It has been months since I last posted, but we’ve been busy! We spent from July until November in the field completing a field survey at Maxwell Hall Park. We’ve been in the lab since late November cleaning artifacts, cataloging, and working on the report. I’ve also been working with artifacts from Rich Hill and researching the lives of some of the enslaved people who lived there. What follows is the story of Winney, an enslaved woman who lived during the late 18th and early 19th century.
Winney was 5 years old when
her master John Chandler died in the spring of 1773.[i] In May two men, Henry
Smith Hawkins and George Keech, came to the Chandler plantation (which was not Rich Hill) and took an
inventory and appraised the value of everything that Chandler owned, including
the five enslaved individuals who were his chattel property. Winney was one of
the five enslaved individuals and she is described in the inventory as a Negro
girl. There were two other children listed in the inventory, two boys named Will
and Nathan, indicating that they were both under 16 years of age. There were
also two enslaved women, Moll and Nell, who may have been the children’s
mothers.[ii] Moll was an older woman
and had once been the property of John Chandler’s father (who died in 1735) and later of his sister Mary.[iii]
.jpg) |
Priming Tobacco Leaves. Most of the Plantations in Southern Maryland grew tobacco. Enslaved people would strip mature leaves and hang them together in groups to dry. This may have been one of Moll, Nell, Nathan, Will, and Winney's duties. https://b-womeninamericanhistory18.blogspot.com/2018/07/slaves-in-in-maryland-men-women.html |
John Chandler had creditors.
The main ones were the firms of John Glasford & Co. of Edinburgh, Scotland
and Barnes and Ridgate, of Port Tobacco. Chandler owed the two firms a total of
£137.6.7.[iv] If his estate couldn’t
pay the debts, Winney and the other four enslaved, who were all valued at a total of £135, might be sold to cover the costs. When the estate
was finally settled in March 1774 by John Chandler’s son Stephen, there was a
remaining balance of £98.18.9 and one
farthing to be divided between Stephen, his brother John, and their younger sisters
Sarah and Ann; neither of the latter two were of age. Stephen was tasked with caring for
their portion of the estate until they came of age.[v] None of the enslaved were
sold to pay debts and Winney was able to continue to live on the Chandler
plantation for a least another six to eight years.
 |
Charles County Probate Records, Administration Accounts 1770-1888. Final Account of Stephen Chandler, Jr., administrator of the estate of John Chandler, pages 237-238 26 March 1774. |
Sometime in the early 1780s,
Sarah Chandler married Samuel Cox, a planter who lived on a nearby farm.
Winney, who was in her teens, accompanied Sarah to her new home. She may
have occasionally seen her family and friends at the Chandler place but she now
belonged to the Cox family. Even her owner’s status had changed, she was now
specifically the property of Samuel Cox. Once Sarah Chandler was married to him
all of her property became his property.
 |
Slave Cabins on a plantation North Winds Picture Archives https://www.northwindprints.com/galleries/slavery |
Over the next quarter century
or so Winney lived on the Cox’s farm. What her duties were is unknown. She may
have been Sarah’s personal servant, or perhaps she was one of the over two dozen
enslaved who lived and worked in the house and fields on the Cox plantation. The records are also silent about any children she may have borne. In
1807, Samuel Cox bought Rich Hill and moved his family into the house on the
property.[vi] By this time Winney was
around 40 years old.
 |
| Rich Hill in 1975 Photograph by J. Richard Rivoire |
 |
1811 Inventory Enslaved owned by Samuel Cox Charles County Probate Records Inventories & Accounts 1808-1812 Pages 387-391 |
Winney may have been described as sickly in the inventory because she was pregnant. Her son Nathan was born after the inventory was taken, probably in late 1811 or early 1812. Perhaps Winney named her son after her childhood friend (or sibling) Nathan whom she had grown up with on the Chandler plantation.
