by Tiya Miles
12. MES and KS, “Ashley’s Sack” label and catalog, Grandeur Preserved: Masterworks Presented by Historic Charleston Foundation, loan exhibition for the 57th Annual Winter Antiques Show, January 21–30, 2011. MES and KS, “Ashley’s Sack” label and catalog, hard copy text used for Grandeur Preserved altered with deletion note, Middleton Place archives, no date.
13. It is difficult to say why the person named Ashley would vanish from the Bonneaus’ estate records while a person named Rose appears in a related set of estate records years later. Because the second set of records detailed the holdings of children who had inherited slave property from Bonneau, there certainly could have been the mistaken inclusion of a woman who entered the children’s property holdings at some point over the intervening years but had actually not been owned by their father. In addition, plantation records were not necessarily comprehensive. People could be present and not be recorded in every accounting, as in the informal freeing of slaves that sometimes took place in instances of sexual indiscretion. Thomas Jefferson, for example, left his enslaved partner, Sally Hemings, and children he had conceived with her out of his will in order to avoid further public exposure of the rumored relationship. Annette Gordon Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (New York: W. W. Norton, 2008), 657–58. Finally, in the case of the Bonneau family, only probate and sales records are filed in the South Carolina state archives, which means that the more detailed and regularly occurring lists of slave distribution are not available in this case.
14. Wilson, Samuel, as Atty. for Judith H. Wilson of Bordeaux, France, to John E. Bonneau, Bill of Sale for 3 Mullatto [sic] Slaves, Miscellaneous Records, S213003, V. 50, p. 920, SCDAH. John E. Bonneau, Inventory and Appraisement of Goods, Chattel, and Personal Estate, Dec. 1849, Inventories, Appraisements, & Sales, 1850–1853, vol. C, pp. 15–18, SCDAH. Eliza E. Bonneau, Sale of John Bonneau Villa, Feb. 18, 1850, SCDAH. Sales of Negroes of the Estate of John Bonneau, Feb. 20, 1850, Inventories, Appraisements, & Sales, 1850–1853, vol. C, SCDAH. Martha Bonneau, Bond, Jan. 25, 1841, BK 5S, p. 105, SCDAH. John E. Bonneau, Bills of Sale, 5G pp. 212, 246, 318, SCDAH. Peter and Martha Bonneau to William Bonneau, S213050, Charleston District, vol. 60, p. 403, November 9, 1855, SCDAH.
15. Inventory of All Goods and Chattels and Personal Estate in the District of Barnwell of Robert Martin, Inventories, Appraisements, & Sales, 1850–1853, vol. C, pp. 366–67. Appraisement of the Personal Property in the City of Charleston of the Late Robert Martin, Inventories, Appraisements, & Sales, 1850–1853, vol. C, pp. 358–59.
16. This statement refers to the records I could access—those that still exist and are in public collections or private collections made accessible to researchers. It is important to note again here that numerous records from the state were destroyed by incidental fire and also by the destruction of Sherman’s March during the Civil War. There is always the possibility, as well, that sources now held by a private family or collector or buried in an as yet unidentified cache will come to light in the future. There is agreement, though, on my reading of the extant sources in the findings of a scholar who traced the sack before me. In his published research on Ashley’s sack, Mark Auslander writes: “Rose and Ashley almost certainly were owned by the wealthy Charleston merchant and planter Robert Martin.” Auslander, “Rose’s Gift,” 2.
17. Milberry S. Martin v. James B. Campbell, Charleston District Court of Equity, Decree Books L 10092, 1858–1861, pp. 64–76.
18. Henry J. Martin, Notices: Genealogical and Historical, of the Martin Family of New England (Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1880), No. 34. David Martin, of Fairfield District, S.C., 236. Robert Martin, American Genealogical-Biographical Index, vol. 111, p. 158, Ancestry.com. Charleston City Directory, 1816, 1829, 1830, 1837, Addlestone Library. Note: the bound copy of the 1830 city directory differs from the digital copy posted at Ancestry.com; the records list Martin at two different locations: Kiddell’s Wharf (bound) and Boyce’s Wharf (digital). I expect that he operated out of both locations in this time period and may have reported differently from year to year. Maurie D. McInnis, The Politics of Taste in Antebellum Charleston (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 49n23, 57.
19. An Inventory and Appraisement of the Goods and Chattels of William Daniel, March 1829, Kershaw County Probate Court Estate Papers Apartment 19, Package 625, William Daniel C9239, Charleston County Register of Deeds Office, Reproduced from Microfilm in South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Columbia, S.C. Will of William Daniel, August 25, 1828, Kershaw County Probate Court Estate Papers, William Daniel. For genealogical sources on Serena Daniel’s family, see word document derived from the Martin Family Bible, taken from a narrative by Annie Elizabeth Miller dated 1934, posted by Lucy Gray, [email protected], at rootsweb.com, January 22, 2003, rolodafile.com/williamodaniel/d3.htm#c905.
