NEGROES WHO OWNED SLAVES 49* 



We have found a large number of individual instances of negro 

 slaveholders in Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, Maryland, both the 

 Carolinas, Missouri, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, the District of Co- 

 lumbia, Delaware, Mississippi and Louisiana, but have not space for all 

 of these in this paper. We will, however, give a few of these. 



Mr. Thomas Blackwell, who lived in Vance County, N. C, owned a 

 favorite negro named Tom, who was a fine blacksmith. He was allowed 

 to hire his own time and was finally permitted to buy his freedom at a 

 price far below his worth ; he was a very valuable man. This was about 

 1820. Tom prospered and bought two or three slaves. William Chav- 

 ers was a well-educated negro who bought a good deal of land in Vance 

 County, from 1750 to 1780, and he owned a good many slaves; his 

 descendants also for several generations were slaveholders. John 

 Sampson, of Wilmington, was a slaveholder in 1855. 



Robert Gunnell, a free-born, full-blooded African Virginian, mar- 

 ried a slave wife, but bought her of her master before their first child 

 was born, so becoming the legal owner of her and all her children and 

 of their daughter's children. He, with all his family, was a resident 

 of the District of Columbia, during the civil war, when slavery in the 

 district was abolished. All slave owners there received compensation 

 for each slave. Gunnell received three hundred dollars each for his 

 wife, for each of his children and for all the living children of his 

 daughter — eighteen in all. Except for a short time during the civil 

 war he lived at Langley, Fairfax County, Va., and died there in 1874. 

 Also, in the District of Columbia, Sophia Browning bought her hus- 

 band's freedom for four hundred dollars, from the proceeds of her 

 market garden, and she was in turn purchased by him. Alethia Tanner 

 purchased her own freedom in 1818, for fourteen hundred dollars and 

 that of her sister Laurena Cook and five children, in 1826. At the 

 emancipation in the district, April 16, 1862, one negro received $2,168 

 for ten slaves; another $832 for two; another $13.80 for one, and an- 

 other $517.50 for one, while from the $4,073 placed to the credit of the 

 Sisters of the Visitation of Georgetown, $298.75 was deducted by 

 Ignatius Tighlman toward the purchase of the freedom of his family. 



Among the people with negro blood in the Indian Territory there 

 were slaveholders. It is well known that the Five Civilized Tribes of 

 the Indian Territory — Creeks, Cherokees, Chickasaws, Seminoles and 

 Choctaws — had slaves both before and after establishing their new 

 nations in the west. Among the Creeks and Seminoles the lines be- 

 tween masters and slaves were less rigid. There has been a good deal 

 of intermarrying between these tribes and negroes. There three-quarter 

 blood makes an Indian, though the other quarter is negro; in recent 

 allotments, the United States government adopted this per cent, in 

 determining who were freedmen and who were Indians. Three of the 



