Technical Service Librarian, Assistant Professor
Black Nashville: An Introduction
Blacks-slave and free-made up 20 percent of Fort Nashborough's settlers in 1779. From these early years through the Civil War, a growing black community in Nashville, led by a small group of black elites, quietly built the foundations of a future society, developing schools, churches, and businesses.
Lovett, B. (1999). The African-American History of Nashville, Tennessee, 1780-1930: Elites and Dilemmas. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press. doi:10.2307/j.ctt201mpt5
Davidson County Slaveowners: A History
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John Overton was born in Louisa |
County, Virginia in 1766. Overton moved to Nashville in March 1789 and began practicing law in the Davidson County court. During his lifetime he served as an early Tennessee lawyer, a jurist, banker and political leader. Overton was also a trusted friend and advisor to Andrew Jackson. John Overton was perhaps Jackson's closest advisor and confidante. He often wrote to Overton, discussing Washington politics, local and national affairs, gossip, and land speculation. He served as federal tax collector on the whiskey tax from 1796 until 1803. Overton was elected to replace Jackson as judge of the Superior Court of Law and Equity, where he served until 1810. After the Jackson Purchase in 1818, Overton, James Winchester and Andrew Jackson established the town of Memphis in the western corner of Tennessee near the Mississippi River. During his later years, Overton devoted a substantial portion of his time at promoting the new town's growth and development. Overton lived at his plantation near Nashville, Traveller's Rest.Andrew Jackson,
byname Old Hickory, (born March 15, 1767, Waxhaws region, South Carolina [U.S.]—died June 8, 1845, the Hermitage, near Nashville, Tennessee, U.S.), military hero and seventh president of the United States (1829–37). He was the first U.S. president to come from the area west of the Appalachians and the first to gain office by a direct appeal to the mass of voters. His political movement has since been known as Jacksonian Democracy (Britannica).
Jackson went from poverty to wealth because he personally embraced the institution of slavery. Enslaved workers grew his cotton, built and tended his house and helped him gain a social foothold in Southern society. Jackson owned as many as 161 enslaved people, buying and selling them, using their labor to build his fortune and even bringing them to the White House to work for him (history.com).
African American Genealogy online research is much more difficult due to the scant nature of record keeping for African American’s prior to the Civil War. This is the reason for creating a separate section for African Americans much like we have for Native Americans who’s research can also be hampered by the available records.
Searching for African American families involves two distinct research approaches. These approaches correspond to the distinct change in the legal status of African Americans in the United States before and after the Civil War. Genealogical techniques used to track slave families before the war are necessarily quite different than those used for white or free African Americans; however, research conducted on African Americans after the war usually involves the same types of records as those used for whites.
Statements credits: Access Genealogy
Photo: Rev. Matt Gardner (Elkton, TN), 3rd Great Grand Uncle of Librarian, Angel Sloss-Pridgen
John Harding founded Belle Meade Plantation in 1807. From his initial 250-acre purchase on the “Old Natchez Road,” seven miles from Nashville, Harding built Belle Meade into a twelve-hundred-acre plantation. During the three decades of his management, Harding sold blacksmith services, farm products, and dressed lumber and established an important stud farm.
John Harding is described as a "self-made" man with limited education who purchased a number of slaves while developing his plantation (initially known as Dunham Station ).
References
Wills, W. (1991). Black-White Relationships on the Belle Meade Plantation. Tennessee Historical Quarterly, 50(1), 17-32. Retrieved February 4, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/42626919
Daniel Graham was the 5th Secretary of State for Tennessee from 1818-1830 then Tennessee's first Comptroller from 1838-1843. In his legislative capacity he hired his slave Isaac to deliver water to legislators. Graham resided in both Davidson and Rutherford counties to which he kept a Slave Register for both properties.
William Ramsey was a Slave trader who was paid by the Nashville Government to buy 12,000 worth of slaves on the behalf of the government. Ramsey went to Virginia and bought two dozen slaves: Ben, Emanuel, Jim, Frank, Lewis, Moses, Salem, Anthony, Charles, Lucinda, Lilburn Henderson, Allen, Jim, Moses, Allen, Isaac, Vincent, Peter, Bob, Granville, John, Isaac, John and Jim. Those 24 slaves were taken away from their families and herded to Middle Tennessee (probably chained together in what was then referred to as a slave coffle). Nashville’s government later bought two more slaves named Daniel and Betsy and used its 26 slaves to perform such tasks as building the city’s first waterworks. At least twice, some of these slaves tried to escape. The mayor of Nashville purchased runaway slave ads in hopes of tracking them down.
