the kitchen or the

nursery, and so did not have to appear as formally. One

bill, from November 20, 1832, records the purchase of ”10

cloth shawls” for the maids, and a later purchase of

calico and aprons was also earmarked for maids.67

While the clothing for the house and field slaves

at Shirley was different, both were provided with some

kind of head covering; "Hats [were] served out to all the

men & boys,"68 and women received head handkerchiefs.69

All of Hill's slaves, no matter what their occupation,

were allotted shoes each year. Hill always bought these

shoes already made, as there was never a shoemaker on the

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plantation to make them, even though one local shoemaker

in 1823 was paid for "teaching his [Hill's] man Bob how to

make them."70 In the same year, that local shoemaker made

100 pairs of "wooden sole" shoes for Hill's slaves. A

later contract, from August 28, 1861, indicated that the shoemaker would make eighty pairs of shoes for Hill "of

the best leather & materials & best workmanship. . .and I

guarantee them to last well, & turn the water well."71

The charge for each of these pairs of shoes was two

dollars and fifty cents. Some years Hill chose to

purchase the slaves' shoes from a merchant rather than

from a local shoemaker. In those years, Hill listed each

of his slaves and the size and type of shoe he was

ordering for them. A list from 1853 designated three

different types of shoes, "army brogues," common brogues,

and "bound shoes (Figure 8 ) . 1,72 All were made of leather,

and all had wooden soles. Whether Hill purchased shoes

from a merchant or a local shoemaker, the house servants

were given shoes with only a single sole, while field

slaves were allotted double-soled shoes that were more

durable.73

In return for the necessities of shelter, food,

clothing, and shoes, the Shirley slaves were required to

labor for the benefit and profit of Hill and his family.

Whether working in the plantation house or its

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Figure 8 Army brogue. Shoe has wooden soles and leather uppers. Type of shoe worn by Hill's slaves. Photograph courtesy of Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

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dependencies, or in the fields, the labor the Carter

slaves performed occupied most of their time, and, in

fact, defined their existence. What were the different

tasks assigned to the slaves? What did each new season

mean for the work cycles on the plantation? The best

source for the answers to these and other questions about

the work of the plantation is Hill's plantation journal,

kept daily from 1816 to 1872.

Because of Hill's ventures into progressive

farming techniques, the agricultural work at Shirley

occupied the entire year. Rotation of crops, and the

diversity of crops, kept slave hands in the fields

plowing, planting, fertilizing and harvesting from January

to December. The various crops, wheat, clover, oats,

corn, cotton, and different kinds of vegetables, all

involved a great deal of work, and the growth cycles of

each of the crops overlapped.74 While field slaves were

planting peas, beans, millet and pumpions in May, they

were also ploughing and weeding the corn crop. In April,

the sowing of the oat crop took place at the same time as

clearing the swampy areas of the plantation for a later

crop, and ginning the cotton; and in June and July, when

the main harvest, that of wheat, was taking place, the

hands were also responsible for weeding vegetables, and

cutting oats for hay. Throughout the growing seasons,

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Hill's slaves manured the various fields, and opened water

furrows for irrigation.

On a plantation as large as Shirley, taking care

of the crops was only a part of what made up a year's

labor. During the winter months, the icehouse had to be

filled, the fences around the plantation mended, wood

hauled, and the buildings whitewashed. The livestock,

too, needed care throughout the year. April was the time

for castrating new colts and breeding the mares; in May

the sheep were shorn and the calves slaughtered. Sheep

were killed in August, and September was put aside to

break the steers. Winter shelters had to be built for the

sheep and cattle in November, and the hogs were killed and

salted in November and December.

In most of Hill's journal entries, he describes

the work on both crops and livestock done during the

preceding day, but rarely mentions whether there were

specific slaves assigned to each task. The only slaves

regularly given special jobs were the slave carpenters, of

whom Hill seems to have owned at least two throughout his

tenure at Shirley. These carpenters worked on fencing,

and also on repairing the various buildings around the

plantation. They spent some time repairing Hill's mill,

located at Hardens, down the road from Shirley, and in

November were set to coopering.

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Occasionally, while recording the day's work on

the plantation, Hill made note of what the women and

children were doing. These notes, like those on the

carpenters, are the only clues that reveal the existence

of a distinct division of labor among field slaves, both

between skilled and unskilled work, and between male and

female work. On a day in May 1836, the "women and boys

[spent their time] getting cheat out of the clover

fields,"75 and in April of 1837, the "boys and girls

[were] minding birds off of corn."76 Women and children

were also assigned tasks such as getting the onions out of

the wheat, planting the corn and oat crop, and tying up

oats. However, women were not always doing less arduous

work than their male counterparts. One reference

describes the "women and ox teams hauling out manure."77

Men, on the other hand, were solely responsible for most

tasks involving heavy lifting or construction. Hill

listed men alone as working on loading crops into ships on

the James that would carry them to market, and men also

filled the icehouse and cleared the Shirley swamp by

themselves.

Most of the tasks given to all of these field

hands, whether male or female, could be accomplished in

the Virginia climate throughout the year without too much

interference by the weather. However, there are days when

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Hill sent the "women in house it being too cold for them

to work out,"78 and others on which it was so hot, "all

hands gave out from the heat."79 On rainy days, women

were often sent inside to sew, spin, or clean the wool.

