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Planters'Records |
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Planters'Records |
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Planters kept a variety of records that can provide material to help us learn about their slaves. In addition to accounts and financial records dealing with their plantations, they also wrote letters, and some kept diaries in which they discussed their bondspersons.
The Carter family, descendants of Robert "King"
Carter, corresponded extensively about their slaves.
John Carter to Richard Gildart, August 1,
1738
Writes of Gildart's shipment of Africans to the
Upper James: "the sort of slaves did not please them [the buyers]."
John
Carter to Foster Cunliffe & Samuel Powel, August 3, 1738
Cunliffe and Powel regularly shipped slaves to Virginia
planters. Carter complains of the behavior of a slavers' captain and describes
the types of shipments he and his fellow planters desired.
John
Carter to Landon Carter, July 11, 1739
John writes that "I expect a Ship in a few days
from the Gold Coast."
Landon
Carter, Jr. to Landon Carter, Sr., January 1, 1763 [1764]
Landon Jr. is sending along one of Landon Sr.'s
slaves (possibly a runaway)
Charles
Carter to Landon Carter, April 24, 1770
Charles writes that he is "so plagued with Runaways"
and asks Landon to "have them outlawed for me & act as if they were
your own Slaves."
Col.
John Tayloe to Col. Landon Carter, March 31, 1771
Tayloe complains "that your Patroll do not do their
duty, my people are rambling about every night."
Landon
Carter, Sr. to John Boughton, n.d. [1772?]
Boughton was Carter's overseer of Carter's quarter
at Ring's Neck on the Mattapony River in King and Queen County. In the
lengthy letter, Carter writes about how a planter is judged by the quality
of his leaf and criticizes his son for being too lenient to his slaves.
He also writes of a hurricane, which may have been the powerful storm that
struck Tidewater Virginia in September 1772.
