The cold calculus employed in the management of enslaved property is on full display in the estate of Dempsey Harrison Jr. Harrison, who lived in what is now western Wilson County, died in 1854. He was in his mid-20s at his death and left two very young children and a wife, who soon remarried. Alfred Thompson was named the children’s guardian.

In about 1859, Thompson engaged a lawyer, William T. Dortch, to petition the court to authorize certain steps to maximize the Harrison children’s assets. Harrison’s estate was relatively lean — 90 acres of unproductive land, an enslaved woman, and that woman’s children. The woman and children “do not hire for any thing,” Thompson had to “set them up to the lowest bidder to keep,” and a forty-dollar bill for their care had come due. However, because the “negroes will soon hire out for something[,]” Dortch proposed “they sh0uld not be sold, as they are increasing rapidly in value[,]” while Harrison’s land was depreciating. Instead, the land should be sold and the proceeds invested in “one or more” of the slaves.

A judge granted the petition and later received this update about the estate:

“The master reports that the negroes mentioned in the petition are a negro woman & four [children], are very valuable but that they on account of the ages of the children, and the frequency of confinements of the woman in giving birth they are expensive. That there is no other property belonging to [Harrison’s] Children beside the land mentioned in the petition, which has been sold, according to the decree of the Court. He therefore reports that it will be to the interest of the wards that the proceeds of the land sale be paid to the Guardian Alfred Thompson for the purpose of maintaining the negroes & paying expenses of the wards.”

A single reference in the estate file identified the woman as Waita. I have not found her or her children in freedom.

Estate File of Dempsey Harrison (1860), Wilson County, North Carolina Estate Files 1663-1979, http://www.familysearch.org.