From the Cradle to the Fields: Slave Childcare and Childhood in the Antebellum South

Abstract

For slaves living in different economic regions of the nineteenth-century American South, the nature of pregnancy and childcare, as well as childhood itself (from birth until working age), differed by degrees. This study employs a comparative approach to uncover the relationship between regional agricultural economies, on the one hand, and slave childcare and childhood, on the other. Focusing on two very different southern communities – namely, Fairfax County, Virginia, and Georgetown District, South Carolina – this study underscores the economic and cultural diversity of the antebellum South, as well as the variations in the experiences of slave children in different economic regions. It also suggests that scholars' contrasting views of childcare as having been either adequate or inadequate, or of childhood as having amounted to a stolen childhood or not, are not mutually exclusive.

Notes

This study draws from my 2009 PhD dissertation for the University of Leiden, entitled ‘Weathering Different Storms: Regional Agriculture and Slave Families in the Non-Cotton South, 1800–1860’, esp. chap. 3. A revised version of this research appears in my book: The Quarters and the Fields: Slave Families in the Non-Cotton South (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2010).

Brenda E. Stevenson, Life in Black and White: Family and Community in the Slave South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 193; Wilma Dunaway, The African-American Family in Slavery and Emancipation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 132; Robert William Fogel, Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery (New York: Norton, 1989), 145; Leslie A. Schwalm, A Hard Fight for We: Women's Transition from Slavery to Freedom in South Carolina (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1997), 28–30; Richard Follett, The Sugar Masters: Planters and Slaves in Louisiana's Cane World, 1820–1860 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005), 73–74.

Peter Kolchin, American Slavery, 1619–1877 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1993), 141; Stevenson, Life, 187; Wilma King, Stolen Childhood: Slave Youth in Nineteenth-Century America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), esp. chap. 2. See also Fogel, Without Consent or Contract, 144–145.

Dunaway, African-American Family, 2–4; Stevenson, Life, 187; Schwalm, Hard Fight, 28–30.

Elijah Fletcher to Jesse Fletcher, Senr., 4 August 1810, in The Letters of Elijah Fletcher, ed. Martha von Briesen (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1965), 8. See also Nan Netherton, Donald Sweig, Janice Artemel, Patricia Hickin and P. Netherton Reid, Fairfax County, Virginia: A History (Fairfax: Fairfax County Office of Comprehensive Planning, 1978), 161–170; Avery Odell Craven, Soil Exhaustion as a Factor in the Agricultural History of Virginia and Maryland, 1606–1860 (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1926), 72–73; Lewis Cecil Gray, History of Agriculture in the Southern United States to 1860, vol. 2 (Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution, 1933), 589–592; Allan Kulikoff, Tobacco and Slaves: The Development of Southern Cultures in the Chesapeake, 1680–1800 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986), 157–158.

Samuel McPherson, ed., Memories of Samuel M. Janney (Philadelphia, 1881), 29–30. See also Netherton et al., Fairfax County, 152–170; Craven, Soil Exhaustion, 79–121; Gray, History of Agriculture, 811–820; Arthur G. Peterson, ‘The Alexandria Market Prior to the Civil War’, William and Mary Quarterly 2nd ser. 12, no. 2 (1932): 104–114; Lorena S. Walsh, ‘Plantation Management in the Chesapeake, 1620–1820’, Journal of Economic History 49, no. 2 (1989): 404; US Census, 1810–1860, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Washington, DC; Damian Alan Pargas, ‘Boundaries and Opportunities: Comparing Slave Family Formation in the Antebellum South’, Journal of Family History 33, no. 3 (2008): 320–330.

Walsh, ‘Plantation Management’, 405. See also Philip D. Morgan, Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and Lowcountry (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 190–191; Frank Bell, in Weevils in the Wheat: Interviews with Virginia Ex-Slaves, ed. Charles L. Perdue, Jr., Thomas E. Barden, and Robert K. Phillips (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1976), 26; Stevenson, Life, 187–188; Ira Berlin, Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 212; Walsh, ‘Plantation Management’, 406. Based on the Virginia ex-slave interviews, the Workers of the Writers' Program of the Work Projects Administration in the State of Virginia (WPA) concluded in The Negro in Virginia that ‘field work in nineteenth century Virginia was for most slaves greater drudgery than it had been in the previous century’. See WPA, The Negro in Virginia (Winston-Salem: Blair, 1994), 66.

