Test. Test. Test. Test. Test. Test. Test. These are just three examples of some of the newspaper advertisements that i collected as part of the research for this book, which reflect a number of things. One, that white mothers were creating such a demand for enslaved mothers services and labor as wet nurses that they were not only putting these ads, placing these ads in southern newspapers, but that also, what you dont see in these, but in others, what also becomes clear is that white women were also some of the individuals who were supplying these white mothers with the enslaved mothers and wet nurses that they wanted, that they were seeking. Here, these three are examples of enslaved wet nurses seeking enslaved wet nurses either to purchase or to hire. And what i found also is that there was a really important intersection and connection between the market in enslaved wet nurses and the slave market proper. So, most of the men and individuals who were offering enslaved women for sale to serve in this capacity were also slave traders who made their living buying and selling enslaved people. So, in addition to that, when we attend closely to what enslaved and formerly enslaved people had to say about white womens economic investments in slavery, it becomes clear that they had so much to tell us about the institution. Slavery and the roles that white women played in the slave market economy and in their continued captivity. We learn that when they said that they belonged to white women, they meant belonged to by law. Sally nightingale owned Alice Marshall and her mother, for example. And marshall claimed that her mistress husband, jack, aint had nothing to do with me and my mother because they belonged to the misses by law, and not her husband. So, what you see here is what is referred to as a lost friends ad. Also, typically, they were referred to as information wanted ads. And these are very unique in large part because they emerge right as the civil war is coming to an end and also in the years following the civil war. And what they reflect is, formerly enslaved peoples attempts to reconstitute their families. So, all of those individuals who belong to their families and communities that had been sold away from them, that they wanted to reconnect with, family members, children and mothers and fathers and even brothers and uncles who they had lost contact with because of sale and separation. They placed these ads in order to try to reconnect with those individuals, to find those people and to reconstitute their families. And so, these advertisements also show more than simply their attempts to reconnect with their families, but they also show how those separations occurred in the first place. And they highlight in many of them, they highlight the owners who were responsible not simply for their sale, but their separation. Here, what you show here what im showing is an advertisement placed by caroline maeson, seeking information about her family members. And so, what she says here is that she was owned by betsy mason, a white woman, and was sold by her as well. So, she doesnt simply say, you know, that she inadvertently was sold by some man who was related to betsy. She identifies betsy as her legal owner, but also the person who was ultimately responsible for the separations that occurred after those sales took place. This is another advertisement which goes a little bit farther, more deeper, and shows more complex elements or dimensions of slavery. William mays advertisement shows several things, not simply about white slaveowning women and heir families, but also their business practices. So he not only identifies his female owner, telalice stokes, in this advertisement, he also described the conflicts within her family over her property and her Property Rights. He argues, or he tells us that jack sampson, his owners grandson, stole his mother and siblings from telalice, so a grandson and a grandmother. He is not willing to recognize the kind of inviability of telalice stokes Property Rights in this particular case. But what he also tells us is that while telalice stokes held legal title to her while she was his owner, that she would hire him out. So he refers to this process of hiring out as living with jemison at the time. In the top element, he talks about jack samsons decision to sell him away from his family i mean, steal his family away from him, and also talks about telalices business practices, meaning she would hire him out, and then receive his wages in return for the labor that he performs for jimson in this particular case. And here, its really these sources really get at some of the kind of, again, these more complex dimensions of slavery that often dont enter into the kind of popular understanding of the institution and of the ways in which enslaved people were passed between people, how those separations occurred, et cetera. So, here, what gye smith is telling us is that he and his wife were separated from their children and that his children were drawn. Refers to a process of being drawn by different members of his owners family, some of whom were women. But in doing so, he also talks about the Legal Process by which these separations took place. He doesnt use all the terms that we would like to that we would think to look for, but he very plainly tells us that while these separations of family members didnt take place in the slave market, they nonetheless brought about the same kinds of traumatic severances from loved ones. So what he tells us is that this process of being drawn and falling to someone refers to the process that happens during an estate, the administration of a deceased persons estate in this particular context. So, his owner dies. And then after that owner died, all of his property was then they would, in fact, have a drawing. So very much like a lottery. So they would put the names of the individual heirs into a bag or hat, and that individual heir would also, the name would also be written alongside a group of enslaved people, or that person would draw. So they would draw either their names out of a hat, and then that person would then be told what property they received, or they would draw out a piece of paper that had a list of property that they would receive. So there are a variety of ways that this