Carpenters built a loom for the plantation in 1830,80 so

weaving was possibly another rainy day task for women.

For men, there was "jobbing about the stables, making

hampers, brooms and mats &c as usual on rainy days."81

With over 100 slaves working on such a wide number

of tasks, it was necessary for Hill to engage an overseer

to supervise his field slaves. This overseer was,

according to contracts, to "obey all said Hill Carter's

orders, and never to leave the plantation without his

permission," as well as to be accessible to Hill twenty

four hours a day, as called upon.82 In return, he would

be paid $300 a year, and provided with the following:

five hundred weights of pork a year, three pecks of meal a week, one barrel of flour a year, and one cow through the year for Milk & Butter, also a Woman to cook and wait on me. I am to have Mr. Carter's pony to attend to his business & . . .the priveledge of raising fowls for my family.83

There is no evidence of where an overseer would have been

housed, but wherever his cabin was located, that white man

and his family would have lived at Shirley without being a

part of any of the communities existing there. Distinctly

below Hill and his family in status, yet at the same time

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in charge of the large black population, the overseer

occupied what must have been an uncomfortable position on

the plantation.

Perhaps that discomfort accounts in part for the

rapid departure of most of Hill's overseers, a pattern of

employment that matches that of overseers throughout

Virginia.84 Between 1817 and 1865, Hill hired a total of

fourteen overseers, the shortest tenure being a half year,

the longest being that of Charles Makaney, which lasted

eleven years, but not consecutively. Most of the

overseers Hill worked with seemed to be part of a

"professional group who made their careers managing

plantations,"85 but in both 1849 and 1854, Hill relied on

his son, Charles Carter, as overseer. This practice of a

son working as overseer before he was old enough to farm

his own plantation was fairly typical in the nineteenth

century.86

Whoever was acting as Shirley's overseer, and

whether or not they were following Hill's advice to "study

their [the slaves] dispositions well, before [exerting]. .

.too much rigor,"87 the field slaves expected from that

overseer both direction and punishment. Those same field

slaves were also dependent on the yearly cycles of

agriculture for the type and amount of work that they were

required to perform. Domestic slaves, by far the minority

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on the plantation, had to deal with a completely different

type of environment and different patterns of work than

their peers.

Hill did not record the tasks assigned to his

various house servants, and so it is impossible to

determine exactly what each slave did. However, there was

a cook, perhaps the Mary Ann that Hill describes in a

letter to his wife as "picking peaches, pressing them into

jam,"88 or William Bates, also mentioned as the cook,89 and

one female servant that was assigned to the overseer.

There were maids, as listed on clothing bills, and also

most likely a laundress. Hill appears to have had a

valet, or personal servant; he mentions sending "his man

Talbert"90 with messages or payments to various

individuals, and also took a servant with him whenever he

travelled.91 Hill also had a driver for his carriages, a

position held for part of the nineteenth century by "that

most unfortunate of servants, Anthony," about whom Hill

stated: "I believe I shall never have sound horses while I

have Anthony for a driver."92 Other male servants, both

adults and young boys,93 would have acted as servers or

butlers, and one guest to Shirley described some of their

d u t i e s :

When you awake in the morning you are surprised to find that a servant has been in and without disturbing you, built up a large fire, taken out clothes and brushed them, and done the same with

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your boots, brought in hot water to shave, and indeed stands ready to do your bidding.94

These servants, together with any others that

worked in the house as nurses or nannies for the children,

or as personal servants of other family members, were

supervised not by an overseer, but by Hill and his wife.

Their jobs, unlike those of their "out slave" peers, were

the same no matter what the season or weather, and did not

necessarily end at sundown. If a Carter child was ill, or

there were guests staying at Shirley, these servants would

have been required to stay at the house long into the

night.

The working patterns of Shirley slaves were both

arduous and time-consuming, whichever occupation was held.

In such demanding environments as a Virginia field in the

middle of summer, or a child's nursery in the middle of

the night, it is no wonder that there were a large number

of illnesses among slaves. Hill, like many of his

contemporaries, provided all of his slaves with regular

health care from local doctors contracted to work on the

plantation. In some cases such care was preventative; all

of Hill's slaves were vaccinated against the small pox,

the only vaccination available to either black or white

Virginians in the nineteenth century.95 In other

instances, doctors came to the quarters to deal with

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problems ranging from abscesses, to pre-natal care and

childbirth, to tooth extractions.96 Several diseases also

made appearances in the Shirley quarters. Slaves suffered

from pneumonia, pleurisy, and influenza. The most common

disease to appear, however, was the "ague and fever," or

malaria. Every summer, Hill's plantation records were

filled with reports of cases of this tropical, mosquito-

carried disease, but there appear to have been few deaths

from it. Cholera, on the other hand, only appeared once

at Shirley in the nineteenth century, but was extremely

deadly? from June 27, 1849, when the first slave died of

the disease, to July 16, when Hill records that "all

cholera patients are convalescent," the Shirley slave

community lost at least thirty-two members.97

For most of Hill's slaves, this health care,

better than that received by many nineteenth-century

whites,• 98 was sufficient. However, on occasion, a slave

required care only available at great cost and at a

hospital. One slave was given an eye operation in 1835,99

and another was sent to Bellevue hospital for a period of

three weeks.100 The most expensive care Hill was required

to provide was to Celia, a field slave who suffered,

according to her doctors, from "insane excitement," and

was committed to Williamsburg's Eastern Lunatic Asylum

from 1857 to 1858.101

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These slaves, Celia, committed to an asylum,

