Part 4, Note 41
Click Here to See All Notes to Part 4
Bill Stein, ed., "The Slave Narratives of Colorado County," Nesbitt
Memorial Library Journal, vol. 3, no. 1, January 1993, pp. 11-12 (or in
George P. Rawick, ed., The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography
(Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1977), vol. 5, part 4, pp. 1577-1583);
Plantation Rules; Charles William Tait to James Asbury Tait, August 12, 1850;
Charles William Tait to James Asbury Tait, October 2, 1850, all three in Tait
Family Papers (Ms. 32), Archives of the Nesbitt Memorial Library, Columbus. Two
sets of Tait's plantation rules have been located. Each begins with ten general
rules. One copy follows with sixteen particular rules; the other with nineteen.
The general rules are substantially the same in both copies; the particular
rules substantially different. The sixteen-rule version uses the names of
particular slaves, and assigns them particular tasks. The nineteen-rule version
does not (see Plantation Rules, Tait Family Papers (Ms. 32), Archives of the
Nesbitt Memorial Library, Columbus; Plantation Rules, Charles William Tait
Papers, The Center for American History, University of Texas, Austin).
One must suppose that miscegenation had been fairly common in
the county for years. The first known report of it occurs on August 7, 1833,
when Benjamin Lundy visited the home of the two Alley brothers (meaning
apparently Abraham and William Alley, since John, Thomas, and Rawson had by then
died). He found them living with "a handsome black girl, who has several
fine-looking party colored children---specimens of the custom of some countries"
(see Benjamin Lundy, The Life, Travels and Opinions of Benjamin Lundy
(1847. Reprint. New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969. Reprint. New York:
Augustus M. Kelley Publishers, 1971), p. 41).