ritual took place. And so, they literally did, in fact, draw enslaved people as a part of this Estate Division process. And so, that is what thats what gye is referring to here. And so, this is not simply something that enslaved people talked about in legal, in terms that arent necessarily proper legalees, but these recollections are also reflected in documents that appear in archival collections throughout the south. What you see here is a handwritten document that shows exactly what gye smith is referring to, an Estate Division in which it lists the individual enslaved people that are a part of that deceased persons estate, and it also shows the ages of those enslaved people. It shows the values, the estimated values of those enslaved people. And then towards the bottom, at the very bottom of this document, it shows which heirs drew which enslaved people. And so, what i thought was really remarkable about this document, and in relationship to what gye shows in his lost friends ad, is that Elizabeth Henry, the very top line there, Elizabeth Henry drew more enslaved people than the other heir, richard henry, did. And why is this important . What i show in the book is that colonial historians, so historians who look at slavery in the colonial period in the country, have shown that slaveowning parents would typically give their daughters more slaves than any other form of property. They would give them other property and they would give them money and they would give them, in some cases ive seen stocks and bonds given to daughters, but they would often give their daughters far more enslaved people than other forms of property, particularly land. And they would give their sons the land, so that when those two, when that couple got together, they would have everything they needed to get a start, to get a start on that new life that they were going to be living. I see the same thing happen in the 19th century. So throughout the 19th century, you see similar patterns where slaveholding parents would also give their daughters more enslaved people than land. And this is reflective of the fact that even if richard did not receive land, he actually you can see that kind of inheritance practice play out here in this document by showing that she received, elizabeth received more slaves than the other heir, which might suggest also that he received land in addition to receiving those enslaved people. And so, i think these sources are really important to showing kind of the process by which i wrote the book, because i centered and foregrounded the experiences of the accounts and reflections of formerly enslaved people in order to lead me in more productive directions and additional directions in relationship to the sources. So, by looking at just fragments of information data, for those scientists that might be in the room or mathematically inclined folks in the room by using the data that formerly enslaved people provided, i was able to piece together some of the details of the lives of the female owners that they identify. And so, this is a really important or a really interesting example of that process for me. So, James Skinner was a reverend who lived in yazu county, mississippi. And on april 20th, 1879, he placed this lost friends ad in the southwestern christian advocate, looking for his brother edward. And so, the last time john had seen edward was on october 12th, 1860, in georgetown, and in the district of columbia, right where we are today. And so, not long after the brothers crossed paths that day, john and his family were forced to leave edward behind when their owner did what historians and what individuals at the time referred to as being refugeed. So his owner refugeed them to mississippi and compelled them to leave the district and leave edward behind. And then one year after john placed his first lost friends advertisement, he still hadnt found edward. So he placed another, this Time Offering more detail. And so, each of these advertisements made one point clear angelica chu although as you can see here, he spells her name differently in both advertisements, but nevertheless, he identifies annjeloco chuw, who ordered that process of refugeeing and she was the reason he and his family were still searching for edward. So initially, it was difficult for me to find annjeloco, in large part because of the operations in spelling and the ways he refers to her in the advertisements. In the first yellow box on the left, he refers to her as mrs. Ann jeloco chuw, and the widow of phrisby chuw with a ph, so jot that down. Then i went to the second advertisement and said, hes doing something completely different the second time. Is this the same person . Whats going on here . You can see he refers to her as mrs. Angelo chuw. And so, i said, okay, i know that in this period, and even sometimes today, when a woman is married, and even if a woman is widowed, she may be referred to as misses, but by her husbands first and last name. So i said, okay, is she the widow of angelo chuw . Like, whats going on here . So im looking at the details. Im like, okay, we know that they lived in we know that hes in yazu, mississippi, now. We know that he was in georgetown because he says that. And we know that this womans last name is chuw, either spelled with a u or an e. Well figure it out. So, i started to enter that information into what, as luck would have it, ancestry. Com. I know theyve been in some trouble lately. But nevertheless, its a wonderful resource where you can find many of the really extraordinary archival documents that the National Archives has available on site here. And so, i was able to find phrisby so i said, wait, there he is so, i found phrsby freeland chew. I found angelicas husband, his obituary in this newspaper. And obituaries are really interesting. Even though theyre macabre, theyre very dark, very depressing pieces of kind of archival fragments, if you want to call them that, but nevertheless, they often give these really rich descriptions of these peoples lives, of the deceased persons life, and you can really see kind of migrations. You can see all kinds of things. And thats what apparent in phrisbys obituary. So it tells us that, yes, he was married to mrs. Chew. It does not identify her by name, but he does refer to yazoo county, some, which