Sanderson to Texas.8 While at Morgans, he is introduced to Oliver Carter near Fairfield, who put him in touch with a Mr.Deming, who had a too-small place for sale, and not until January 7. His next ferry payment was to cross the Red River on July 11, likely on his way out of Alexandria. Finally, they announced a verdict that few expected: "We, the Jury in the above entitled cause, do find for the plaintiff and assess her damages in the premises at Two thousand five hundred dollars.". They led me to archives in nine states in search of her story, which I tell in full for the first time in my new book, Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America. Cirode returned to France in 1844, abandoning his wife, Jane, who eventually took Wood with her to Ohio, a free state. This list is by no means complete. and was bought for Miss Perking of Buckingham.. This was good for me, however. Then, in 1848, Jane Cirode went to a county courthouse and registered Wood as free. A Note to our Readers ), so Poole (overseer) left, presumably with slaves. It reaches across all of the slave South, Levengood said. His ancestors were slaves here, but the longtime math and science teacher at McComb High School felt no anger or bitterness. In the eyes of Kentucky law, Wood was a slave. We sold all the negros 43 in number at astonishingly large prices the whole amounting to $32016. My father gave $25. The plaintiff was Henrietta Wood, described by a reporter at the time as a spectacled negro woman, apparently sixty years old. The defendant was Zebulon Ward, a white man who had enslaved Wood 25 years before. Brandon told me that Mr.Poole was offered $2000 in gold for Phoebe on his way to Texas, but he was on ahead of wagons and negroes and did not hear of it until too late. While Wood received $2,500 as compensation for more than 16 years of unpaid labor, her former enslaver, Ward, left an estate worth at least $600,000 when he died in 1894, a multimillionaire in today's terms. H. Weir of Centerville, who hit me a dig.. Brandon mentions his diary in a letter to his daughter Ella, dated October 21, 1863, and found in the Vonkersburg Family Collection at the Historic Natchez Foundation. not the care, pains & comfort in fixing up places. He couldnt find corn. I worked under the meanest overseers, and got flogged and flogged, until I thought I should die.. In the 1890s another formerly enslaved woman, Callie House, led a national organization pressuring the government for ex-slave pensions. Many of the slaves had been forgotten to the world until the Virginia Historical Society received a $100,000 grant to pore over some of its 8 million unpublished manuscripts letters, diaries, ledgers, books and farm documents from Virginians dating to the 1600s and began discovering the long-lost identities of the slaves, said society president and CEO Paul Levengood. Harrisonburg by the 16th, butcould not pass the pickets" and found that all the Ferries on Ouachita & Tensas were destroyed or strictly guarded. Backtracks to Alexandria. Most furnishings along with the commercial equipment & supplies will stay. Parole denied for RFK assassin Sirhan Sirhan, Ship that sank in 1894 discovered in Lake Huron, Why Fox News pushed Trump's bogus election claims, Tennessee governor says photo of him in skirt and wig irrelevant to drag show ban, Jurassic-era insect discovered at Arkansas Walmart, Why space experts want to establish a lunar time zone. Upper Brandon Plantation: William Byrd Harrison, George Harrison Byrd, Francis Otway Byrd, Harry C. Thompson, Fred E. Watkins, Jim Justice ) If some of the enslaved people owned by James Brandon were also taken to Texas by Gerard, it is possible that this is the woman referred to in the journal, who would have been a teenager at the time. Has dinner with a woman who is hard on all who were not in the army, two soldiers from Vicksburg also critical of Mississippians. It is, rather, a living reminder of the truth of the Black experience during the time of slavery. Charles S. Darden It is believed that the name Brandon came from the family name of Martin's wife . Descendants identify the man in this photograph, found on Ancestry.com, as Brandon. Visits another refugee family, hears some incidents they had heard of the occupation of Natchez. Legal trouble with Hughes.12 Talks to lawyer A. A second ferry location is illegible, but he also paid for ferries across Cocodrie Bayou and Cross Bayou. Brandon Hall Plantation was built in 1856 outside of Natchez. In order to identify records of interest, you must first examine the genealogy of slaveholding families. All accommodations at this luxury home have private in-room (not shared) bathrooms. He owned 700 to 800 slaves on several plantations, and he "put me to work at once in the cotton field," she said. In 1809 the property was sold at public auction to