Existing comment:
A Voice Unheard:
From the late 1600s to the early 1800s, tobacco, wheat, and other crops helped bring prosperity to slaveholders on this farm -- at the price of bondage, hard labor, and broken families for enslaved African Americans.
No information about the lives of enslaved people here survives in their own words. The wills, letters, and records of slaveholders tell part of the story, but only from the slaveholders' point of view. In the early 1800s, at least half of the population of Prince George's County was enslaved African Americans.
African American named George, Edward, Hamilton, Minta, Patsy, and Matilda, among others, lived in bondage on this land. Most able-bodied enslaved people -- men, women, and older children -- worked in the fields. One or two enslaved women on this farm probably worked as cooks or servants in the main house. Enslaved African Americans were considered property by law, and were by far the most valuable property after the land itself.
A few enslaved people who lived here were freed by slaveholders, usually after years of forced service. Along with their labor, African Americans -- free and enslaved -- brought their languages, skills, food, music, stories, and history to this farm, Maryland, and the nation.
When John Henry DeButts died in 1831, he left a will describing how to divide his property. This inventory of his possessions helped fulfill the terms of his will. The value of his personal property was $3,224.08. His sixteen enslaved workers accounted for $2,512.50 -- more than three quarters of the total.
Freeing an enslaved person is called manumission. Records of the manumissions in Prince George's County show that a brother and sister, John and Nelly Garner, were born a year apart at Mount Welby. They were sold to Thomas S. Moore, who lived nearby, and freed by him on August 28, 1830. |