slaveowner

Founding fathers.

North Carolina Standard (Raleigh, N.C.), 2 May 1855.

Wilson County’s earliest appointed officials included some of the largest slaveholders in the county:

Elias Barnes’ 1856 estate included 55 enslaved people.

  • Washington Barnes

In the 1860 slave schedule of Saratoga township, Wilson County, Washington Barnes claimed five enslaved people.

  • Macon Moye

In the 1850 slave schedule of North Side of the Neuse, Wayne County, Macon Moye is listed with eight enslaved people. Though he does not appear in the 1860 slave schedule, in the 1860 population schedule of Saratoga township, Wilson County, Moye claimed personal property valued at $95,000. This estate would have been comprised overwhelmingly of enslaved people — and many dozens of them. Moye was a younger brother of county founder, sheriff, and slave trader Wyatt Moye.

In his father Etheldred Sauls’ 1859, Lawrence J. Sauls was bequeathed two enslaved people, Patrick and Jane, as well as control of four other enslaved people on behalf his sister Elizabeth E. Sauls Becton. Lawrence Sauls is listed in the 1860 slave schedule of Davis district, Wayne County, with two enslaved teenagers.

In the 1860 slave schedule of Wilson township, Wilson County, Joshua Barnes (brother of Elias Barnes above) claimed 66 enslaved people.

  • Dr. Alexander G. Brooks

In the 1860 slave schedule of Black Creek township, Wilson County, Dr. A.G. Brooks reported 29 enslaved people.

  • Robert Bynum

The 1850 federal slave schedule of Edgecombe County lists Robert Bynum with 19 enslaved people. In 1858, Robert Bynum inherited three enslaved people from his father Turner Bynum. By 1860, as reported in the Wilson County slave schedule, he claimed 46 enslaved people.

  • J.D. Rountree

In the 1860 slave schedule of Town of Wilson, Wilson County, J.D. Rountree is listed with 12 enslaved people.

  • George Howard Jr.

In the 1850 slave schedule of Edgecombe County, George Howard is listed with 11 enslaved people. In the 1860 slave schedule of Town of Wilson, Wilson County, Howard claimed eight enslaved people.

George W. Stanton house.

George W. Stanton house, near Stantonsburg, built circa 1873 and demolished circa 2000.

George W. Stanton’s house was built during Reconstruction, and no enslaved people labored there. I am certain, however, that it was staffed with formerly enslaved people and their descendants.

Stanton, though a committed slaveholder, was one of a handful of Union loyalists in Wilson County during the Civil War. We have met him here and here, and we know that he enslaved Larry and (very briefly, before transferring them to his mother Gatsey Truitt Stanton) Harry, Violet, Eliza and her child, Ben, Dan, and Edy. I have not been able to identify the names of any others he held.

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In the 1860 census of Saratoga district, Wilson County: G.T. Stanton, 46, farmer, and children G.W. Stanton, 25, farmer, who claimed $3400 in real property and $4538 in personal property [which would have been mostly enslaved people], D.M., 12, and Celestia N., 10.

In the 1860 slave schedule of Saratoga district, Wilson County: G.W. Stanton claimed seven enslaved people, who lived in one house — men aged 72 and 36; a boy aged 8; a woman aged 38; and girls aged 14, 10, and 3. (These ages suggest a single, multigenerational family, but we cannot determine this definitively.)

Per the 1870 federal mortality schedule, Violet Stanton died in September 1869 of scrofula. She was 59 years old and a widow.

Perhaps, in the 1880 census of Sparta township, Edgecombe County: farmer Ben Stanton, 32; wife Leer, 25; and sons Gray, 9, and William, 5.

Luvennia Artis died 11 May 1924 in Wilson. Per her death certificate, she was 70 years old; was a widow; lived at 177 Narroway; was born in Wilson County to Haywood Moye and Eliza Stanton; and worked as a laundress. She was buried in Wilson [probably, Vick Cemetery.] Luvennia Artis perhaps was the child of Eliza noted above.

Photo courtesy of Wilson County Genealogical Society 2004 Calendar: The Families of the Stantonsburg & Saratoga Area.

Slave schedule.

1860.PNG

Prior to 1850, enslaved people were enumerated only as numbers in columns designated for sex and age. In 1850 and 1860, the federal government expanded the census to include “slave schedules.” Though enslaved people still were not recorded by name, they were enumerated individually by age, sex and color and grouped by slaveowner (or representative). Additional columns tallied “fugitives from the state,” “number manumitted,” “deaf, dumb, blind, insane, or idiotic,” and “no. of slave houses.”

