Jan 27, 2017 Orange County Review
I know at least a few readers have been eagerly awaiting the findings of my recent sojourn to Louisiana in search of the 16 Montpelier slaves sold in 1834 for a new life on William Taylor’s sugar plantation. The findings are vast, exciting and, to-date, still wanting additional confirmation. Hopefully you will enjoy what we now know.
History, or at least the portion that now concerns me, is fortunate that Taylor kept very detailed accounts and that a descendant chose to gift his diary with those very revealing accounts to a public repository: The Hill Memorial Library at Louisiana State University.
The diary provides more than one list by name and age of all of Taylor’s nearly 100 slaves. There are lists for shoes (separated by gender) and lists detailing the receipt of clothing. There are records of those having children, naming the mother and child. There also are accounts of the occasions where named slaves ran away and in some cases the cause of their desire to escape and, in at least one entry, the punishment that ensued.
The pages detailed life on the plantation: when it was too wet to plough; activity on the second plantation located near the Bayou Latanache; sugar harvest days that required all hands in the fields including women and children; trips to New Orleans via the Mississippi River. The information is valuable in understanding the life of the people who produced the crops and literally kept the machinery in force.
Of special interest to our effort was the fact that the accounts of the enslaved children’s births included a detail that may lead to additional information; the children were baptized soon after birth. William Taylor and his wife Lucy lived on a plantation called Lakeland situated on the banks of the Mississippi and directly opposite a small town called Bayou Sara. A ferry running from the western shore to the town was on the northern boundary of the estimated 2,000-acre plantation.
Taylor notes on more than one occasion attending church service across the river in St. Francisville, literally up the hill from Bayou Sara. Grace Episcopal Church was established in about 1827 and is active today. A return trip to the area will determine if additional records exist and can be cross-referenced with Taylor’s diary notes.
It is challenging to nail down which of nearly 100 names could be those Virginians relocated from Montpelier to Lakeland in 1834, but we have a few more clues. In 1831, Taylor purchased the land known as Lakeland and the purchase included 87 slaves. A provision in the sale contract prohibited the sale of any of these individuals to another property. Though Taylor attempted more than once to sell the property (along with the original Lakeland slaves) he was not successful. Nonetheless, each time there was an attempt to sell, the names were listed.
These names are consistently French in origin and can be eliminated in the larger list, reducing the number of “other enslaved persons” to a more reasonable number. But it gets better!
In more than one account, Taylor identifies at least three men with the descriptor Virginia; one of those is Jack Virginia. It is likely that Taylor is identifying these people as being ones he purchased from Virginia though his rationale may not yet be clear. But it provides great hope for us as researchers.
Jack Virginia is listed as having a wife named Mary and in 1839, a 2-year-old son named Madison! A quick review of the 1870 Census for the parish where Lakeland was located reveals a Mary Virginia born in Virginia of about the age we estimated and living in a settlement of sorts that included others with the same names as those in Taylor’s lists.
The written accounts pertaining to Jack are compelling. More data has been collected from the local courthouse and a current-day individual or two who have committed to help with the unraveling. Stay tuned.
Until next week, be well.