Lists & Inventories

Ever since visiting Harris County over the summer, I've been haunted by the probate records of my slave owning 5th great grandfather. I find the inventory and subsequent sale records of his belongings fascinating.

Over the past weeks, I've been working on transcribing the inventory. It was not as easy as I had hoped. Old styles of penmanship, farm equipment jargon, and misspellings made the transcription slow and frustrating. Currently, I have a draft that I find satisfactory, with only two words that I have not been able to figure out.

According to my research on Georgia standards of agricultural wealth, Isaiah would have been considered in the elite class of farmers called planters. This means he was reasonably wealthy. At the time of his death in 1961, his entire estate was appraised at $35,340 and included about 900 acres of land and 23 slaves.

This inventory is extraordinary because it lists each slave by name and monetary value, along with farm animals, equipment, and household items as mundane as wash kettles and lard. One of the questions this document raised for me was what factors determine a slave's value? The obvious answer to that question was work potential, but I also found that reproductive potential and life expectancy were also significant factors.

When comparing this inventory to the slave schedules that accompanied the US census taken the year before, I learned several things. The first thing that I noticed was the number of children; over half of the slaves were under the age of 16. The second fact that the women of childbearing age and had at least one child were more valuable than those who do not have children. After crosschecking both documents with the 1870 census (which listed African American people on the regular schedules which included names and ages) I was able to match Charity Ann and several of her children (Henry, Julius, Hiram and possibly Virginia).

Another question this document raised is what would an inventory of my possessions look like when compared to Isaiah's? I have started working on taking a complete inventory of my workspace as a result of these ponderings. This inventory might grow into a larger project, where I attempt to record all of my possessions but I want to set a limit for the time being.

Although not a question, the fact that this is the first official document listing my 4th great grandmother, Charity Ann (and several of her children) by name it seems almost like a genesis of sorts. Something that laid the foundation for everything that came after. It provides personal context for my family and their eventual migration to Muscogee County and beyond as well as cultural context for issues of power and valuation. How much was a black life worth in 1861 and how does that contrast with now?

I'm working on an audio project in response to this list. By overlapping one channel with a list of slave names with another channel listing animals, objects and property, I seek to emphasize the contrasts between the two while also pointing out the fact that they appear on the same list.