Anthony, charged as a clumsy driver, and all of the others

living in Shirley's slave quarters, have left behind very

little of themselves aside from the occasional mentions on

Hill's lists or bills. Hill's words, once peeled back

from their surface meanings, provide snatches of lives, or

of descriptions, but little else. Hill's documents

reveal what he thought of as important in his slaves'

lives, as well as how he saw himself as a humane, educated

slaveowner. The slaves themselves, not able to read or

write, have left as their response to the life provided by

Hill only their attempts to escape to freedom. The first

recorded escape of Shirley slaves appeared in a Richmond

newspaper in April 1829.102 Six men, "after committing a

robbery in the neighborhood" ran off with their "Sunday

clothes, as they call them." Hill offered a ten dollar

reward for each slave returned to him. At least two of

the men, Joe Lyons and Sam Smith, were apprehended and

returned to Shirley several weeks later.103 Whether any

other Shirley slaves attempted to run away between 1829

and 1861, there is no way to know. However, the beginning

of the Civil War sparked a great deal of activity in the

slave quarters, and during Yankee occupations in 1862,

1863 and 1864, eighty slave men, women, and children ran

off to the northern gunboats patrolling the nearby James

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River, including "the blacksmith, and carpenter and eight

others, which breaks up the operations on the farm."104

This massive escape to freedom effectively crippled Hill's

plantation, and by the June harvest in 1864, he was left

with only "10 broken down women and men, a poor

business."105

From these actions to escape, it becomes obvious

that however well-treated and well-cared-for Hill's slaves

were, they were still unhappy. They were ordinary human

beings struggling under a system that bound them to their

masters, and trying to deal with both the overseers'

demands for their labor and with the daily events of any

human's life, both the extraordinary and mundane. Hill

was not evil, nor was he cruel to his black 'family'; he

treated his slaves as well as he was able, and encouraged

his neighbors to do the same. However, the one thing the

slaves wanted was the one thing no white southern

American, including Hill, was prepared to offer to blacks

in the first sixty years of the nineteenth century: their

freedom. Realizing the existence of this basic conflict

between black and white that must have been ever present

in the minds of owner and slave alike, the evidence and

details unearthed about the lives of Shirley's slaves take

on a different perspective. Underneath meat and blanket

rations, birth announcements, and death records, there can

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be found a fascinating relationship between a humane owner

and his human property. The details serve to demonstrate

how Hill and his slaves communicated and related to each

other within a peculiar system that neither enjoyed, but

within which both were forced to live.

III. INTERPRETING THE STORY

Slavery as an institution, both at Shirley and

throughout the South, came to an end during the American

Civil War. However, the end of the war does not mark the

end of the slaves' stories at Shirley. Hill Carter, as

research revealed, kept detailed lists and records about

his slaves, and the treatment they received. Those

records can provide a solid basis for a multicultural

interpretation of the plantation and its inhabitants, and

the information gleaned from the records should be passed

along to Shirley's visiting public.

Once the necessity of interpreting Shirley from a

multi-faceted perspective is accepted, the next question

becomes one of method. How should slavery at Shirley be

interpreted? What types of interpretation would be most

appropriate, taking into consideration both finances and

visitors' understanding? Based on the financial resources

available, the most plausible response to the need for a

broader interpretation would be to incorporate the story,

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or elements of the story, of Shirley's slaves, into the

house tour that is already given by trained guides.

The house tour, as it currently operates, follows

a route through the four first floor rooms of the main

plantation house. These rooms encompass both the public

sphere of the household, a parlor, dining room, and hall,

and the private, a bedroom. Guides tell pieces of the

history of both the house and its furnishings, and of the

Carter family, as they move through each space. Portraits

in each room provide illustrations to the family genealogy

discussed, and anecdotes related to the family's silver,

or to lead pipes installed in the parlor, are scattered

throughout the narrative. Traditionally, guests are

greeted in the hall, and are introduced to the layout and

design of the house. A servants' entrance, that would

have been used by the slaves carrying food from the

kitchen, is often the only mention of Carter slaves in any

space on the tour.

Is it possible to incorporate the history of the

slaves into a traditional interpretation of the house

without totally changing the atmosphere of the house and

the tour? Most definitely. However, it must be done

carefully, particularly to accommodate the variance of

chronology between subjects; the family history is

discussed from the seventeenth century through to the

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nineteenth, whereas the slaves' stories uncovered in

research focus solely on the nineteenth century. The time

discrepancy can be addressed in two ways. The first

involves only a minor adaptation of the tour narrative.

Guides currently discuss the seventeenth century in the

hall, the eighteenth century in the parlor, and the

nineteenth century in both the dining room and bedroom.

Hill Carter, as the proprietor of the estate throughout

much of the nineteenth century, becomes the focus, with

his immediate family, of the two latter rooms. A shift in

that focus, from Hill and his children to Hill's entire

'family,' including field slaves, house servants, and an

overseer, can be accomplished very easily without changing

the basic structure of the tour.

