Existing comment:
The Meathouse: A Food Vault
"I used to reason that the slaves were the property of their masters, and so were the pigs…if I induced them to wander away, it was only taking a part of master's property, the pigs, to make the other part of his property, the women, more valuable."
-- Josiah Henson
Under lock and key, the contents of a smokehouse or meathouse were considered extremely valuable. Lacking refrigeration, the Riley family needed to preserve their meat to keep it from spoiling. Butchered meat, such as pork after a winter hog killing, was salted and then cured over a slow smoke. Most of the meat ended up on the Rileys' dinging table. If meat was distributed to the enslaved, their allotment was usually small and of poor quality.
[Captions:]
This smokehouse was discovered in northern Montgomery County in Black Hill Regional Park. The building probably looks similar in size and material to the one that stood on the Riley plantation.
Chronically undernourished, the enslaved were tempted by the meathouse stores. This 1809 legal document describes a Montgomery County court case brought against "James a negro man slave the property of Henry Gaither" for "breaking open the meet [sic] house." |