I’ve been hunting for digitized evidence of the trade of Wilson County slavers like Wyatt Moye, Robert S. Adams, Stephenton Page Jr., and Joshua Barnes in Aberdeen, Mississippi. I finally found some in a deed book dated 1847-1850. (Wilson County, of course, had not yet formed, but these and other traders lived or had lived in parts of Edgecombe, Nash, Wayne, or Johnston Counties that are now Wilson County.) These registered affidavits attest to the affiants’ personal acquaintance with an enslaved person who had been sent from North Carolina to Mississippi for further sale.
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Deed Record 13, page 640. Chancery Clerk’s Office, Monroe County, Mississippi.
Know all men by these presents that we Jesse Simpson and Isaac Williamson Citizens and free holders of the County of Nash and State of North Carolina do hereby certify that we are acquainted with a negro man named Abram aged about twenty three years old a Stout Strong well musselled boy about five feet two inches high and darke culler and cross eied, furthermore that said Slave has not been guilty or convicted of murder arson burglary or felony within our knowledge or belief in said County nor no other County. /s/ Jesse Simpson, Isaac Williamson
Deed Record 13, page 640. Chancery Clerk’s Office, Monroe County, Mississippi.
Know all men by these presents that we Jesse Simpson and Isaac Williamson Citizens and free holders of the County of Nash and State of North Carolina do hereby certify that we are acquainted with a negro man named Aberdeen aged about twenty three years old, a large Stout Strong Boy and of dark complection, furthermore that said Slave has not been guilty or convicted of murder arson burglary or felony within our knowledge or belief in said County of Nash or any other County. /s/ Jesse Simpson, Isaac Williamson
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- Abram and Aberdeen — Abram (or Abraham) and Aberdeen appear in the 1835 will of Elisha Applewhite, who devised them to his daughter Smithey D. Applewhite. Eventually, they came into the hands of Bartley Deans, whose daughter Elizabeth had married Smithey’s brother Robert Applewhite. In 1848, Deans placed both Abram and Aberdeen with the slavetradiing firm Moye & Adams to sell or hire out in Monroe County, Mississippi, a transaction that ended in litigation.
- Jesse Simpson — Simpson is listed in the 1850 slave schedule of Nash County, N.C., with three enslaved people — two men, aged 55 and 33, and a young woman aged 16.
- Isaac Williamson — Williamson is listed in the 1850 slave schedule of Nash County, N.C., with two enslaved people — two women, aged 40 and 24.
Documents reproduced at www.familysearch.org.