four good fellows, a lad & two girls of abt 16. each in 8 ½ hours dug in my cellar of mountain clay a place 3.f. deep, 8 f. wide & 16 ½ f. long = 142/3 cubical yds. ... in digging my dry well, at the depth of 14 f. I observed one digger, one filler, one drawer … it was a yellow rotten...
Deep rooted prejudices entertained by the whites; ten thousand recollections, by the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained; new provocations; the real distinctions which nature has made ... will divide us into parties, and produce convulsions which will probably never end but in the...
296,852, the number of free inhabitants, are to 270,762, the number of slaves ... Under the mild treatment our slaves experience, and their wholesome, though coarse, food, this blot in our country increases as fast, or faster, than the whites. During the regal government, we had at one time...
The skill & activity of Clarkson are sufficiently manifested allready to make us hope that your affairs in Albemarle will be better conducted than they have ever been. I know it will give you real pleasure to hear that he has a valuable art of governing the slaves which sets aside the...
your account of Clarkson’s conduct gives me great pleasure. my first wish is that the labourers may be well treated, the second that they may enable me to have that treatment continued by making as much as will admit it. the man who can effect both objects is rarely to be found. I wish you would...
I now employ a dozen little boys from 10. to 16. years of age, overlooking all the details of their business myself and drawing from it a profit on which I can get along till I can put my farms into a course of yeilding profit. my new trade of nail-making is to me in this country what an...
I now employ a dozen little boys from 10. to 16. years of age, overlooking all the details of their business myself and drawing from it a profit on which I can get along till I can put my farms into a course of yeilding profit. my new trade of nail-making is to me in this country what an...
a nailery which I have established with my own negro boys now provides completely for the maintenance of my family, as we make from 8. to 10,000 nails a day
His negroes are nourished, clothed, and treated as well as white servants could be. As he cannot expect any assistance from the two small neighbouring towns, every article is made on his farm; his negroes are cabinet-makers, carpenters, masons, bricklayers, smiths, &c. The children he employs...
Those who work in the nailery, are Moses, Wormly, Jame Hubbard, Barnaby, Isbel’s Davy, Bedford John, Bedford Davy, Phill Hubbard, Bartlet, and Lewis. They are sufficient for 2 fires, five at a fire.
my houshold manufactures are just getting into operation on the scale of a Carding machine ... which may be worked by a girle of 12. years old, a Spinning machine ... carrying 6. spindles for wool, to be worked by a girl also, another ... carrying 12. spindles for cotton, & a loom, with a...
we have in our family ... looms fixed with flying shuttles, which altho’ they do not perform the miracles ascribed to them, do, I think, double the effect of the common loom.
our Spinners are taught to use them so completely as to ensure our being able to clothe our own people by the labor of a few of the least useful of them.
I make in my family 2000. yds of cloth a year, which I formerly bought from England, and it only employs a few women, children & invalids who could do little in the farm.
I am afraid mammy did not like my not telling her good bye when I came away tell her I did not forget it but I could not go up stairs after grand papa call’d me to go.
the mortality among our negroes is still more serious as involving moral as well as interested considerations. I have had n they are well fed, and well clothed, & I have had no reason to believe that any overseer, since Griffin’s time, has over worked them. accordingly the deaths among the...
I know no error more consuming to an estate than that of stocking farms with men almost exclusively. I consider a woman who brings a child every two years as more profitable than the best man of the farm. what she produces is an addition to the capital, while his labors disappear in mere...
One of the propositions in your letter of the 8th inst. is so exactly suited to my situation and feelings on the subject of the negroes for Francis, that I cannot hesitate a moment to accede to it. it is that which proposes to loan me the stock you mean to lay out in this way, to be paid for two...