20. Martin R., Deed of Gift to Elizabeth Martin, Nov. 19, 1838, Bill of Sale Indexes, Book L, pp. 187–88, SCDAH. Martin, Robert, Miscellaneous Records, Bills of Sale, BS, 5A, pp. 280, 452; BS 5K, p. 455, SCDAH. Aiken: Martin, Robert, Miscellaneous Records, S213003, Book 5M, pp. 165, 194, SCDAH; Chalmers Gaston Davidson, The Last Foray: The South Carolina Planters of 1860: A Sociological Study (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1971), 8, 171. Martin, Robert, Miscellaneous Records, S213003, Book 5I, p. 39; Book 5N, p. 270.
21. Robert Martin Will, Pinckney-Means Family Papers, 208.03, Folder E, Estate Records, 1795–1971, Will Book No. L 1851–1856, p. 126, Addlestone Library. McInnis, Politics of Taste, 338n18. Inflation rates for “today” in the text are calculated to 2019, using the Inflation Calculator (also linked through the Library of Congress website), westegg.com/inflation/infl.cgi. The exact figure for the $20,000 distribution calculation was $486,244.51. The detailed provision for daughters in the Robert Martin will is an example of what Stephanie Jones-Rogers has highlighted as slaveholding relatives’ attempts to protect the property of white women even after marriage. Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers, They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019), Kindle loc. 885, 916. When Robert Martin named Milberry Martin as executor, the practice of propertied husbands assigning this managerial role to widows had been declining across the country. Married white women were increasingly defined as dependents (rather than as productive members of households) and saw their influence curtailed to the domestic sphere. Joan R. Gunderson, “Women and Inheritance in America: Virginia and New York City as a Case Study, 1700–1860,” in Inheritance and Wealth in America, ed. Robert K. Miller, Jr. and Stephen J. McNamee (New York: Plenum, 1998), 103, 108.
22. Martin named his rural estate Milberry Place Plantation after his wife. J.L.P. Powell to Robert Martin, Bill of Sale, Barnwell County Deeds, Deed Book BB, p. 136, SCDAH. U. M. Robert to Robert Martin, 2,400 A. Savannah River, Deed Book BB, p. 400. See various Robert Martin land purchases between 1843 and 1849, Barnwell County Deeds, Books BB, DD, SCDAH. According to Joseph P. Madden, Erwinton was a distinctive, well-off community that used to have its own post office. The figures Madden names as prominent in the community were listed in the deed books as having sold land tracts and/or enslaved people to Robert Martin, including General Erwin, Captain Robert, and Mr. Powell. Joseph P. Madden, A History of Old Barnwell District, SC to 1860 (Blackville, S.C.: Historical Business Ventures, 2001), 75–77, South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia. Milberry S. Martin v. James B. Campbell, Charleston District Court of Equity, Decree Books L 10092, 1858–1861, pp. 64–76. In further evidence of the couple’s rising status, Milberry Martin became a lifetime member of the City Mission Society of the prestigious St. Philip’s Church in 1849. St. Philip’s City Mission, St. Philip’s Church Records, South Carolina Room, Charleston Public Library.
23. James Oakes, The Ruling Race: A History of American Slaveholders (New York: Vintage, 1982), 57. I extend my thanks to the genealogist
Jesse Bustos-Nelson for tracking these church records down, and to Patricia Smith Moore, St. Philip’s Archivist, for assisting him.
24. James Oakes discusses the disproportionate number and nature of planter records, often preserved as the papers of prominent families, noting that scholars have tended to rely on these narrowly prescribed sources to the detriment of understanding the diversity of slaveholders. Oakes, Ruling Race, xvi.
25. Robert Martin was already related to some branch of the Aikens through his mother, Mary Aiken; Martin, Notices: Genealogical and Historical, 236. U.S. Federal Census, 1840, Ancestry.com. Charleston City Directory, 1852. Ellen Martin married Joseph D. Aiken; Henrietta Martin married Edward B. Means; Barbara R. Langdon, Barnwell County Marriages 1764–1859 Implied in Barnwell County South Carolina Deeds, 12058, Reference Library, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Henrietta Martin: Pinckney-Means Family Papers, Box 4, Correspondence, 1840s–1860s, Special Collections and South Carolina Historical Society, Addlestone Library.
26. Erskine Clarke, Wrestlin’ Jacob: A Portrait of Religion in Antebellum Georgia and the Carolina Low Country (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2000), 90, 98.
