Dwelling Place

by Erskine Clarke

  A Mrs. Dunham, an older woman with connections to Liberty County, was in need of a house servant and chambermaid. Nelson, a house servant of a neighbor’s, was asked to help find someone. He made inquiries for several days before Jane met him and told him the story she had fashioned for “Sarah.” Nelson took her to Mrs. Dunham. Jane presented herself to her, said she was able to do housework, and agreed to work for $6.50 a month. Jane “behaved herself very well, attending ordinarily well to her duties,” but Mrs. Durham found that she was “greatly inclined to be lazy, and at times somewhat impudent in answering back when spoken to with reference to her work.” Jane apparently had a place to live in the yard behind the house. After she had been there a few weeks, Jane reported that “her master was in the city and had told her that she must go back with him up the country.” She asked for her month’s wages, saying she must leave. She was told, “Go to your master and get from him a receipt for your month’s wages, and I will pay you.” She was also told to ask her master to let her stay a day or two longer in order that another house servant could be secured. “After this she said nothing further about wages or about leaving.”9

  In the meantime, of course, Jane’s absence from Carlawter had been discovered. When a search for her was unsuccessful, Charles and Mary faced a new dilemma. They needed to recover their runaway slave, but they could not bring themselves to follow the usual custom of putting an advertisement in the paper. An advertisement—“Runaway slave of the Rev. Charles C. Jones”—would seriously damage Charles’s reputation as a successful and benevolent planter. Why would a slave of one known far and wide for his benevolence and for his advocacy of reform run away? In spite of such concerns, a reward of $25 was offered through Charlie, who was by then practicing law and living in Savannah with Joe.

  As the search began for Jane, Phoebe and Cassius showed no interest in helping to find out where she had fled. Their apparent indifference infuriated Charles, and their lack of cooperation seemed to him a deliberate challenge to his authority and to his paternalistic assumptions. He believed that they could “have brought her back” if they wished. Moreover, adding fuel to the fire of his anger, they “sold all her clothing, plainly intimating that she is no more expected or desired back.”10

  Slave hunters in Savannah tracked down runaways who were hiding out in the city’s black shanties by the river or who were, like Jane, disguising themselves as workers being hired out by their owners. Among the slave hunters in 1856 was a city constable by the name of Jones. He hired spies to be on the lookout for Jane, and in late September she was discovered. About six in the evening on 30 September, Jones went to Mrs. Dunham’s house, arrested Jane, and took her—most likely at Charlie’s instructions—to the slave jail of William Wright, one of Savannah’s most prominent slave traders. Charlie wrote his father the next day and provided the details he had learned about Jane, her employment by Mrs. Dunham, and her arrest. He recommended that no legal action be taken against Mrs. Dunham. “I am persuaded,” he wrote, “that there was no intention in the case to harbor the Negro in any manner, shape, or form. A prosecution would be unpleasant, tending to make the matter notorious, and would in every probability be unaccompanied by conviction.”11

  Jane was “just as fat as she can be, with fine ear-and finger-rings, etc.” Charlie believed Wright’s jail as “safe and comfortable as any in which she can be placed” and calculated, “She would be worth in this market eight or nine hundred dollars.” He wondered “whether she should be allowed to come on the plantation again. Her tales of Savannah and of high life in the city would probably not have the most beneficial effect upon her compeers.”12

  Charles was obviously relieved to receive his son’s letter. He wrote back immediately. While he agreed that no legal steps should be taken—he certainly did not want to “make the matter notorious”—he did hope “we may yet discover in what conveyance and by whom she was taken to Savannah,” and he speculated that one of the river schooners had been the means of her escape. One thing was for sure: “We have had trouble enough, and I wish to have no more. She is no more to return to the plantation nor to the county.” Charles believed that Phoebe and Cassius were “privy to her movements, and are in good spirits and consider her gone for good.” He had decided that neither Phoebe nor Cassius nor anyone else on the plantations was to be informed of Jane’s arrest and for good reason:

  We have concluded to dispose of the whole family, but not in Savannah nor in the low country. They must be sold up the country, where they will not come back. It is very painful, but we have no comfort or confidence in them, and they appear unhappy themselves—no doubt from the trouble they have from time to time occasioned. Enclosed is a list of them—to which Titus is added—with your mother’s estimate, which cannot be far from a correct one. You can copy the list without the sums annexed and show it to Wright, and if you think best to Montmollin also, and learn what their estimate would be, and if they have orders from the up country, and could dispose of the whole family to one owner; for we cannot consent to separate them. If the thing can be done, we will close the matter at once. Should you hear of anyone willing to purchase, you might come to some understanding about it. Make no final contract without consulting us.

