Case Study: Determining Maternity by Correlating Records of Alpheus Beall's Slaves

Case Study:
Determining Maternity by Correlating Records
of Alpheus Beall's Slaves

Historians and genealogists often want to reconstruct slave family structures from available records. The private records, if any, of most U. S. slave owners have long disappeared; most written evidence for the enslaved is in legal records that record the slaves’ status as property, and that were not intended to serve as family histories.

How can we reconstruct enslaved family kinships from the legal records of the slave masters? Since the condition of slavery followed the status of the mother (the identity of one’s father was irrelevant to legal status as a slave), legal records are most likely to contain clues to the mother-child relationship than any other kinship. This case study shows how we can sometimes elicit unstated kinship information from court documents, such as probate records, if we:

(1) understand the customary ways in which the data in these documents were compiled,

(2) and compare related records against each other.

Case Study Summary. We examine an estate in probate that begins with 33 slaves (19 of them children) and increases over five years to 45 slaves. During these five years, the 19 children increase to 33 children (not including an estimated 3 deaths). Only two of the original children (and three subsequent unnamed infants) are ever specifically identified in the records with a particular mother; however, by comparing and analyzing the estate's legal records, it is possible to demonstrate, with virtual certainty, the maternity of 22 more of these children, and the most likely maternity of the remaining 6 children.

Sources. The primary records for the Alpheus Beall estate (Upson County, probated 1848-1853) are in Upson County Record of Accounts Book C, pp. 40, 44, 167, 288-9, 486, 592-3. Additional, valuable details are found in the Record of Vouchers Book A, pp. 83-89 and 251-4. A lawsuit contains some useful data (William & Elisha H. Beall vs. William J. Starling, administrator of Alpheus Beall, May Term 1853, Upson Superior Court Writ Book H, pp, 247-276). The division and allotment of slaves resulting from the suit is recorded in Upson Superior Court Minute Book B, pp. 529-31 (May Term 1853, Decree in Equity in the case of William & Elisha H. Beall vs. William J. Starling, administrator of Alpheus Beall).

Method. I arrange data in tables so that information about each individual can be compared more easily. Arranging in tables also helps to resolve ambiguities in identity when more than one slave has the same name, or when slaves' names are recorded in different forms. I have placed data from the Alpheus Beall records in three tables. I have ignored minor variations in name spellings when the identity was obvious.

Note for Table 1. Only column 1 of this table lists persons in the same order as the source document. The data in columns 2 through 6, originally recorded in various orders, is here conformed to the order of persons listed in column 1 for purposes of comparison.

Table 1

Summary of Probate Records, 1848-1852

1	2	3	4	5	6
7/10/1848 Sched. of Property	Oct. 1848 Inv. &App.	1849 hire	1850 hire	1851 hire	1852 hire
Men
Jack	$650	x	x	x	x
Sandy	$575	x	x	x	x
Isham	$575	x	x	x	x
Women
Sukey	$75	x	x	x	x
Becky	+2 $950		+3	+3	+3
old [Big] Eliza	+1 $625	+2	+1	+1	x
young [Little] Eliza	+4 $1200	+4	+5	+5	+4 and 1 born
Mary	+1 $650	+2	+2, a third died	+2	+2
Nancy	+2 $800	+2	+3	+3 and pregnant	+4
Jane	$575	x	x	x	x
Ann	$550	x	x	x	x
Amanda	+2 $900	+2	+3	+3	+3
Martha	+1 $700	+2	+2	+2 and pregnant	+3
Elizabeth	$450	x	x	+1 born 4 / 1851	+1
Children
Harriet	$425	x	x		x
Pathena	$400	x	x	x	x
Julius
Calvin
Susan	$550	x	x	x	x
Josephine	$350	x	x	x	x
Emily	$300		x	x	x
John	$525	x	x	x	x
Henry	$500	x	x	x	x
Chloe
Sarah
Francis
Jones
Ellen
Peter
Bill
Fredonia
Dallas
Laura

Table 1 (explanation).

Column 1. The "Schedule of Property in the Hands of the Temporary Executrix" (widow, Mary C. Beall), made on July 10, 1848 , lists all 33 slaves by name, but does not suggest any family relationships. The list is reproduced in column 1 in the same order as recorded. Note that the people are divided into three categories: men, women, and children. It was most common in such lists for the adults to be listed in age order (for example, Sukey is presumably the oldest woman). Children might be listed in descending age order, or by family groups in descending age order – but we cannot be sure what arrangement was used until we compare this list with other data.

This list differentiates two women named Eliza as "old Eliza" and "young Eliza," but later documents call them "Big Eliza" and "Little Eliza." The return for 1852 differentiates "Old Eliza" from "woman Eliza [with] four children," allowing us to determine that: Big Eliza = old Eliza, and Little Eliza = young Eliza.