When entering the dining room, guides generally

discuss the declining condition of Shirley in the

beginning of the nineteenth century due to poor

management, and how Hill, once he took over in 1815,

revived the agriculture and the house. Hill could not

have attempted this revival without the manual labor of

his slaves, and a guide can discuss some of the

obligations and odd jobs for which the field slaves found

themselves responsible, including planting and harvesting,

shearing sheep, and whitewashing buildings.106 The house

servants, too, can be incorporated, if only by placing a

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picture in the visitors' minds about the servers and cooks

for the grand meals in this dining room, or by quoting

from a nineteenth-century visitor, who described the food

and the servers who brought it to him.107

The discussion of Hill and his activities

continues as the tour enters the final room on the route,

the bedroom, and it is here that Hill's wife and children

are introduced, as well as the story of Shirley during the

Civil War. This story is, by its very nature, directly

related to the presence of slaves on the plantation,

whether they are discussed or not, and so here it makes

sense to mention at least one element of the slave story.

Perhaps a guide chooses to tell about the runaway slaves

who achieved freedom by running to the Yankee gunboats in

the James River, or to discuss overseers, because one of

Hill's sons was an overseer at Shirley. Mentioning Dr.

Robert Carter, another of Hill's sons, and the son who

inherited Shirley, might lead guides into a short

discussion about health care on the plantation, a topic

that would not have to center specifically on slaves, but

could include the whole family.

These small additions to a traditional tour can be

achieved without an interruption of routes or even

narrative outlines, and would provide guides with

opportunities to introduce basic, crucial elements of the

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slaves' history to visitors. A more comprehensive

reorganization of the tour structure allows for a more

coherent discussion of the house, its functions and

meanings, and of the slaves who worked within that house

and those meanings in the nineteenth century. By

organizing the tour differently, slaves can be discussed

in each space on the tour. This type of change, however,

will significantly alter the narrative used in tours, and

may not be as immediately acceptable to guides, or to

long-time visitors.

The hall, currently used for an introduction to

the house and its structural history, as well as for the

beginning of the family history, can retain its

introductory role to the house and family, but also be the

site of an introduction to the other elements of the tour.

This introduction will simply discuss the fact that a

plantation like this required a large and varied work

force to function, and that the rest of the tour will

introduce the visitor to the owners of Shirley over time,

their families and stories, as well as to some of the

workers of Shirley and their stories.

The parlor is traditionally the space where guides

discuss the family's history in the eighteenth century,

mainly because many of the early family portraits are hung

here. Currently, many guides do mention the fact that one

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generation of the family used this space as a dining room,

and that the "running water" piped into the room would

allow the servants to wash dishes in between meals. This

glimpse into the duties of the house servants can be

expanded with a discussion of the presence in the house of

maids, cooks, and servers, as well as small children

performing simple tasks for guests. The difference

between the house servants who greeted and served

visitors, and the field slaves who would have been out of

sight of most visitors can also be mentioned. This

general information about the role of slaves at Shirley

would prepare visitors for any specific information about

Hill's nineteenth-century slave family that they would be

given later in the tour, and at the same time help them to

realize that slaves were an essential, if silent, part of

life at the plantation throughout the history of Shirley.

Guides have only a limited time in each space, and

obviously the addition of the history of 100 or more

slaves to an already crowded narrative poses a challenge

for even the best interpreter. But even the thirty to

forty minute tour length at Shirley provides them time to

make visitors aware of the presence of slaves on the

plantation, and of their roles and relationships among

themselves and with the white family members.

With a limited time to discuss any issue or

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element from the family history, and the need to provide

some context for that history, which elements of the

history of the Shirley slaves should be included, and

which left out? In any interpretation, whether of slaves

or not, time constraints pressure interpreters to choose

their material very carefully. Shirley, with limits of

approximately seven to ten minutes per room, is no

different. It is important to include enough documented

information and explanation of that information to be

educational, without overwhelming the visitor. It is

important, as well, to balance the information given, and

not to concentrate too much on any one portion of the

plantation or its family. A Shirley guide should, above

all, provide visitors the opportunity to think about how

both slaves and white gentry lived and interacted within

the environment of nineteenth-century Shirley Plantation.

The roles of Shirley slaves in each of these

aspects of the plantation can be more comprehensively and

more concretely demonstrated by incorporating tours and

exhibits beyond the scope of the current house tour. The

first of these exhibits is simply a plaque, or large

label, placed in the kitchen building (Figure 9). This

area is currently open to the public, and is furnished

with nineteenth-century cooking utensils, but there is no

explanation about the space (Figure 10). A label could,

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Figure 10 Kitchen. Interior. The Caiter family has filled the kitchen building with utensils and equipment for exhibit to the public.

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simply and inexpensively, describe the presence of slave

cooks, incorporating the quotes uncovered in Hill's

records about his cooks.108 A label might also discuss the

servers who carried the food to the main house, or the

fact that food preparation for the slaves and overseer

took place in their cabins.

The second possibility for an exhibition of

elements of slave life at Shirley is more ambitious, and

centers around the extant slave cabin discussed earlier in

this thesis. There are many problems involved in the use

of this space, however. The cabin currently stands on a

piece of land no longer belonging to the Carter family.

Its dilapidated condition, while allowing excellent

opportunities for study, is not conducive to visitor

safety. Combined with the financial resources that would

be required to put together an exhibit in the space, these

problems seem at first to be prohibitive. There are,

however, several possibilities that would allow rhe use of

this visual proof of slave lifestyle and existence at

Shirley.

