declined to place all the blame on Joe. Joe had 

 been '"Coachnian to Mr. Belfiekl ol Richmond 

 Count) ■■ and in the reward offer Mercer states that 

 Joe 



. . . was for some time after he first ran away lurking 

 about the Widow Belfield's Plantation .... He is a 

 short, well-set Fellow, about 26 Years of .Age, and took 

 with him several cloaths, among the rest a Suit of Blue, 

 lined and faced with Red, with White Metal Buttons, 

 Whoever will secure and bring home the said Negroe, 

 shall receive Two Pistoles Reward, besides what the 

 Law allows: And as I have a great Reason to believe, 

 that he is privately encouraged to rim away, and then 

 harboured and concealed, so that the Person or Persons so 

 harbouring him may be thereof convicted, I will pay to 

 such Discoverer Ten Pistoles upon Conviction. This 

 being the third I ri|i he has made since I bought him in 

 January last, I desire he may receive such Correction in 

 his Way home as the Law directs, when apprehended."" 



Whether Joe received the harsh punishment his 

 offense called for is not recorded. However, in 1748 

 Mercer accounted for cash paid for "Joe's Lodging & 

 burial £3. 10.," suggesting that Joe enjoyed death- 

 bed care and a decent burial, even though he may 

 have succumbed to "such correction ... as the law 

 directs." 



As has already been suggested, his o\'erseers seem 

 to have given Mercer more trouble than his slaves. 

 One was Booth Jones of Stafford, about whom Mercer 

 confided in his ledger, "By allowed him as Overseer 

 tho he ran away about 5 weeks before his time was 

 out by w'''' 1 suffered more damage than his whole 

 wages. £3. II." Meanwhile, in 1746 William 

 Wheeland, an overseer at Bull Run Quarters, 

 "imbezilled" 40 barrels of corn. 



James Savage was one of the principal overseers 

 and seems to have been in charge first at Sumner's 

 Quarters and then at Bull Run Quarters. John 

 Ferguson succeeded him at the former place. William 

 Torbutt was also at Bull Run, while Mark Canton 

 and Nicholas Seward were overseers at Marlborough. 



The outfitting of slaves with proper clothes, blankets, 

 and coats was an important matter. It called for such 

 purchases as 121 ells of "ozenbrigs" from Hunter in 

 1 742. "Ozenbrigs" was a coarse cloth of a type made 

 originally in Oznabruck, Germany,'"' and was tradi- 



"" Virginia Gazelle, September 12, 174,"). 



"* George Francis Dow, Everyday Life in the Massachusetts 

 Bay Colony (Boston: The Society for the Preservation of New 

 r i,.l .,1(1 Antiquities, 1935), p. 78. 



tionally the .\egro field hand's raiment. Many 

 purchases of indigo point to the dying of "Virginia" 

 cloth, woven either on the plantation or by the 

 weavers mentioned earlier. Presumably, shoes for 

 the Negroes were made at Marlborough, judging from 

 a purchase from Dick of S}^ pounds of shoe thread. 

 The domestic servants were liveried, at least after the 

 mansion was occupied. William Thomson, a Fred- 

 ericksburg tailor, made "a Coat & Breeches [for] 

 Bob, 11." Bob was apparently Mercer's personal 

 manservant, who had served him since 1732. Thom- 

 son also was paid £4 16s. 2d. for "Making Liveries." 

 The listing of such materials as "scarlet duffel" and 

 "scarlet buttons" points to colorful outfitting of 

 slaves. 



SAILING, FISHING, HUNTING 



Water transportation was essential to all the 

 planters, most of whom owned sloops. We have seen 

 that Mercer used a sloop for his earliest trading 

 activities before he settled at Marlborough, and it is 

 apparent that in the 1 740's either this same sloop or 

 another which may have replaced it still was operated 

 by him. Hauling tobacco to Cave's warehouse, 

 picking up a barrel of rum in Norfolk or a load of 

 lumber on the Eastern Shore were vital to the success 

 of the plantation. To equip the sloop, 14 yards of 

 topsail, ship's twine, and a barrel of tar were pur- 

 chased in 1747. Mercer had two Negroes named 

 "Captain" and "Boatswain," and we may suppose 

 that they had charge of the vessel. Such an arrange- 

 ment would not have been unique, for many years 

 after this, in 1 768, Mercer wrote that "a sloop of 

 M'' Ritchie's that came around from Rapp" for a 

 load of tobacco stopped at my landing; his negro 

 skipper brought me a letter from M'' Mills . . . ." '"^ 



That there was considerable hunting at Marl- 

 borough is borne out by repeated references to 

 powder, shot, gunpowder, atid gunflints. Fishing 

 may have been carried on from the sloop and also in 

 trap-nets of the same sort still used in Potomac Creek 

 off the Marlborough Point shore. In 1742 purchases 

 were made of a 40-fathom seine and 3 perch lines, 

 and in 1744 of 75 fishhooks and 2 drumlines. 



BOOKS 



In Ledger G, Mercer listed all the books of his 

 librarv before 1746. He then listed additions as thev 



' George Menei Pafieis. op. cit. (footnote 51), p. 208. 