William Twisdale to Nelson Berkeley, 19 January 1828, in Stevenson, Life, 193; Sally G. McMillen, Southern Women: Black and White in the Old South (Wheeling, IL: Harlan Davidson, 2002), 72–73; Stevenson, Life, 104, 193, 250–251; Dunaway, African-American Family, 132; Christopher Nichols, in A North-Side View of Slavery: The Refugee; or the Narratives of Fugitive Slaves in Canada, ed. Benjamin Drew (1856; New York: Negro Universities Press, 1968), 71.

Donald M. Sweig, ‘Northern Virginia Slavery: A Statistical and Demographic Investigation’ (PhD diss., College of William and Mary, 1982), 107, 142.

Louise Jones, in Perdue et al., Weevils, 185. See also Elijah Fletcher to Jesse Fletcher, 4 August 1810, 29 August 1810, in Briesen, Elijah Fletcher, 8, 14; John W. Blassingame, The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South (1972; New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 179.

Francis Henderson, in Drew, North-Side View, 156. See also Blassingame, Slave Community, 180–181.

Stevenson, Life, 250–251, 250.

Caroline Hunter, in Perdue et al., Weevils, 150.

Francis Henderson, in Drew, North-Side View, 155; Estate Inventory of M.C. Fitzhugh, 30 August 1858, Fairfax County Will Book, microfilm, Z-1, p. 73, Fairfax City Regional Library.

Frank Bell, in Perdue et al., Weevils, 25–26.

Some 771 slave children lived on estates which contained no elderly slave women at all. Calculations are based on US Census, 1840, NARA. The figures for David Wilson Scott are taken from Lynn C. McMillon and Jane K. Wall, Fairfax County, Virginia: 1820 Federal Population Census and Census of Manufactures (Vienna, VA: McMillon, 1976), 18. The census returns list children in age cohorts of 0 to 14, so some of these children may have already been old enough to have been put to work in the fields or as domestic servants.

Christopher Nichols, in Drew, North-Side View, 68; M.D. Conway, Testimonies Concerning Slavery (1864; New York: Arno Press, 1969), 5; Frederick Law Olmsted, A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States in the Years 1853–1854, with Remarks on their Economy (New York: Mason Brothers, 1861), 17; Bethany Veney, The Narrative of Bethany Veney, a Slave Woman (Worcester, MA, 1889), 7–8. See also Dorothy Sterling, ed., We Are Your Sisters: Black Women in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Norton, 1984), 6.

Charles Peyton Lucas, in Drew, North-Side View, 105. See also Sterling, We Are Your Sisters, 41; Leslie Howard Owens, This Species of Property: Slave Life and Culture in the Old South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), 41–42.

Richard Marshall Scott, Senr., Diary, typescript, Fairfax City Regional Library.

Stevenson, Life, 197; James Redpath, The Roving Editor, or Talks with Slaves in the Southern States (1859; University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996), 194; Austin Steward, Twenty-Two Years a Slave and Forty Years a Freeman (1857; Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2002), 10; William Still, The Underground Railroad: A Record of Facts, Authentic Letters, etc. (1872; New York: Arno Press, 1968), 399.

George Jackson, in ‘Slave Narratives: A Folk History of the United States of America from Interviews with Former Slaves’, typewritten records prepared by Federal Writers' Project (1936–1938), Washington, DC: 12: 45–46. See also Stevenson, Life, 187–188.

Silas Jackson, in Voices from Slavery: 100 Authentic Slave Narratives, ed. Norman R. Yetman (Mineola, NY: Dover, 2000), 176; Henry Banks, in Stevenson, Life, 188.

US Census, 1840–1850, NARA.

Charlotte Petigru Allston, in Schwalm, Hard Fight, 8. See also Gray, History of Agriculture, 721–722; Joyce E. Chaplin, ‘Tidal Rice Cultivation and the Problem of Slavery in South Carolina and Georgia, 1760–1815’, William and Mary Quarterly 49, no. 1 (Jan. 1992): 31–34, 39; US Census, Georgetown District, South Carolina, 1800–1810. National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC.

Sam Mitchell, in Voices of South Carolina Slave Children, ed. Nancy Rhyne (Orangeburg, SC: Sandlapper, 1999), 107; Basil Hall, ‘A Naval Officer Sees All Sections, 1827–1828’, in American Social History as Recorded by British Travellers, ed. Allan Nevins (New York: Henry Holt, 1923), 154; Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States, 434. See also Morgan, Slave Counterpoint, 179; Berlin, Generations of Captivity, 77–78; Larry E. Hudson, Jr., To Have and To Hold: Slave Work and Family Life in Antebellum South Carolina (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1997), 2; Charles Joyner, Down by the Riverside: A South Carolina Slave Community (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984), 43.