One option available is the moving of the cabin

onto Shirley land, where it can be restored and opened to

the public. Detailed drawings and measurements that have

been done of this cabin allow the alternative option of

recreating the cabin on Shirley property and opening it as

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a reproduction. The latter alternative would not disturb

the original cabin, leaving it for future study in its

proper location, and may, therefore, be the most

appropriate choice. Whichever course of action is

followed, the next step, once the cabin is constructed or

reconstructed, is to determine how to furnish and display

it as a piece of the slave past.

Colonial Williamsburg, in furnishing their slave

cabins at Carter's Grove, decided to fill the cabins with

recreated objects that might have been found inside.109

However, at Shirley there is no evidence at all, aside

from small amounts of ceramics discovered during

archeological study of the plantation, of what the slaves

may have lived with, other than the blankets given them by

Hill Carter. But would a visitor find an empty cabin an

evocative space, one that revealed the past to them? That

is a question that cannot be answered without questioning

the visitors themselves, and it is a question that needs

to be taken into consideration. A slave space should be

as powerful and expressive about the people who lived in

that space as the living space of a white statesman. With

careful interpretation, an empty cabin might reveal more

about Hill Carter's slave family than could a cabin filled

with reproduction props.

The interpretation of the cabin should center

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around what is known about the slaves. A map easily

provides a context for the quarters, their distance from

the house, and their position in relation to the fields.

An interpreter can then take advantage of the pieces of

lives that this thesis brought together to introduce

visitors to the flow and character of life in the quarters

in the nineteenth century. Names and descriptions of

slaves, along with what is known about families, medical

care, and occupations, mesh together to form a visual

image of life. An interpreter might focus on the story of

one family, whose members were divided between the house

and the field, or on different slaves; Celia, who was

committed to Eastern State, or Jefferson, who was a

skilled slave bought by Hill as an adult, and who later

married and had a family within Shirley's slave community.

This exhibition of the slave cabin as a separate

space, completely away from the presence and in most cases

the influence of Hill and his family, allows modern

visitors to visualize the existence of slaves as human

beings, rather than simply as one-dimensional figures

serving in the background of the Carters' lives. Once the

human element of the slave quarter and community are

revealed, it becomes important to reconnect the two pieces

of Shirley: the plantation house and its white family, and

the slave community. Neither one of the pieces ever

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existed alone. A walking tour, guided either by an

interpreter or a pamphlet and map, will incorporate the

entire plantation, including the house, outbuildings, and

the slave cabin, and provide visitors with the chance to

see all of the parts coming together into a whole (Figure

11). This kind of tour illustrates the idea that the

house, while the center of plantation activity, was only

one piece of the atmosphere and character of Shirley;

without the fields, the slave houses, and the

outbuildings, the main house would not exist.

The walking tour can begin on the banks of the

James River, a location accessible to both visitors who

have seen the house, and those who have not. This vista

provides the background for an introduction to the tour,

and to the plantation. The view of the house from this

angle is the same one that guests approaching Shirley by

water would have first seen. The tour information,

whether presented by a guide or by a pamphlet, could

discuss the imposing nature of the house, designed

specifically to impress Shirley's visitors.

The next few "stops" on this walking tour serve to

introduce the activity that was constantly occurring in

the background of that impressive facade. The side

entrance to the house can be pointed out, and the walk

taken every day by the slaves, with all of the food, from

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H □

BASIC ROUTS

A. River/ introduction B. Main house/ slave entrance C. Kitchen 0. Icehouse E. Granary and barns F. Agricultural fields G □ G. Slave cabin H. Garden/ laundry

Figure 11 Map of walking tour.

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the kitchen building to that door. The kitchen provides a

center for a discussion of food on the plantation and the

cooks who prepared it.

From the kitchen, visitors will be guided to the

icehouse, and to the granary. The cutting of ice from the

River can be described, as well as Hill's sale of his ice

during the year to those neighbors without icehouses. The

granary, from which it is possible to see the other

plantation barns, can serve as the backdrop for a

description of some of the tasks that were required on

this property. Livestock had to be tended, sheep shorn,

colts trained, and bulls castrated. Hill, too, used this

granary to store the corn crop, some of which was sent to

Richmond from the James River, and some of which fed both

the slaves and the Carters.

A path leads from the granary building down

approximately a half mile into the fields. These fields

will serve as trhe next site for discussion on the tour.

The crops of the plantation, the various tasks required

for each crop, and Hill's innovative agriculture can be

introduced here, as well as the labor performed by the

field slaves. In these fields, the Shirley Plantation

slaves still retain an eerie presence. A chimney that

remains standing amid the crops can be the focus of a

description of the slave quarter and the community that

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thrived there. If the decision is made to recreate or to

move the extant cabin, this might prove to be an ideal

location, and that cabin would add to the chimney in a

portrayal of the slaves' environment.

The visitors, returning from the field on the same

path they followed previously, will this time be able to

see the main house the way the slaves did, and to compare

it to the view that so many nineteenth-century visitors

saw from the James River. Their last stop before the main

house will be the laundry building. While it currently is

operating as the museum store, the building itself allows

an opportunity to talk about other tasks, like laundry,

sewing, and knitting, that went on here every day.