Table 1, Column 2. Three and a half months later, on October 25, 1848 , the Inventory & Appraisement (I&A) was made. The format of this list is different from the earlier Schedule. Women are listed with the number (no names) of their youngest children. No ages are given, but based on common practice, youngest children listed with their mothers might include those from infancy up to 6 years or ten years old. The average maximum age of those listed with their mothers was commonly about 8 years old. The entry for Becky is typical: "Woman Beccy & two children $950." I have summarized such entries in column 2 with a plus sign (“+”) and the number of unnamed children followed by the valuation, so that Becky is shown as "+2 $950".

Appraised values are included in the table because they often indicate children's relative ages (the older, the more valuable, with boys generally more valuable than girls of the same age). Appraised valued can sometimes also suggest family groupings.

Notice that Julius, Calvin, and all children following Henry are not appraised individually. This means that they are among the unnamed children numbered with the women (their mothers). Notice that there are twelve named children in the earlier Schedule of July 10, but a total of thirteen unnamed children in the I&A on October 1848. This suggests that one additional child was born between July and October. For the moment, we do not know whose child this might be, but see the later discussion of Little Eliza's children.

Table 1, Columns 3 through 6. Each year, the administrator of the estate hired out most of the slaves. Their earnings (or expenses) were included in an annual return. Although the amount of hire for each slave can often provide valuable clues to a slave's age or physical condition, to simplify the present analysis, I have omitted the amounts of hire from this table. Columns 3 through 6 show the number of children hired with each woman in the same manner as in column 2, along with any additional information given in the returns concerning pregnancy, births, or deaths. An "x" in the appropriate column indicates that that the annual return specifically names that person. The arbitrators’ report to Superior Court (May 1853) mentions a return for 1853, but that return was not recorded.

Note that girl Emily's hire is listed each year except 1849, and that, coincidentally, Big Eliza is listed with 2 children in 1849, but in 1848 and 1850 she has only one. Might Emily have been hired with Big Eliza in 1849, and therefore be her child? We will return to this possibility later.

Harriett's absence from the list of hires for 1851 is explained in the Record of Vouchers, Book A (p. 88), where she is claimed as an expense to the estate due to a long sickness that year.

There are two pieces of data for which I do not have satisfactory explanation: (1) the return for 1849 omits Becky and her children, and (2) the return for 1852 lists Big Eliza without any children. Absence of a person, or reduction of number of children listed with a mother, often indicates death – but this explanation obviously does not apply to Becky or Harriet, and is not supported for Big Eliza by analysis of subsequent records from Superior Court (see Table 2). The number of children listed with a mother can also decrease when a child becomes old enough to hire individually – but, in this case, the return for 1852 names no new person who might correspond to Big Eliza's child. These discrepancies might have been mistakes in the original returns, or transcription errors by the clerk who copied them into the record book.

In response to a lengthy dispute over the estate (William & Elisha H. Beall vs. William J. Starling, administrator of Alpheus Beall, Upson Superior Court Writ Book H, pp, 247-276), widow Mary C. Beall filed a statement for the April 1850 Term of Superior Court, saying, in part, that since the Inventory & Appraisement, "five negro children have been born and are now living: Billy, Mary, Willmond, Martha's infant and Amanda's infant." This establishes birthdates for these children between October 25, 1848 , and April 1850. Comparison with the Return for 1849 narrows the birth of Billy (Becky's William) and Mary to about November-December 1848.

The return for 1849 suggests that Martha had had a child since the I&A, but this cannot be the unnamed “infant” described in the previous paragraph because such a child would have been 18 months old by April 1850. It is possible that Martha had a child in late 1848 who died in 1849. If she gave birth to another child soon afterward, this would explain why Martha could be hired with two children in each year 1849 and 1850, and would suggest the full meaning of Mary C. Beall’s phrase, “born and now living.”

The Division. Table 2 shows the "equitable division" of the estate's slaves between three legatees, made on December 28, 1853 . The persons in each lot are listed here in exactly the same order as shown in the Superior Court record. Names of women known to be mothers are displayed in bold letters for easier reference in the following analysis. We find that all the names of children last seen on the list of 7/10/1848 are here, except that Pathena is abbreviated to Thena, and Fredonia is called Doney. Bill, named in the 1848 list, may correspond to one of the two Williams in the 1853 division, but can we tell which one?

Table 2

Decree in Equity, December 28, 1853 , division of Negroes

Lot #1	Lot #2	Lot #3
Sandy $850	Jack $900	Isham $1000
Little Eliza & infant $900	Amanda $800	Nancy $800
Sarah $650	Ellen $550	William, Nancy 's son $350
Frances $450	Peter $550	Doney $450
Jones $550	Jefferson $450	Wilmond $350
Louisa $350	Martha & son Henry $1050	Ariann $300
Big Eliza $450	Laura $500	Mary $750
Emily $550	Elizabeth $350	Dallas $650
Chloe $500	Nancy $300	Mary, girl of Mary $450
Thena $850	Harriett $800	Susan & child $1000
Jane $950	Josephine $800