William Lock Chew for the sum of $7,000. An affidavit provided by Brandon in a later lawsuit indicates he departed on July 1.5. Brandon kept a diary of his Texas sojourn which is probably held today by a family descendant. Ownership may have meant the purchase of a spouse, an individual's children, or other relatives who were not emancipated. Brandon Hall Plantation, built ca 1856 by Gerard Brandon, U.S. 61, Washington. Today, it remains virtually unknown, even as reparations for slavery are once again in the headlines. But Wood's name never made it into the history books. In the eyes of Kentucky law, Wood was a slave. Robertson offers him use of land, offers to put the deal in writing in Belton. But Wood and her lawyers had argued that the case was about much more than damages from abduction. In the first half of the 19th century, there were as many as 85 slaves working at the plantation. Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, a New Orleans native who has devoted much of her life to the study of slavery, spent 15 years in the courthouses of Louisiana, as well as in archives in Spain, France and. Celebrates Christmas with Graves and Dr. If you purchase an item through these links, we receive a commission. Researching black folk is difficult, so anytime you can find a new resource its always good to investigate, he said. You have to read between the lines: Oh, they mention Amy in a letter, and then you have to read another letter in the collection to realize that Amy is a slave and not a family member, Levengood said. Misses a dinner invitation from Graves. By 1983, only 40 acres remained and the house had fallen into disrepair. It would be 16 years before Wood set foot in Ohio again. 1800 kitchen/slave house with its unusual extended cornice. 1845, d. 1909), Charlotte Lottie Brandon (b. A Warner Bros. Wood was an early contributor to a long tradition of formerly enslaved people and their descendants demanding redress. After years of trials and tribulations, a group of 300 of Ross' slaves were transported to Africa, where they founded Liberia. This inventory lists the names, ages and capabilities of Arnold's newly . Between 1820 and 1860, nearly a million people were sold "down the river.". Brooding about home. Cobbler and corn bread with another host. Not everyone agreed with the verdict, but the facts of her horrific story were widely accepted as credible. What a pity, that amount would have supported you during the war. When she died in 1912, her suit was already forgotten by all except her son. According to scarborough2003, p. 432, Brandon owned 706 enslaved people on plantations in Adams County (512), Concordia Parish (113) and Tensas Parish (81) in the 1860 Census, making him the tenth largest slaveholder in Scarborough's sample for 1860, even though he does not appear on Scarborough's sample of planters with over 500 slaves in 1850. Even the judge who presided over Woods case, Phillip Swing, viewed it narrowly. One half illegible. Ancestry places birth on December 5, 1864., See also this genealogy page and the Gerard Brandon children website., See Steven Brooke, The Majesty of Natchez (Gretna, La. Now I was in trouble. The story told by Bill deepens in complexity, and involves a plot by Ables son to run to Mexico, though most of his slaves deny that they were going to go along. and Mimy and three children $2505. Friends visit from Waco. By the 1850s, the interstate slave trade was booming, and the Whites saw dollar signs whenever they thought of Wood. It was four years after the Confederate surrender before Wood was able to return up the river, where she tried to locate long-lost members of her family in Kentucky. When he returned to camp,Sanford had come up with all the negroes. Brandon strictly instructs them not to trade with anyone. how Texas has been over stated. CNN Sans & 2016 Cable News Network. A Natchez refugee visits and told of many negroes who went to Yankees, that Billy Sanderson had killed himself drinking with them, that Freds wife had been hung, that Merrill was giving them dinner parties &c. but had heard never a word of my family. Feelings of worry and suspense. (The plantations were part of his wife's dowry.) Wood was never allowed to testify, however, and Ward denied her claims. An 1858 runaway slave ad for Elijah, who said Gerard Brandon was his owner, is in the Runaway Slaves in Mississippi project, edited by Douglas Chambers and Max Grivno, on p.536. II, p. 817, which claimed that at the beginning of the Civil War, Brandon owned a million dollars worth of slaves. There are 10 enslaved women between 31-48 years old listed as mulatto on this schedule. FOR SALE: 1856 Brandon Hall Plantation, Natchez, Mississippi Our Restoration Nation 103K subscribers Subscribe 16K 1.4M views 1 year ago Have you ever wanted to own your own historic mansion. See