Because the building served at one point in the nineteenth

century as a schoolhouse, the schooling of Hill's children

can also be mentioned. A piece of the plantation's

nineteenth-century garden, which provides an ideal end to

the walking tour, and a place to rest and reflect, is

behind this outbuilding, and visitors are able to walk

through it.

Each of these expanded interpretations of Shirley

illustrates the varied aspects of life on the plantation,

the ways Hill dealt with problems, and the way the slave

community itself was structured. Establishing a walking

tour or opening the slave cabin at Shirley will require a

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great deal of effort and time. Reconstructing the cabin

will also necessitate financial resources not currently

available at the plantation. For these reasons, it may be

possible at this time only to incorporate the slaves of

Shirley into the current house tour, or to place a plague

or a label in the kitchen building.

IV. CONCLUSION

Shirley Plantation, like other historic houses,

provides visitors with the opportunity to step back in

time, and to explore the American past using artifacts and

architecture. This thesis has examined the story of

Shirley's nineteenth-century slave community as one of the

pieces of that American past. It has also incorporated

those slaves into a more complete interpretation of the

plantation and its artifacts, one that will illustrate the

many different facets of plantation life. Visitors will

be able to examine for themselves the importance of

slavery to a southern planter, as well as to begin to

understand the relationships that existed in this isolated

plantation community between master, mistress, overseer,

doctor, and slave.

This thesis is not intended to elevate the story

of the lives of slaves to primary focus in an

interpretation. It is meant to expand the narrow history

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of a white planter to include all of the elements of the

plantation environment that influenced that planter and

with which he dealt every day. Only when all of the

pieces of Hill Carter's life are brought together can that

man, his achievements, his beliefs, and his lifestyle be

fully understood. If its interpreters begin to include

information that this thesis uncovered, Shirley Plantation

will be one step closer to reaching the goal set forth by

Charles Montgomery in 1959: to become "an historical

document which will stand forever as truth."110

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. APPENDIX 1858 List of Slaves111

John Washington, Jinny, Manuel, Rachel, Marthy, Joe, Mary, John, Jim, baby (Sally)

Mary Ann, George, Joe, Eady

Jim Boy, Betty, baby

Daniel, Louiza, Fanny, Molly, Sally, baby

Tom How, Betsy, Julia, Ellick, Napoleon

Jim Green, Abby, baby (Dandridge)

Molly, Billy, Rachel, George, Sigh, Martin, Ann

Betsy Lyons, Coy, Celia, Mary, Hartwell

Charity, Daniel, Phill, James, Maria

Charles Buck, Iris, Soloman

Jim Buck, Lydia, Amey, Phibby, Matt, Sally, Winny

Sarah, Edward, Harry, Robert, Molly, baby

Antony, Sarah, William, Stephen, Antony

Charles, Eliza, Lucy, Maryann, baby

Nat, Betsy, Bibbiana, Phill, James, Ann, baby

Mimey, Anderson, John, Lewis, Edmund, Cornelius

Harry Tin, Nancy, Judy, Cuetta, Anne

John Jackson, Mary, Talbot, Fanny, Mimey, Jinny, William, baby

Nelly, Phillis, Joe, Eliza, Thomas, William, Robert, baby

68

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William Buck, Betsy, Phibby and baby Robert, John, Joe, Celia, Jack, Lilly, Phillis, baby

Phillis, Mary, Mildred, Susan and baby, Betty, Susan

Peter, Sally, Lavinia, Jane, Mary, Peter, Lyga, baby

Cimon

John Short

Frank

Jefferson

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NOTES

1The Mount Vernon Ladies Association of the Union: 1853-1953. Centennial Exhibition catalogue. Mount Vernon, VA: 1953; 4.

2Tilden, Freeman. Interpreting Our Heritage. Third Edition. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977; 3.

3Alderson, William, and Shirley Paine Low. Interpretation of Historic Sites. Nashville: American Association for State and Local History, 1976; 24.

4Tilden, Interpreting Our Heritage. 15.

Montgomery, Charles. "The Historic House: A Definition." Museum News. September, 1959: 13.

6Blatti, Past Meets Present. 4.

7Catherine Lynn's thesis, Shirley Plantation (Master's Thesis, University of Delaware, 1967), is the best source for a full history of the plantation and its owners.

8The Carters of Shirley represent only a small part of one of the most influential Virginia families. Many of the papers of other Carter family members, including those of the patriarch Robert "King" Carter and his sons Landon Carter and Robert Carter, survive, and can shed light on the activities of this large clan.

9a good source of information on the eighteenth- century Virginia tobacco economy is Allan Kulikoff's book, Tobacco and Slaves (University of North Carolina Press, 1986).

10Hill wrote a description of his work on his swamps in "An Account of the Embankment", Farmer's Register. Volume 1 (August 1833): pages 129-135.

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Hill held and cultivated plantations in Charles City and Henrico Counties, land left to him by his grandfather, Charles. According to Charles' will, the acreage totalled over two thousand acres.

12Lynn, Shirley Plantation. 105.

13in Campbell, Edward, and Kym Rice, eds. Before Freedom Came. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1991; p. 21; quoted from James Bonner, "Plantation Architecture of the Lower South on the Eve of the Civil War", Journal of Southern History 11: 371.

14planter is generally considered a designation for a slaveholder owning twenty or more slaves.