  The list that Charles sent read as follows:

  The decision was thus made to sell the whole family, and Big Titus, the son of Prime and Fanny, who lived at Arcadia, was also “thrown in” the lot.14 Why they decided to include Big Titus is not clear—perhaps he was regarded as Jane’s husband, or perhaps Charles and Mary wanted to increase the number and value of those being sold. What is clear is that the sale of the family would serve several purposes—it would remove Jane, “the troublemaker;” it would remove a family which had “always been unprincipled;” and it would attempt to keep the family together and thus reinforce the image that Charles and Mary had of themselves as kind and benevolent owners. It is also clear that Charles did not want the family anywhere in the low country, where they might make contact once again with their friends and relatives who lived at Carlawter, Maybank, Arcadia, the Retreat, and other surrounding plantations.

  Charlie immediately began the negotiations for the sale. He talked with John S. Montmollin, a prominent slave trader, who told him that the slaves could be sold quickly in southwest Georgia. Charlie talked with Wright, who thought that the market would improve and prices would be better in a month. The estimates given by Mary and sent by Charles must be, Charlie wrote, “subject to greater or less modification. The size, soundness of teeth, etc., are all to he considered.”15 Days and weeks passed, however, and no buyers appeared. Mary began to have second thoughts. She was apparently hesitant to sell Phoebe, who was such a superior seamstress and around whom so many emotions swirled. Charles wrote Mary, who was visiting in Savannah:

  I thought we had determined to part with the whole family, and were only waiting, upon recommendation, a month later for a better sale, until within a few days of your leaving for Savannah, when you appeared to hesitate on account of the inconvenience and trouble that would ensue upon the loss of an efficient house servant and seamstress. Our determination to sell the whole family was based, I believe, on these considerations: (1) An indisposition to separate parents and child, no matter how evil their conduct had been in the premises. (2) The unreliable character of the family, the trouble the mother has always given, and the moral certainty that whenever occasions offer, the same rebellious conduct will appear again. (3) And in case of the sale of the present incorrigible runaway apart from her family, although they have sent her away never to return, the effect upon them in all probability will not be for the better. (4) And lastly, a change of investment would be more desirable than otherwise.

  Because Phoebe and her children belonged to Mary, she needed to give her permission for them to be sold. Moreover, Charles did not want to act alone or in an arbitrary manner as the “head of the household.” He told Mary:

  I do not wish to influence you in
the least degree beyond your own convictions, nor to have you subjected to any inconveniences in your domestic arrangements whatever, and therefore cannot assume the sole responsibility of a decision. It is the second or third time we have had it in contemplation to sell this family. The sale of one may prove beneficial to the character and subordination of those that remain. Time only can show. If not, they may be sent after her.

  Charles did not believe the family had ever been treated badly by their owners. Had Jane or Phoebe or Cassius any cause for their behavior, Charles said he would feel differently. “But I think they have not. Jane has been treated as our other servants have been, and every effort has been used to reclaim her—and without effect.” And so, since the family had no reason for their behavior, he concluded:

  If, therefore, you wish the whole family sold, I have not the least objection. If not, then Jane may be sold and we may wait and see the effect. If for good, we shall be glad; if for evil, then we must meet the evil as best we may. But I have very little hope of any improvement. The main objection to the sale of the family, so far as I can see, is the loss of the services of a servant who has given us more trouble, and even now and always has required more watching, than all our servants twice put together. However, I am willing to keep her and do all I can to make her profitable to you—as much so as in times past. I have no objection.16

  Charles’s distrust of Phoebe—in spite of his not wanting to impose his will on Mary—finally had the possibility of leading to some action, and he clearly did not want to miss the opportunity of getting rid of one who had so frequently irritated him and disrupted the peace he sought at Maybank and Montevideo. But his fourth “consideration” about “a change of investment” was also revealing. Expenses had mounted and income had shrunk ever since the hurricane. The year before Jane ran away, Charles had for the first time in his life mortgaged some of his slaves: three of Old Lizzie and Robinson’s sons, Lymus, Daniel, and Little Adam; and Old Lizzie’s daughter Maria and her son Dick. So a “change of investment” would be more than “desirable”—it would also relieve significant financial pressure that had accrued with the renovation of the Montevideo house and the expenses associated with Charlie’s and Joe’s educations. Mary agreed with Charles’s careful and prudent reasoning, and the efforts to make a sale proceeded.17

  Within a week, Charles had made arrangements for Phoebe, Cassius, Cassius Jr., Prime, and Victoria to be taken to Wright’s jail, where prospective buyers could examine them and consider “the size, soundness of teeth, etc.” The twelve-year-old LaFayette had already been taken, with his sixteen-year-old cousin Little Titus, to Savannah to work as a house servant for Charlie and Joe. For some unknown reason, Big Titus had been removed from the lot of those to be sold.18

  Charles hired Joseph Jackson to be in charge of getting Phoebe and her family to Savannah. Jackson was a small farmer, a rough man, who owned a little place south of the Retreat near the Pleasant Grove church and who had served for a time as the overseer of John Jones’s Bonaventure plantation on the Medway. He could be called upon to hunt runaways in the swamp or to catch a slave slipping away at night to visit in another settlement—just the kind of white man needed for the dirty work of carrying slaves to market.19