27. McInnis, Politics of Style, 46, 49, 45. For a further description of Charleston’s urban architectural styles, see Bernard L. Herman, Town House: Architectural and Material Life in the Early American City (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 2005), 65–70.
28. Martin, Robert House (SC-150), Historic American Building Survey South Carolina 10, Char, 141, Washington, D.C. McInnis, Politics of Style, 47. While the HABS describes the home as “Greek Revival,” Maurie McInnis calls it a “suburban villa,” referring to a rural-inflected twist on a traditional Charleston elite style that was often classical and Georgian. McInnis, Politics of Taste, 37, 46, 57–58.
29. Appraisement of the Personal Property in the City of Charleston of the Late Robert Martin, Inventories, Appraisements, & Sales, 1850–1853, vol. C, pp. 358–59, SCDAH. 1840 U.S. Federal Census, 1840.
30. Harriet Ann Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself (1861; repr., Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987), 55.
31. Izard quoted in Maurie D. McInnis, Politics of Taste, 178. Glass shards, sounds of violence, and walls as control mechanisms: McInnis, Politics of Taste, 180, 181. The opening mood and language of this chapter was inspired by an enslaved woman’s folk song that refers to Charleston’s enclosed gardens and imposed curfew for enslaved people, which was signaled each night by a drum beat: “Oh! Dear! I can’t get out, / For I’m in dis lady’s garden. / Bell done ring and drum done beat, / And I’m in dis lady’s garden”; quoted in McInnis, Politics of Taste, 264.
32. HABS, Robert Martin House.
33. Emily Burke, Pleasure and Pain: Reminiscences of Georgia in the 1840s (1850; repr., Savannah: Beehive Press, Library of Georgia, 1991), 9.
34. Jacobs, Incidents, 27.
35. Herman notes the placement of slaves in white-owned urban townhouses as “props,” “fixtures,” and “animated furnishings”; Herman, Town House, 148–49. McInnis notes the social significance of the Martin double parlors; McInnis, Politics of Taste, 47.
36. Robert Martin, Property Appraisement, Charleston, SCDAH. Karen Hampton, “African American Women: Plantation Textile Production from 1750 to 1830,” Approaching Textiles, Varying Viewpoints: Proceedings of the Seventh Biennial Symposium of the Textile Society of America, Santa Fe, N.M., 2000, Digital Commons, University of Nebraska–Lincoln, digitalcommons.unl.edu/tsaconf/770, 266. Madelyn Shaw, “Slave Cloth and Clothing Slaves: Craftsmanship, Commerce, and Industry,” Journal of Early Southern Decorative Arts 41 (2012), mesdajournal.org/2012/slave-cloth-clothing-slaves-craftsmanship-commerce-industry. Enslaved women were rarely afforded the opportunity to learn specialized skills beyond sewing; see Jacqueline Jones, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family, From Slavery to the Present (New York: Vintage, 1985), 18.
37. Gladys-Marie Fry, Stitched from the Soul: Slave Quilts from the Antebellum South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990), 14–15. Fry points out that while cloth-making was mainly the provenance of men in West and central African societies, the skilled work of spinning and weaving became the specialty of Black women enslaved in the United States. Enslaved Black women were, however, rare in the high-skilled artisanal category of dressmaker. An 1848 Charleston census of mantua-makers counted 38 white, 128 free Black, 4 enslaved; McInnis, Politics of Style, 362n8.
38. Quoted in McInnis, Politics of Taste, 28; Journal of G. F. Fox, Jr., November 5, 1834, Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University, Durham, N.C.
39. Harlan Greene, Harry S. Hutchins, Jr., and Brian E. Hutchins, Slave Badges and the Slave-Hire System in Charleston, South Carolina, 1783–1865 (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2004), 3, 4, 5, 6, 127, 128, 120–34; 1840–50 sales chart: 133–34, images A–H. Free people of color were required to pay for and wear badges in the 1780s, before the law pertaining to them was repealed; they later had to pay special taxes to the city as a class (23–24, 28). Greene, Hutchins, and Hutchins also note that only dogs were also required to wear badges regularly in this period (64). Charleston’s curfew for the enslaved was nine p.m. in winter and ten p.m. in summer. Frances Anne Kemble, Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838–1839 (1961; repr., Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1984), 38; McInnis, Politics of Taste, 84–85.
40. Robert Martin and Serena Milberry Daniel were married by an Episcopal priest, the Reverend Mr. Davis. Camden Journal, September 27, 1828. Milberry Martin belonged to an Episcopalian charity society. St. Philip’s City Mission, St. Philip’s Church Records, South Carolina Room, Charleston Public Library.