These pages are the first and second in the 1860 slave schedule of Black Creek township, Wilson County. In them,

  • Sallie Simms reported that she owned ten slaves aged 7 months to 72 and sheltered them in two houses.
  • William Thompson reported that he owned 22 slaves aged 7 months to 44 and sheltered them in five houses.
  • Dr. A.G. Brooks reported that he owned 29 slaves aged 1 to 55 and sheltered them in four houses.
  • Enos Barnes reported that he owned two teenaged boys and sheltered them in one house.
  • Celia Barnes reported that she owned 28 year-old and 53 year-old men.
  • James Barnes reported that he owned nine slaves aged 3 to 50 and sheltered them in four houses.
  • Jesse Watson reported that he owned one ten year-old boy.
  • James Daniel reported that he owned four male slaves aged 9 to 60 and sheltered them in two houses.
  • Joseph Farrell reported that he owned nine slaves aged 5 months to 38 and sheltered them in one house.
  • James Nusom reported that he owned 22 slaves aged 1 to 28 and sheltered them in four houses.
  • Jesse Sauls reported that he owned seven slaves aged 3 to 26 and sheltered them in two houses.
  • Nancy Bass reported that she owned eight slaves aged 5 months to 36 and sheltered them in two houses.
  • Belinda Aycock reported that she owned six slaves aged 3 to 38 and sheltered them in two houses.
  • Sallie Daniel reported that she owned 14 slaves aged 11 months to 53 and sheltered them in four houses.
  • Elisha Bass reported reported that he owned six slaves aged 3 months to 30 and sheltered them in one house.
  • Jeremiah Bass reported that he owned a 17 year-old girl and two babies, aged 2 years and 4 months, who were probably her children.
  • Ephraim Bass reported that he owned a 36 year-old man.

Jacob and Sarah Barnes Daniel house.

Per Kate Ohno, Wilson County’s Architectural Heritage (1981):

“The Jacob Daniel House is similar in construction to the Dr. Robert Cox House (also in Black Creek Township). The house was built for Jacob Daniel before 1850. Daniel was born in 1805 and died in 1880. He married Sarah Barnes, and according to the 1860 census he was a farmer of some substance, owning $6,000 worth of real property. Like the Cox House, the Daniel House has an engaged porch and rear shed. In the early twentieth century a kitchen wing was added to the rear. On the interior the house is divided into two rooms at the front with another room in the rear shed.”

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In the 1850 census of the North Side of the Neuse River, Wayne County: farmer Jacob Daniel, 45; wife Sarah, 50; and children Elizabeth, 21, Josiah, 20, Mary, 18, Zilpha, 15, Lucindia, 12, Sarah, 10, and Laney, 8. [Black Creek was in northern Wayne County prior to the establishment of Wilson County.]

In the 1850 slave schedule of the North Side of the Neuse, Wayne County, Jacob Daniel is reported with eight slaves, four girls and women aged 4 to 35, and four boys and men, aged 1 to 50.

In the 1860 census of Black Creek township, Wilson County: farmer Jacob Daniel, 55; wife Sallie, 60; Willie Batts, 20; Teresa Batts, 21; and James Flora, 16. reported $6000 in real estate and $600 in personal property, including enslaved people.

In the 1860 slave schedule of Black Creek township, Wilson County, Jacob Daniel is reported with four enslaved men and boys, aged 9 to 60.

The 1870 census of Wilson County lists many dozens of African-Americans with the surname Daniel living throughout the eastern half of Wilson County.

“Standing by your old ni**er, are you?”

b Woodard 1 31 1908

News & Observer (Raleigh), 31 January 1908.

This nasty bit of “news” is a sample of the gratuitous racism that permeated Josephus Daniels‘ News & Observer in the Jim Crow era. Daniels had grown up in and gotten his journalistic start in Wilson and undoubtedly knew all the involved parties well.

Benjamin Woodard, a notorious folk doctor in Wilson County, had been arrested on unclear charges (probably involving bootlegging liquor) and hauled into federal court in Raleigh. Several notable white Wilsonians showed up to serve as counsel and character witnesses, including brothers and law partners Frederick A. Woodard (a former United States Congressman) and Sidney A. Woodard (a state congressman). The Woodards were described as Ben Woodard’s former owners, though F.A. had been a child and S.A. an infant at war’s end. Ben’s owner, then, had been their father, Dr. Stephen Woodard of Black Creek, Wilson County. F.A. requested a nolle prosequi (“nol. pros.”), which is odd, as this is generally a motion made by a prosecutor who wishes to drop charges. The District Attorney here politely indicated his unwillingness to make such a request, but the judge cheerfully entered it anyway. Thus Dr. Ben benefitted from ties forged in slavery and earned an insulting article in the state’s newspaper of record.