 |
| Sarah Cox in the 1810 United States Federal Census Sarah's household included her, two young women between 10 and 16 years of age, two young women and a young man between the ages of 16 and 26, and a man over the age of 45. There were also 27 slaves living on the plantation. Sarah's household was listed next to the households of two free families of color, those of Jane Adams and Henry Butler |
 |
Distribution of the Estate of Sarah Cox Charles County Probate Records Inventories 1812-1813, pages 250-251 |
 |
Portion of the Will of Sarah (Chandler) Cox Wills Book HB no 13, pages 274-276. Signed 16 October 1813, admitted for probate 14 December 1813 |
John Chandler Cox died within 18 months of his mother Sarah Cox. His will was dated 13 June 1814 and in it he bequeathed 3-year-old Nathan to his young nephew John Walter Gody with the proviso that if John Walter died before reaching the age of 21, then Nathan was to be divided among John Chandler Cox’s surviving brothers and sisters. In other words Nathan would be sold.[ix]
 |
| Portion of the Will of John Chandler Cox CCPR Will Book HB no13, pages 327-329. Signed 13 June 1814. Second copy 13 June 1814. Admitted for probate October Court Term 1814. |
In 1820, when the Federal census was enumerated, the Gody family lived in Georgetown in the District of Columbia. If Nathan was still alive he would have been 9 years old. If John Walter was still living with his father Walter Gody, Nathan should be numbered among the enslaved living in Walter’s household. However, there were no male enslaved living in the Gody household.[x] The census only numbers one enslaved woman and a female child under the age of 14. Neither of these individuals are specifically named.
 |
View of Georgetown Reprint of the 1855 E. Sachse & Co., Baltimore John Walter and his parents Walter & Rebecca (Cox) Gody lived in Georgetown Nathan may have lived here after 1814 |
Between her birth in about 1768 and 1814, Winney belonged to members of the Chandler and Cox families, passing from John Chandler to his daughter Sarah, then to her husband Samuel Cox, back to Sarah when Samuel died, and then finally to their daughter (and Chandler’s granddaughter) Margaret and her husband Hugh Cox. She lived at Chandler’s plantation (known as Chandler’s Addition), Samuel Cox’s first plantation, his second at Rich Hill, and then on Hugh Cox’s plantation near Salem. Between 1811 and 1814, her young son Nathan was the property of Sarah Chandler Cox, her son John Chandler Cox, and then his nephew (and Sarah’s grandson) John Walter Gody. Nathan was probably born at Rich Hill in about 1811 and was perhaps taken to Georgetown in 1814. What happened to Winney and Nathan after 1814? I don’t know, they, like so many enslaved individuals, disappear from the records. Their presence in the records is entirely based on the economic transactions of their owners, not on their own individual stories.
[i]
Winney’s age in 1773 is estimated, the records
show that she was age 43 in 1811 when the inventory of the estate of her then
master Samuel Cox was made, which places her birth year circa 1768. Charles County Probate Records [CCPR], Inventories
& Accounts 1808-1812. Second Inventory of Reappraisement, Estate of Samuel
Cox and Distribution of the Estate to Heirs, pages 387-391, 9 April 1811.
[ii] CCPR, Inventories & Accounts 1766-1773. Inventory
of the Estate of John Chandler, pages 522- 524, dated 11 May 1773.
[iii] CCRP, Will of John
Chandler, Will Book no. 4, pages 58-59. Signed 30 November 1735. Inventory of
Estate, pages 33-38, dated 26 Feb. 1735/36.
[iv] The convention is pounds, shillings, pence. A pound
is divisible into 12 shillings, and a shilling into 12 pennies. A penny is four
farthings.
[v] CCPR, Administration Accounts 1770-1888. Final
Account of Stephen Chandler, Jr., administrator of the estate of John Chandler,
pages 237-238, 26 March 1774.
[vi] Richard Brown
and
Catherine Brown to
Samuel Cox, Rich Hill with the
dwelling house and Lomax Addition. Charles County Land Records, Liber IB no. 7,
page 393.
[vii] Charles County Probate Records, Inventories
& Accounts 1808-1812. Second Inventory of Reappraisement, Estate of Samuel
Cox and Distribution of the Estate to Heirs, pages 387-391, 9 April 1811.
[viii] CCPR Estate of Sarah (Chandler) Cox. Wills Book HB no 13, pages 274-276. Signed 16 October 1813. Admitted for probate 14 December 1813. Inventories & Accounts 1812-1815, Distribution of Estate to Heirs, 24 March 1814, page 250 -251.
[viii] CCPR, Inventories & Accounts 1766-1773. Inventory
of the Estate of John Chandler, pages 522- 524, dated 11 May 1773.
[ix] CCPR Will of John Chandler Cox, Book
HB no13, pages 327-329. Signed 13 June 1814. Second copy 13 June 1814. Admitted
for probate October Court Term 1814.
[x] Fourth Census of the United States, 1820. Georgetown,
Washington, District of Columbia. National Archives Records Administration,
Roll M33_5, Image 39, Page 32.
Comments
Post a Comment