is where James Skinner is at the time he placed his lost friends advertisements. So we have that. Thats one corroboration. Then he talks about it talks about his children. It talks about the fact that he was on his way to the government at washington, so it tells us he had been appointed to a governmental position, which would, again, not only corroborate what James Skinner is talking about, or placing him and edward and his family in d. C. , but also why they were in d. C. And how the heck, you know, where the connection between yazoo, mississippi, yazoo county, mississippi, and d. C. Came from. So, it tells us why the chews were in washington, d. C. , and then it tells us how he died. And so, this was a really interesting component, because again, it corroborates what james is saying, this formerly enslaved person is saying. But it also gives some details about angelicas life, her migrations, how shes moving around the country or parts of the country at this moment. And then, you know, im about to have a super nerdy moment on you. But then i found angelica chews fathers will. For those who are into geneal y genealogy, for those who are into any kind of history, you know that this is, like, you know, this is like archival gold. And so, for me, it was really important, again, because it underscored not simply these kind of parental relationships between parents and daughters and the ways in which their inheritance practices almost ensured that white women who received enslaved people would be deeply and profoundly invested in the institution and its perpetuation, and even in continuing to invest economically in the institution by buying and selling enslaved people after they received inheritance such as this one, but it also shows how they were able to maintain control over and exercise control over the enslaved people that they inherited. So, how does it do that . So, in this yellow box, what it says and ill just read it to you, because it is not, you know, i think immediately apparent to a lot of you what it says. So, it says im going to say it in a very, what i would imagine George Washington biscoe might sound like in these moments. Heaven made gifts by way of advancement to my dear daughter, angelica chew, and desiring to make my dear daughter emmas share of my estate proportionate with her said sisters, i give and bequeath to my dear wife, ann marie biscoe, entrust for the sole and separate use of our said daughter emma the following servants. And then he describes the servants that emma will receive. So, why is this important . Why did i get excited about this . So, what it tells us is that angelica sometime during the course of her life, before her father died, he gave her her portion of his estate. And thats important for me and important for us to understand, i think, in large part because when we think about slavery and we think about inheritances, we often think that happens just when a person dies and that when they leave a particular heir property in their will. But what this shows is that and this is an argument that i make in the book is that slaveowning parents didnt just leave their daughters enslaved people as their property in their wills. They gave them enslaved people over the course of their lives, even from infancy as birthday gifts, as christmas presents, and especially as wedding gifts. So, they would often give them a group of enslaved people, as i mentioned earlier, upon notification that they were going to get married. So they would typically have a ritual at the recital. So, the wedding no, the reception. I didnt have a rekremsiception because i was poor when i got married, so i didnt have a reception. But at the reception, they would essentially line up the enslaved people, and then there would be kind of an announcement made at the wedding reception, that essentially granted the wife of the daughter, the newlywed daughter, her wedding present, which would involve a group of which would entail a group of enslaved people. So, what George Washington biscoe is saying here is that he already gave angelica her share, and that likely means that she received those enslaved people at the time of her wedding or sometime over the course of after she got married, okay . So, thats one thing, that really important thing that it shows. And what it also reflects is that as historians and as genealogists, that we can look elsewhere to try to make these connections, that wills are important, but that theyre not the end all, be all to understanding property bequests, property transfers between white southerners, or southerners, or any folks that had the ability to own property and to transfer that property to someone else. What it also shows is an important legal clause that many slaveholding parents not only built into their wills, as we see here, but also in trust estates. So, these would be very much like trust funds that are established for wealthy folks these days, you know. So were familiar with trust funds. So what slaveowning parents would often do as well is, if they gave their daughters property before they married or before they died in their wills, like we see here, they would do so by creating a trust. And they would put that property in a trust, appoint a trustee. Sometimes it would be the husband. Sometimes it would be the father or a male family member. Sometimes it was even a woman. As you see here, george appoints his wife as emmas trustee. So he creates a separate trust estate, a separate trust fund for emma, and he puts ann in charge of that estate, that property, until she comes of age. And he states here the underlined clause. He puts in that really important clause entrust for the sole and separate use of our said daughter, emma. This has such power in a legal context, because what it says, what its making clear, is that George Washington did not want emmas future husband to have any control over the property that he was giving to emma. And so, by saying entrust for the sole and separate use of emma, he is essentially telling her husband, ha, ha, ha you thought you were going to get your grubby hands on this property, but no. So, slaveowning parents and their daughters are working together before they get to the point in which women might be fearful that their husbands might dispose of their property in