Goodspeeds Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Mississippi, vol. These 81 years extended from Mississippi's frontier days during the period of grace and plenty before the Civil War, and through the South's darkest hours after the war. List of troubles: screw wormshow many of them there are. Eats water melons at Joness, drinks a mint julep, has dinner with good soup & a peach cobbler. On Monday (August 17?) The advanced search fields include the slaves first name or last name; gender; occupation; owners last name; date range; and record type. Cold front. Nearly every one of the negros were satisfied as they were bought by people in the country mostly, going ahead of the prices given by the traders, Cabell wrote his wife. I first learned of Wood from two interviews she gave to reporters in the 1870s. The traders put Wood up for sale at Natchezs infamous Forks of the Road slave market. In the same tax rolls is a J. She is described as the familys faithful colored servant Henrietta. One of the Grandest Greek Revival Plantation Homes in the South. Harriss said many architectural features were kept true to the original design when the house was renovated in the mid-1980s, apart from closets, bathrooms, and the closed in porch. He then traveled on to Texas via these stops, according to a list on an unnumbered page of his journal: If he followed marked roads out of Alexandria to the Sabine River, then he would have gone through Natchitoches, but that road would have taken him to Milam, Texas, not Sabinetown. The Virginia Historical Society finds 3,200 slaves named in private documents, The unpublished documents are from Virginians' attics, basements and desk drawers, "We sold all the negros 43 in number at astonishingly large prices," an 1858 letter says, One user of the society's free database of slaves finds the owner of his great-great-great-grandfather. Many newspapers described Woods suit as an old case or a relic of slavery times, consigning stories like hers to a fading past. Yet Wood v. Ward did not set a sweeping legal precedent. The defendant was Zebulon Ward, a white man who had enslaved Wood 25 years before. The trial began only after eight years of litigation, leaving Wood to wonder if she would ever get justice. The value of his real estate was $170,000 and his personal estate was $400,000. Wood suffered another, unexpected setback in 1874 when her lawyer was murdered by a clients husband in an unrelated divorce case. Gerard Brandon, one of the largest slaveholders in the South, bought Wood and took her to his house, Brandon Hall, on the Natchez Trace. Reprinted with permission from Smithsonian Enterprises. 468 Filed Under: Mississippi Natchez Natchez A NCGenWeb Special Project Documented Slave Plantations of North Carolina is a comprehensive database of various plantations derived from a variety of information mediums. to Mr. Agee and then allowed Mr. Turner to take Mimy as he owned her husband. The gang located Wood's employer in Cincinnati, a boardinghouse keeper named Rebecca Boyd, and paid her to join their scheme. Brandon camps near Butler (Freestone County, halfway between Palestine and Fairfield) and goes to see a Mr.Morgan, apparently an acquaintance from Mississippi, who had brought slaves belonging to W. S. (or S. PIN IT Sharing is caring! (She is still living this October 6, 1932. The freedom suit had prevented Ward from selling Wood for nearly two years, but in 1855, he took her to a Kentucky slave-trading firm that did business in Natchez, Mississippi. When the United States banned the importation of slaves after 1807, Virginia became the largest provider in the nations internal slave trade, Levengood said. If he followed the road from San Augustine to Crockett pictured on Texas Map (1865), then he likely passed through Nacogdoches as well. Not only business operations and day-to-day labor routines, but family affairs, the roles of women, racial attitudes, relations between masters and slaves, social and cultural life, the values shared by members of the planter class, and Wood was among them. Contact the agent for information. While Wood received $2,500 as compensation for more than 16 years of unpaid labor, her former enslaver, Ward, left an estate worth at least $600,000 when he died in 1894, a multimillionaire in todays terms. Mailing Address: Brandon Hall Plantation 1213 Hwy 61 North Natchez, MS 39120 Got me excited. Thinks about people at home. Hes hoping his 12 grandchildren can benefit from his work. Sanford has gone to Monroe, returned about the 1st, and the authorities say I have not had any negroes in their hands. Hears that the Yankees had not molested anyone in our neighborhood, & all were getting on pretty well. Sanford saw a family wash their feet in the skillet in which they had cooked their supper! 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