15statistics taken from Vlach, John Michael. Back of the Big House. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993; 7-8.

16Lynn, Shirley Plantation. 104.

17Carter, Hill. "On the Management of Negroes." Farmer's Register I (1834): 564-565. This quote and subsequent quotes from Hill Carter in this section of my thesis are all taken from these two pages of text. For a full text of this article, see Appendix I.

18Hill Carter in Plantation Journal, April 15, 1841, Shirley Plantation Research Collection, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Williamsburg, VA.

19Hill Carter Meat Rations Lists, 1858 and 1861, Shirley Plantation Research Collection.

The rhythm of life in the quarter can never be completely recovered, as there is no surviving evidence about the free-time activities of Shirley's slaves, their holidays, celebrations, and funerals. We do know that some Shirley slaves were baptized in the Westover Parish Episcopal Church (from Westover Parish Register 1833-1888, State Archives, Richmond, VA) , but we know nothing else about their religious beliefs or activity.

21 ages, dates of birth, and maternity proven through examination of Hill's records in the Shirley Plantation Research Collection. Documents used included birth records, death records, and date of birth lists.

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22see Vlach, John Michael. Behind the Big House. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993; 161.

^data taken from all available Carter records, 1820 to 1865.

24Genovese, Eugene. Roll. Jordan. Roll: The World the Slaves Made. New York: Pantheon Books, 1974; 446.

^from various slave-related documents/notes, Hill Carter Papers, Shirley Plantation Research Collection.

26see section on occupations for further details on this subject.

27Hill Carter, Plantation Journals, 1831, Shirley Plantation Research Collection. Hill's entry records that: "carpenters finished the two new quarters for Big Phill, and Billy Tanner."

28the average price for a healthy adult male field hand in the mid-nineteenth century was $1000; data taken from Vlach, Behind the Big House. 142.

^Hill Carter, receipts for purchase, September 11, 1850 and November 29, 1852, Shirley Plantation Research Collection.

30A11 of the information about hired slaves at Shirley comes from Hill Carter's records of the mentioned years, Shirley Plantation Research Collection.

31 in Charles Carter's 1803 will, he leaves slaves to each of his daughters, some of whom he says have already received their allotment of slaves, presumably in a dowry. From Charles Carter, will, 1803, Shirley Plantation Research Collection.

32Hill Carter, ] Plantation Research

33Hill Carter, Plantation Research

^Hill Carter, Plantation Journal, 1828, Shirley Plantation Research ollection.

35Hill Carter, Plantation Journal, 1832, Shirley Plantation Research

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36report of this archeology written up in Reinhart, Theodore, ed. The Archeology of Shirley Plantation. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1984.

37Reinhart, Archeology. 161.

38Reinhart, Archeology. 161

39The chimney of this structure was recently pulled down in order to prevent the collapse of the entire cabin.

40The staircases are now enclosed, but Edward Chappell of Colonial Williamsburg believes that the enclosures were not added until after the Civil War, when the cabin was occupied by tenant farmers.

41 Carter, " Treatment", 565.

4201mstead, Frederick Law, quoted in Vlach, Back of the Big House. 159.

43Vlach, Back of the Big House. 158.

4401msted, quoted in Vlach, Back of the Big House. 155- 156.

45Vlach, Back of the Big House. 162.

46Gruber, Anna. The Archeology of Mr. Jefferson's Slaves. Master's Thesis, University of Delaware, 1991; 7.

47Vlach, Back of the Big House. 167.

48Hill Carter notes, plantation documents, 1861, Shirley Plantation Research Collection.

49Reinhart, Archeology. 186.

50Hill Carter food bill, 1861, Shirley Plantation Research Collection.

51Mary Carter in letter to son, 1852, Shirley Plantation Research Collection.

52Hill Carter receipt, October 1819, Shirley Plantation Research Collection.

53Hill Carter, clothing bill, March 6, 1857, Shirley Plantation Research Collection.

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54in several clothing bills, Hill notes which fabrics are for family, which for slaves; see Hill Carter clothing bill, November 20, 1832, Shirley Plantation Research Collection.

55Stachiw, Myron. "Negro Cloth: Northern Industry and Southern Slavery". exhibition, Boston National Historic Park, 1981; 2.

56Linda Baumgarten, from interview, Summer 1994; Baumgarten states that in the eighteenth century the same term was used for a course linen product.

57Hill Carter clothing bill, November 20, 1832, Shirley Plantation Research Collection.

58Hill Carter clothing bill, March 6, 1857, Shirley Plantation Research Collection.

59in Hall's Travels in North America in the Years 1827 and 1828. Edinburgh: Cadell &Co, 1829; vol 3, 225.

60Robert Collins, quoted in Genovese, Roll,. Jordan. Roll. 551.

61Genovese, Roll. Jordan. Roll. 551.

62Runaway Advertisement, Richmond Enquirer, April 1829.

63Campbell and Rice, Before Freedom Came. 56.

^from Lydia Jean Wares. Dress Of the African-American Woman in Slavery and Freedom: 1500-1935. Phd Dissertation, Purdue University, 1981; 154.

65Carter clothing bill, November 28, 1831, Shirley Plantation Research Collection.

^Baumgarten, interview.

67Hill Carter clothing bill, 1860, Shirley Plantation Research Collection.

^ill Carter, Plantation Journal, December 1830, Shirley Plantation Research Collection.

