GEN-AFRICAN-L Archives

From: Bennie J McRae Jr.< >
Subject: 1814 Slave Bill of Sale
Date: 5 Apr 1997 10:57:52 -0800

The following from the article "Slavery bill of sale pops up at
auction" may
be of interest to many researchers.

A Germantown, Ohio man won the bid for a stack of early 1900s sheet
music at
an "Americana paper" (histroical documents) sale at a Cincinnati
auction.
Tucked neatly between the pages of music which the auctioneer had
listed as
racist was an 1814 bill of sale for two slaves.

The paper was a 183 year-old handwritten legal document, detailing
the sale
of "two Negros, Fanny, a blackish colored woman about twenty-seven or
eight
years old, slave for life, and her girl, Becky, about six years of
age, also
slave for life."

The document had been filed in Rockbridge County, near Lexington,
Virginia,
"in the seventeenth day of January in the eighteenth year (?) of the
independence of the United States of America in the year of eighteen
hundred
and fourteen.

The slaves had been sold to William Miller of Nottoway County,
Virginia, by
J.C. Hughes Mills. The price for the two slaves was listed as $475.

By the way, titles of some songs in the early 1900 sheet music were
"Rastus
on Parade," "Laughing Sam." "A Warmin up in Dixie," and "Cheerful
Charlie
Jones."

The purchaser of the documents stated that he didn't have the
financial
resources available to launch an all-out genealogical search for the
history
of the two, but hopes to stop by the Nottoway and Rockbridge County
courthouse or cemeteries on his next vacation south.

SOURCE: The Dayton Daily News - Saturday, April 5, 1997

Bennie J. McRae, Jr.
LEST WE FORGET, Web Site Manager <http://www.coax.net/people/lwf>;
Come
and visit us sometime.

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• 1814 Slave Bill of Sale by Bennie J McRae Jr.< >