41. Clarke, Wrestlin’ Jacob, 104–6, 145. Ethan J. Kytle and Blain Roberts, Denmark Vesey’s Garden: Slavery and Memory in the Cradle of the Confederacy (New York: New Press, 2017), 26. Philip D. Morgan, Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and Lowcountry (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 284. Cynthia M. Kennedy, Braided Relations, Entwined Lives: The Women of Charleston’s Urban Slave Society (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005), 79. Tristan Stubbs, Masters of Violence: The Plantation Overseers of Eighteenth-Century Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2018), 4, 6, 8. In a polite revision of the work of Eugene Genovese, James Oakes argues that the paternalist ethos recedes among southern slaveholders, replaced by a racial argument for Black subjugation, as the market economy and profit motive expand in the nineteenth century; Oakes, The Ruling Race, xii–xiii, 34. Also see Eugene D. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York: Vintage, 1972), 3–7.
42. Burke, Pleasure and Pain, 13. Emily Burke, a teacher from New Hampshire, was not a professed abolitionist. She enjoyed her decade-long sojourn in coastal Georgia even as she noted with alarm the cruel and violent treatment of enslaved people in a series of letters. Library of Georgia, Introduction, Pleasure and Pain, xi.
43. Drew Gilpin Faust, Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 6, 32, 59.
44. Burke, Pleasure and Pain, 14.
45. Jacobs, Incidents, 52.
46. U.S. Federal Census, 1840, Robert Martin, Charleston Neck, Charleston, S.C. These children in 1840 would have been Henrietta Aiken Martin, Ellen Daniel Martin, William Aiken Martin, and Robert Martin, Jr. All of these children, plus Serena Milbury Martin, born after this census was taken, were listed as recipients of the sale and partition of Robert Martin’s property in 1853. James W. Gray to Mrs. M. S. Martin, Deeds Barnwell County Book HH, 1854, pp. 183–84. A sixth child, Charles Wentworth Martin, is listed in public genealogy sources: Robert M
artin, www.findagrave.com/memorial/69820867/robert-martin.
47. The 1840 census lists two enslaved women in Martin’s Charleston household between the ages of twenty-four and thirty-five, matching up with this age and date conclusion for Rose. Rose was probably born around 1818.
48. Deborah Gray White, Ar’n’t I a Woman? Female Slaves in the Plantation South (New York: W. W. Norton, 1985), 97.
49. Slave marriage: Kennedy, Braided Relations, 95–97. Mark Auslander was the first to suggest that Robert Martin may have fathered Rose’s child; Auslander, “Slavery’s Traces,” 2016. Over a decade ago an individual on Ancestry.com asserted the belief that an enslaved ancestor, a woman named Katie, had children fathered by Robert Martin. The creator of that post to a public Martin family tree seems to have been referring to a different Robert Martin from the man we are following, as more than one slaveholder with that name lived in South Carolina at the time. The post reads: “Katie was a slave owned by John Martin. She would have been born between 1803 and 1810. Her name could have possibly been spelled Catey. She gave birth to six (6) children (father was Robert Martin/slave owner and grandson of John Martin). She may have been married at least three (3) times, and gave birth to one (1) additional child. Husband—Morgan Latta?” This described sexual relationship between a white Martin man and an enslaved woman may, however, have taken place within an extended Martin slaveholding family, of which the Robert Martin we are tracing was a part. A recent newspaper article profiles the African American Martin family descended from this relationship. These family members trace their ancestry to Katie (daughter of an enslaved woman named Trasie) and John Martin, and to their descendants, Black community leaders in Fairfield County. The Robert Martin connected to Rose in our study was born in Fairfield District and was likely related to the John Martin noted above. While a family tree posted to Ancestry.com states that Robert Martin of Charlotte Street was the grandson of said John Martin and the son of a John Martin and Margaret Elizabeth Aiken, a published genealogy of the Martin family gives Robert Martin of Charlotte Street’s parents as David Martin and Margaret Aiken. Despite possible discrepancies about genealogical details, the case of Katie Martin indicates that there is at least one documented example of interracial sexual relations between an owner and owned person in the extended South Carolina Martin family. Ava Pearson, Martin Family Tree Post, 9 May 2008, ancestry.com/family-tree/tree/116756017/story/20?pgn=32912&usePUBJs=true&_phsrc=aPm3. Caitlin Byrd, “Slave’s Legacy an Influential Family,” Post and Courier, May 10, 2020. I am grateful to genealogist Jesse Bustos-Nelson, who found this Ancestry.com post and made the connection, as well as to Victoria Carey, who shared the recent news article on the Black Martin family with Mr. Bustos-Nelson. Martin, Martin Family, 1880. Jacobs, Incidents, 28.