Plowden C. Weston, ‘Rules and Management on the Plantation’, in Memories of the Southern States, ed. Elizabeth Collins (Taunton: Barnicott, 1865), 107–8. Charles Joyner has argued that most tasks in Georgetown District were calculated to last the entire day, but that some slaves finished early. See Joyner, Down by the Riverside, 43. Most evidence, however, suggests that tasks were calculated to last only eight to 10 hours on average, and that many slaves finished long before sundown.

James R. Sparkman to Benjamin Allston, 10 March 1858, in The South Carolina Rice Plantation as Revealed in the Papers of Robert F.W. Allston, ed. J.H. Easterby (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1945), 346.

Weston, ‘Rules and Management’, 109. Mortality rates in the rice country were relatively high compared with other parts of the South. See William Dusinberre, Them Dark Days: Slavery in the American Rice Swamps (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 411–416; Berlin, Generations of Captivity, 210–211; Kolchin, American Slavery, 114. Leslie Schwalm argues that in some parts of the lowcountry, pregnant women were forced to work full tasks right up to the onset of labour. The evidence which exists for Georgetown District, however, suggests that pregnant women were set to light tasks during the latter months of their pregnancy. See Schwalm, Hard Fight, 42–43; Emily West, Chains of Love: Slave Couples in Antebellum South Carolina (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2004), 95–96; Hudson, To Have, 3; Joyner, Down by the Riverside, 45; Schwalm, A Hard Fight, 42–43.

James R. Sparkman to Benjamin Allston, 10 March 1858, in Easterby, South Carolina Rice Plantation, 346.

Dusinberre, Them Dark Days, 411–416. Child mortality in Fairfax County, by contrast, was only 40 per cent. See Sweig, ‘Northern Virginia Slavery’, 142. William Lowndes, Plantation Book, 1802–1822, Papers of William Lowndes, Manuscript Collections, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

Weston, ‘Rules and Management’, 115. When calculated from the enslaved children's perspective, the 1840 census returns indicate that a vast majority lived on estates where elderly women were present to look after them. Out of 4408 enslaved boys and girls under the age of 10, only 501 (11 per cent) did not live on slaveholdings with at least one enslaved woman between the ages of 55 and 100. This means that 89 per cent were physically able to be cared for by resident elderly women. Calculations based on US Census, 1840, NARA.

Sam Mitchell, in Rhyne, Voices, 107. According to Charles Joyner, the practice of putting elderly women in charge of caring for young children while their parents were away in the fields can be traced back to a common West African practice that utilised the skills of the elderly. See Joyner, Down by the Riverside, 63, 78. See also Schwalm, Hard Fight, 31–32; Emily F. Weston in Equity, List of Negroes on True Blue Plantation, Waccamaw, Estate of Francis M. Weston, 11 July 1864, microfilm, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (I am indebted to Janet Wright for bringing this document to my attention).

Hall, ‘Naval Officer’, 154.

Henry Brown, in Federal Writers' Project, ‘Slave Narratives’, 14: pt. 1, 119; J. Motte Alston, Rice Planter and Sportsman: The Recollections of J. Motte Alston, 1821–1909, ed. Arney R. Childs (1953; Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1999), 46; Elizabeth W. Allston Pringle, Chronicles of Chicora Wood (1922; Atlanta: Cherokee, 1976), 90–91.

Margaret Bryant, in Georgetown County Slave Narratives, ed. Christopher C. Boyle and James A. Fitch (Georgetown, SC: Rice Museum, 1997), 12; Ellen Godfrey, in ibid., 20. See also Emily F. Weston in Equity, List of Negroes on True Blue Plantation.

G.S.S., ‘Sketches of the South Santee’, in Travels in the Old South, Selected from the Periodicals of the Times, ed. Eugene L. Schwaab (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1973), 8.

Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States, 424.

Henry Brown, in Federal Writers' Project, ‘Slave Narratives’, 14: pt. 1, 119; Pringle, Chicora Wood, 90; Weston, ‘Rules and Management’, 108

Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States, 424, 433; Emily F. Weston in Equity, List of Negroes on True Blue Plantation; Schwalm, Hard Fight, 28–29.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Damian Alan Pargas

Damian Alan Pargas is Assistant Professor of American History, Utrecht University, 3512 BS Utrecht, The Netherlands.