We have now moved past the mid-point of Dartmouth’s 2023 summer term –week five of a nine week class schedule has just concluded. In the wake of a critical mass of uploads (more than two hundred) and transcriptions (6000 lines recorded) we devoted this week to the subject indexing feature that makes “From the Page” well-suited to tracking individuals. Our “People” category is now available and will continue to grow over the weeks to come. We are placing most individuals in subset categories, initially arranged according to different household groupings. The categories are fluid and we expect to devise other ways to sort and list.
The work of indexing raises philosophical as well as logistical questions. In what circumstances did someone reduced to slavery register a presence as a named individual? The federal census lists sex and age without an actual name. We have several ways to establish the identities further and are prioritizing these in the process of uploading and transcribing.
Three kinds of “naming” documents in our growing cache of materials are worth brief notice. Two constitute the notice of a “sale” (that term is flagged in the titles of all documents that provide that critical life-event for captive Black Georgians). The most basic of these, which the Stephens brothers retained to sustain legal claims for valuable investments, recorded a cash transaction. In formulaic language there was a transfer, at the price listed, of control that would thereafter be exercised over particular humans. Bare description of the individuals conveyed appear in these which can establish age and perhaps a few other details (parents and offspring, for instance).
A companion set of documents feature discussion of purchases made or decisions to sell an enslaved person. The narratives of such actions need to be assessed critically. Alexander and Linton Stephens routinely discussed their role in human merchandizing in a positive light.
A third set of materials have been listed as “inventories.” As with “sale” we put that term in the title of each document in this general category. Alexander Stephens prepared several of these and stuck to the same format that can first be seen in an 1847 document: the tally names and estimated values is provided’ there sequence used suggests rough groupings, especially as the numbers increase, of general family units. The tally of later lists begin with individuals that appear prominently across the Stephens papers. Lower down are some whose stories are far less well documented. We’ll be keeping an eye out for stray mentions of such persons as “Jack” “Jacob” and “Stephen” to determine more about individuals that may elude our efforts to reconstruct lives.
Among these documents are two large inventories that give details about the Hancock County enslaved. The earlier one documents how in 1852 several dozen lowcountry men, women, and children came into Linton Stephens’ control. A letter written four years later show Linton’s unsuccessful attempt to dissolve the relation by his proposal to return the entire group to their previous owner. Tracking the overlap in these two snapshot profiles allows us to see the births and deaths that occurred in the interim. Neither Linton nor Alexanders systematically kept a tally of life beginnings and endings; these are documented often by a stray mention in correspondence and we plan to make such commentary part of our broader project.
Records that list names in this way are both spare and heart-breaking. Such bills of sale and tallies will provide one of the key building blocks of the life stories we aim to compile.