Georgetown farmer James Anderson still owned eight slaves after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed and after the Civil War came to an end in April 1865.
It was only after the 13th Amendment became law on Dec. 6, 1865, that slaves in Delaware were freed.
A newly discovered document, found by a state archivist at the Delaware Public Archives, lists the last remaining slave owners in Sussex County – men and women who among themselves claimed ownership to 525 humans. At the time, they were treated as property and taxed as such.
The records show up in a Sussex County Assessment roll that Stephen P. Marz, director of public archives, believes likely dates back to 1866. The county government, then called Levy Court, wanted to determine how much revenue from taxes on slaves they would lose, Marz said. The tally in 1865 dollars was $17,131. Today, it would be closer to $255,000.
“No price can be placed on a human life,” he said. “This document offers a stark glimpse into the business of slavery.”
Anderson’s name was among the former slave owners on the list, which includes former governors and shopkeepers along with prominent farmers.
Anderson is especially interesting because he owned the one slave in Delaware, a woman named Jints, for whom there is a photographic record.
The archives owns a picture of Jints holding Hanna Stockley. The image is believed to date from 1860 or 1861, only a few years before Jints would be freed.
There is also a Stockley on the list of slave owners. C.C. Stockley, who later became governor of Delaware, was shown as owning one slave in Georgetown Hundred.
Two areas of Sussex County were slave owner strongholds at the time the document was produced: Northwest Fork Hundred near Seaford, where there were 96 slaves, and Baltimore Hundred, which now includes the Ocean View and Millville areas along with the coast from Bethany Beach to Fenwick Island, where there were 90.
Marz said the documents were discovered when an archivist was looking through a box of miscellaneous papers.
While this list is an unexpected find, Marz said researchers and archivists often stumble upon items that have been previously overlooked.
This latest document could be helpful to African-Americans who are working on genealogical research, he said.
Syl Woolford of Newark has traced his own family tree and is helping other African-Americans in Delaware trace theirs.
Woolford said genealogy for African-Americans presents a special challenge because many of the obvious records that are used by whites don’t exist for people who are descended from slaves.
A white person can look for birth certificates, marriage records and death records. They may find family names on census lists. But for the African-American or mixed race person who is a descendant of slaves, Woolford says, “forget that.” A paper trail doesn’t exist.
When it does, not much more may be found. Even though Jints is clearly seen in a rare photograph – the archives has few photos of slaves – there is no record of what happened to her after she was freed.
There are some clues about what happened to former slaves, said P. Gabrielle Foreman, the Ned B. Allen Professor of English and Professor of Black American Studies & History at the University of Delaware.
Freedman became a popular last name among former slaves, Foreman says. If the family name was Freedman, it meant they were freed after the Civil War. Freeman, on the other hand, is also a common name among African-Americans. It was often taken by people who were freed or purchased their freedom prior to the Civil War.
In other cases, people took names for the skills they had so someone who worked with clay might have taken the last name of Potter, she said.
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And some former slaves took the name of their white masters. In Sussex County, there are black Waples and white Waples, black Cannons and white Cannons, Woolford said. Both names show up on the Sussex County slave owner documents.
Woolford said that around the turn of the 18th century, slave owners north of the canal started freeing their slaves. There are manumission records but they often don’t include last names.
Woolford said he found a big clue just by thinking about his name.
“I trace my family back to Dorchester County” in Maryland, he said. There, he discovered a place called Woolford.
“I now had a connection with my name,” he said.
Next, he looked for evidence of how the place got the name and searched the white Woolford family tree back to Roger Woolford, who arrived in Dorchester County in 1662.
“So I have made a genealogical connection. I know the origin of my name,” he said.
He traced the white Woolfords over some 15 generations. He looked at their personal property and learned that there were Woolfords who fought in both the Revolutionary and Civil wars. In both cases, they were cavalry soldiers which meant they had enough money to provide their own horses, he said.
And so, for African-Americans, there are different genealogical clues, he said.
The slave owner records could be a starting point when combined with other resources.
One of those resources might be a will.
“In the name of God, amen. . . I Peter Marsh of the County of Sussex being in a sick, weak and low condition … I give unto my said wife my nigro [sic] man called Toney … and also a horse called Slider.”
To his son, he gave “one Nigro woman called Dinnah and her child.”
To another son, he gave “one Nigro boy called Cesar and one horse … and one year of schooling.”
Marsh’s slaves were among his most valuable possessions, according to the accounting of his estate. Peter Marsh, who lived on a farm near what is now Rehoboth Beach, died in 1813. By the time his son, Peter, died in 1850, he had no remaining slaves.
The single largest slave-owner in Lewes-Rehoboth Hundred at the time of the assessment document was Sheppard P. Houston, who is buried at Lewes Presbyterian Church.
He owned four slaves and would have had more on the list save for a dramatic escape during a storm. Three of Houston’s slaves were joined by a slave who was owned by a Lewes blacksmith and rowed across Delaware Bay to reach New Jersey, which was not a slave state. An oyster boat captain then took them on to Philadelphia.
“With simple faith, they entered the skiff, two of them taking the oars, manfully to face uncertain dangers from the waves . . . at every new stage of danger they summoned courage by remembering that they were escaping for their lives,” according to William Still’s “The Underground Railroad.”
The men were William Thomas Cope, described as a “yellow” man, 24, John Boice Gray, 19, his brother, Henry Boice, and Isaac White, 22, who was escaping from the blacksmith.
Even though these slaves escaped, many stayed on until their freedom came in December 1865.
James Blackwell, with the Seaford Historical Society, said once slaved were freed, many likely went to go live with their relatives who were already free.
Petition records from Delaware show several requests to state lawmakers to limit the movement of free blacks and mulattos. They came from organizations in northern Delaware seeking abolition of slavery to requests from property owners in both Kent and Sussex County.
Smyrna residents filed one such petition in 1845: “Sixty-three residents of Smyrna represent that they ‘have for long time been under serious annoyance from frequent large and noisey [sic] assemblages of Negroes & others in the Streets of the said town and by evil and dangerous practices of Boys and others in firing guns crackers Squibbs & the throwing of fire Balls about the streets especially about Holliday times.’ They therefore pray that a law be passed to prevent in future the evils they now complain of.”
Between 1860 and 1865, the numbers of slaves in Delaware dropped, mostly, Blackwell said, because of the strong influence of the Methodist Church and the Quakers.
But once freedom came, change was slow, especially when it came to education of black Delawareans in Kent and Sussex counties.
Black Delawareans joined together at a convention at Whatcoat Methodist Church in Dover on June 9, 1873 to discussion educational freedom and the abolishment of the whipping post.
Foreman, the UD professor, is part of an initiative to digitize the records of the colored conventions that were held across the nation. The records of the Whatcoat assembly are already digitized.
You see that blacks are organizing and are pushing for education, better protection of the community and issues of temperance, she said.
Reach Molly Murray at (302) 463-3334 or mmurray@delawareonline.com. Follow her on Twitter @MollyMurraytnj.