- Slaves were often sold as the result of lawsuits, the dispensation of an estate or the financial over-extension of a slaveholder. These sales were carried out by chancery court clerks and masters at slave sales that were announced in public notice ads. I found 163 of these events that accounted for the sale of 1,199 slaves in counties ranging from Blount to Lincoln to Shelby.
Further reading: Tennessee's Slave History
Slavery in Public Places
Glover & Boyd- A General Purpose Agency, No. 50 Cherry Street that sold the enslaved, rented properties to others, and the selling of land property amongst other things.
Dabbs & Porter- General Purpose Agency that was into the buying and selling of African Americans. Office was located on 33 Cedar Street, between Cherry and Summer. The Partnership was dissolved on October 30, 1854.
James & Harrison- A General Purpose Agency on 18 Cedar Street, commissioned others to board, sell, and oversee the enslaved. Auctions were held every Saturday at 10:00am to the public. Often would place ads to help others recover lost slave property in the local papers.
Lyles & Hitchings - Slave Dealers located at No 33 Cedar Street. Involved in the buying/selling of the enslaved in the New Orleans Market.
Reese W. Porter- Formally of Dabbs & Porter who sold the enslaved from a variety of trades (carpenters, cooks, blacksmiths, plough boys, fancy boys, girls, and seamstress).
This information was taken from ads in the Republican Banner 1856-1857
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Slavery in America and the World: History, Culture and LawThis an open access archive on the history of world slavery, but concentrates mostly on African American slavery.
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Slave VoyagesAfrican Origins contains information about the migration histories of Africans forcibly carried on slave ships into the Atlantic. Using the personal details of 91,491 Africans liberated by International Courts of Mixed Commission and British Vice Admiralty Courts, this resource makes possible new geographic, ethnic, and linguistic data on peoples captured in Africa and pulled into the slave trade.
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Library of Congress: Chronicling AmericaSearch America’s historic newspaper pages from 1836-1922 or use the U.S. Newspaper Directory to find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present. The site includes digital copies of antislavery newspapers, such as the Freeman’s Champion and the Anti-Slavery Bugle, and numerous papers covering the slaveholding South
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Digital Library on American SlaveryThe Digital Library on American Slavery offers data on race and slavery extracted from eighteenth and nineteenth-century documents and processed over a period of eighteen years. The Digital Library contains detailed information on about 150,000 individuals, including slaves, free people of color, and whites. These data have been painstakingly extracted from 2,975 legislative petitions and 14,512 county court petitions, and from a wide range of related documents, including wills, inventories, deeds, bills of sale, depositions, court proceedings, amended petitions, among others.
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Runaways, coffles and fancy girls : a history of slavery in Tennessee / by Bill Carey. Location: Shelf 1st Flr - Main Call No.: E449.T3 .C37 2018
African American Historiography
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Courtesy of the Tennessee State Library & Archives
Most early historical works by black authors were biographies or autobiographies, which usually described a few exemplars of the race to counterbalance the omission or denigration of blacks in many white-authored works. The late 19th century saw the emergence of a new black historiography devoted to demonstrating that contributions by African American individuals and groups were essential to the course of American history and culture. African American historians conducted extensive primary source research to support their historical analyses. Other writers compiled long encyclopedic works, often delving into subfields such as religion, music, and journalism (The Library Company of Philadelphia).
Jim Crow & the Age of Washington
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Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia: Using objects of intolerance to teach tolerance and promote social justice - Ferris State University
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The triumph of Jim Crow : Tennessee race relations in the 1880's / Joseph H. Cartwright.Location: Shelf - Williams E185.93.T3 C37
Blacks and the Civil War
courtesy of USCT History
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Samuel Bridgeforth USCTMs. Angel Sloss-Pridgen's 3rd Great Great Grandfather was in the 111th USCT Infantry. He was a prisoner of war but managed to escape and return back to union forces. He was from Giles Co TN.
Free Blacks in A Volunteer State
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Clinton, Tennessee, Schools from Freedom Facts and Firsts: 400 Years of the African American Civil Rights Experience
Blacks in Territorial Nashville
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North Nashville North Nashville Project- with oral and written resources on the history of North Nashville.
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Trial and triumph : essays in Tennessee's African American history / edited by Carroll Van West. Location: Shelf 1st Flr - Main Call No.: F445.N4 T75 2002