Great Stuff Bruce! May I post this on the site? Ann ----- Original Message ----- From: Bruce Liddell To: MSJEFFER-L@rootsweb.com Sent: Monday, August 18, 2003 9:12 PM Subject: [MSJEFFER-L] The Facts Unravel #2 The Facts Unravel #2 At his untimely death in 1856 in Jefferson County MS, my ancestor Jimerson (James Jr.) Liddell owned thirty black Negro slaves. A lot of folks have trouble discussing uncomfortable topics. To me, the best way to handle a sticky issue is to stick strictly to the facts. Jimerson's household before his death in 1856: - 6 families - 38 people, 8 free whites and 30 black Negro slaves - 17 working-age adults (10 men, 7 women) - 5 elderly (all slaves) - 16 children Of the 9 slaves not formally in families, 2 were elderly and 5 were children. Jimerson's slaves were "Negroes," the term then used for people of Sub-Saharan African ancestry. All surviving documents classify them as "black" suggesting a mainly African bloodline. The classification not used, "mulatto," described people of supposedly mixed African and European parentage. Although Jimerson's contemporaries had many other words for fractions of races, the law generally recognized only whites, blacks, mulattos, and aboriginal "Indians." (Mainstream science today recognizes none of these, only individual human beings.) Jimerson was a "planter" on the 1850 census. By definition a planter owned 20 or more slaves, a "farmer" 19 or fewer. The census coincided with the national uproar over slavery that resulted in the Compromise of 1850, a political patch-job that satisfied neither side. Jimerson's occupation was probably true, but he disguised ownership from "the abolitionists in Washington" by counting his slaves among many others from the neighborhood under J. R. Comfort, occupation "overseer." (Overseer Comfort. Reminds me of now-retired Judge Nice, who wasn't.) The typical MS planter farmed his own land, bought more slaves (not land) when prosperous, and rented his excess slaves for seasonal labor. Mixing fat years and lean, the average plantation earned perhaps 2% or 3% on the money invested. (Big-city banks offered depositors twice that return.) Full-time slave rental, desired but rarely achieved, returned about 10% of the slave's appraised value. Slave values were standard, the same as livestock and used-car values today. Long-term capital growth came primarily from natural increase, children born into lifetime slavery. A healthy young adult slave, raised from infancy, represented a 30% to 50% annual return over childrearing expenses. Jimerson left behind "heirs of his body" a widow age 41 and six minor children 3 to 13. Eighteen months later Martha Ann Baldridge Liddell married childless widower Rev. Thomas Calliham Brown M.D. (of the MS pioneer Calliham family.) Executor Brown kept the estate intact and sold none of the thirty slaves, but one infant, one elder, and one workingman died of natural causes 1859-1862. Upon Emancipation in 1865 all the former slaves took, or were assigned, the surname "Brown" from the current head of household. To the best of our knowledge no present-day African-descent Liddells spring from Jimerson's slaves, but one or more Jefferson-area Brown families probably do. Details, including the names and condition of 37 individual slaves, are on the Jefferson County MS website http://www.rootsweb.com/~msjeffe2/aframerican.htm (address current as of summer 2003.) Liddell family research by Barbara Liddell Thornhill and her late father Jefferson Walter Liddell Sr. Bruce D. Liddell, BDLiddell@yahoo.com 18-Aug-2003 __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com ==== MSJEFFER Mailing List ==== "I collect dead relatives! And sometimes a LIVE cousin!