Hill Carter clothing bill, August 12, 1857, Shirley Plantation Research Collection.

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70Hill Carter receipt, August 1823, Shirley Plantation Research Collection.

71Shirley Plantation Research Collection.

^Hill Carter shoe list, 1853, Shirley Plantation Research Collection.

^Hill Carter shoe list, 1861, Shirley Plantation Research Collection.

74all of the information about the agricultural activity of Shirley is taken from Hill Carter, Plantation Journal, 1824, Shirley Plantation Research Collection.

^Hill Carter, Plantation Journal, May 183 6, Shirley Plantation Research Collection.

76Hill Carter Plantation journal, Shirley Plantation Research Collection.

^Hill Carter, Plantation Journal, Winter 1837, Shirley Plantation Research Collection.

78Hill Carter, Plantation Journal, 1837, Shirley Plantation Research Collection.

^Hill Carter, Plantation Journal, June 1824, Shirley Plantation Research Collection.

80Hill Carter, Plantation Journal, 1830, Shirley Plantation Research Collection.

81Hill Carter, Plantation Journal, 1841, Shirley Plantation Research Collection.

82Hill Carter overseer contracts, 1855, 1860, Shirley Plantation Research Collection.

^Hill Carter overseers contract with James Brand, 1855, Shirley Plantation Research Collection.

^Kulikoff, Tobacco and Slaves. 410.

85Kolchin, Peter. American Slavery 1619-1877. New York: Hill and Wang, 1993; 103.

^Kolchin, American Slavery. 103.

87Hill Carter, "Management of Negroes", 565.

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88Hill Carter m letter, 1845, Shirley Plantation Research Collection.

O p m letter of Mary Carter to son, 1852, Shirley Plantation Research Collection.

90Hill Carter in letter to Mary, 1832, Shirley Plantation Research Collection.

91The room and board of a servant is included in many of the hotel bills of Hill Carter throughout the nineteenth century, all of which are in the Shirley Plantation Research Collection.

92Hill Carter in letter to Mary, 1832, Shirley Plantation Research Collection.

93from nineteenth-century letter of Henry Barnard: "Mrs. Carter will send you by two little black boys as fine a cup of coffee as you ever tasted"; quoted in Lynn, Shirley Plantation. 121.

94from nineteenth-century letter of Henry Barnard, quoted in Lynn, Shirley Plantation. 121.

"Lou Powers, in interview with Jennifer Ley, August 1994, Williamsburg, VA.

96Hi l l ' s records seem to 'indicate that doctors were on contract with him to care for his slaves, a practice mentioned in Sheridan, Richard. Doctors and Slaves. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985; 314. The doctors who worked for Hill are recorded in his records, and mere work needs to be done to find out where these doctors trained, where they lived, and what their position in the community was.

97Hill Carter, Plantation Journal, June and July 1849, Shirley Plantation Research Collection. For more complete information about slave diseases and health care in the American South, see Savitt, Todd. Medicine and Slavery. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1978.

p Q Kolchm, American Slavery. 114.

"Hill Carter, Plantation Journal, 1835, Shirley Plantation Research Collection. The operation, on slave John Short, took place in Richmond.

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100Hill Carter, hospital bill, 1859, Shirley Plantation Research Collection.

101Hill Carter, bills and receipts from Lunatic Asylum, 1857 and 1858, Shirley Plantation Research Collection. For complete history of the Lunatic Asylum, see Colonial Williamsburg research report, by Pat Gibbs and Linda Rowe (Williamsburg, 1974); slaves were treated at the hospital from 1846, and were housed, with free black patients, separately from white patients.

102Runaway Advertisement, Richmond Enquirer, April 1829.

103Hill Carter, receipts, April 28, 1829 and May 6, 1829, Shirley Plantation Research Collection.

104Hill Carter, Plantation Journal, July 14, 1863, Shirley Plantation Research Collection.

10SHill Carter, Plantation Journal, June 17, 1864, Shirley Plantation Research Collection.

106Information about Shirley slaves used throughout this section is all discussed in detail in the previous section of my thesis, The Slaves. References and credits are given there.

107from Henry Barnard, quoted in Lynn, Shirley Plantation. 121.

108See section two, page 46 of this thesis.

109 for discussion • • of Carter's Grove slave quarters, see Katz-Hyman, Martha. "'In the middle of This Poverty Some Cups and a Teapot': The Material Culture of Slavery in Eighteenth Century Virginia and the Furnishing of Slave Quarters at Colonial Williamsburg." Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Library Research Report # 350, 1994.

1l0Montgomery, "Historic House", 14.

111Taken from Carter, meat rations list, 1858. Shirley Plantation Research Collection.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. BIBLIOGRAPHY

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_____ . Interview with Jennifer Ley. Williamsburg, VA, August 1994.

Blatti, Jo, ed. Past Meets Present: Essays About Historic Interpretation and Public Audiences. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1987.

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Lynn, Catherine. Shirley Plantation. Master's thesis, University of Delaware, 1967.

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Smith, Daniel Blake. Inside the Great House. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1980.

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Vlach, John Micheal. Back of the Big House. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993.

Walsh, Lorena. '"From Calabar to Carter's Grove': The History of a Tidewater Virginia African American Slave Community". Colonial Williamsburg Foundation draft, 1994.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.