  Charles also rode to Arcadia and called the driver Stepney aside. Stepney was a cousin of Phoebe’s—they had both been born at the Retreat and had grown up together—but it was better to send him than Cato with Jackson. Cato was, after all, Cassius’s older brother. They had explored the world of Carlawter together as boys, and if they had taken different roads in their response to the oppression of slavery, their roads had run side by side for many years. But now the road of Cassius—the handsome, restless one whose anger could flareso quickly—would be parting from the road of Cato, the prudent one who suppressed his anger and worked the system. So Charles followed his own prudent instincts when he sent Stepney and not Cato on this bitter mission.20

  No letters were written and no records were left to tell how Phoebe and Cassius were informed that they and their children would be sold. They were apparently told on Saturday, 1 November, that they would be taken early the next Monday morning. Nor was any letter written or record left that told how Cassius and Phoebe and their children responded to the news. It was probably with a combination of defiance and grief. Certainly there were no hints of Phoebe’s pleading to remain at Carlawter and no indications that Cassius promised to become a dutiful and submissive slave if he and his family were not sold away.21

  At any rate, there was little time for them to say their good-byes or to make arrangements for the disposal of their possessions. Cassius asked Cato and Porter to give his son James (the son of Peggy, who lived at White Oak and who had been a rival of Phoebe’s) and his daughter Nanny (the daughter of another woman on another plantation) “3 small hogs, 3 pots, 1 oven, 1 pail, 1 piggin, 3 plates, [and] 1 new bucket.” Cassius sold a colt to his brother Daniel for forty-five dollars and gave him a saddle and bridle. That left Cassius’s mare, valued by him at seventy-five dollars; his buggy that had recently been repaired by Prophet at South Hampton; a barrow and a sow; two bushels of rice; a dozen chickens; two hundredweight of fodder; ten bushels of corn; and nine stick baskets that Cassius had made. He asked Charles to sell all of these possessions, pay Cassius’s debts, and forward the proceeds to him once he and Phoebe and their children reached their new home.22

  At four o’clock on Monday morning, a little jersey and a wagon set out from Carlawter. Charles and Mary were up, as were Cato, Daniel, and their sister Sina, who was sick with a recurrent fever. And no doubt Porter and Patience were also up with their children to say their good-byes, together with old Rosetta and her children and all the others who lived in the cabins at Carlawter. Permission may have been given for Prince, the grandson of Old Jupiter and Blind Silvey, to bring the people from White Oak to bid farewell, or perhaps they had come on Sunday. But surely on that Monday morning there were tears that wet the sandy soil of Carlawter, for even Charles and Mary found it painful. “We have had a sad day of it,” wrote Charles later in the morning, “as you may suppose—the first of the kind in our lives.” But he also wrote that he and Mary “do not wish them sacrificed” with a quick sale that would bring only a low price.23

  The jersey and wagon went down the Montevideo avenue, turned right on the little road that led to Riceboro, went past the old courthouse where in former years so many had been bought and sold, and then turned north on the road to Savannah. They moved slowly in the morning darkness past Lambert, where Sharper, the black preacher, had lived and where the slaves of Laura Maxwell labored in rice and cotton fields. Just as the sun was coming up, they approached Midway Church. From a distance the sandy road to Savannah and its slave market appeared to run straight through the meetinghouse, with its tall steeple now illumined by the morning sun. Phoebe may have remembered the day she had made her confession of faith before the congregation and had become a member, or when she had been excommunicated for several years when she had had her affair with Cassius while still married to Sandy Jones. More likely, Phoebe’s eyes and her thoughts turned westward beyond the old Midway cemetery to Arcadia, where Clarissa, Phoebe’s firstborn, lived with Phoebe’s four grandchildren. Maybe Phoebe was thinking that in spite of all that Charles had said about keeping families together, a daughter and four grandchildren were not in the wagon on the road to Savannah. Or maybe she was thinking that even a slave so privileged as she had been—the daughter of Jack, the personal servant of Mary Jones, the skilled seamstress—even she could be stripped of her privileges and sold away. Or maybe she was thinking that she was but a chick left unguarded by her father’s death and now she was in the clutches of the hungry fowl-hawk. But who knows what Phoebe thought as she rode along that November morning?

  They reached Savannah before the evening and made their way to the house where Charlie and Joe lived. When they arrived, young LaFayette was confronted for the first time with the terrifying re
ality of his parents’ and brothers’ and sister’s being taken to the slave market. He was told that for the moment he would not go with them to the market but would remain with his cousin Little Titus to be a house servant for Charlie and Joe. He would not be allowed to return to Carlawter to say good-bye to his aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends, or to Arcadia to see his sister Clarissa. Rather, when the time came, he too would be taken to the jail for an inspection and sale. That evening Charlie went with Jackson and Stepney to Wright’s to see “the people located.” And so the journey from Carlawter to the slave jail was made in what Charles called the “least public” and “most speedy” way.24

  Weeks passed, however, and no purchaser was found. Buyers came and inspected Phoebe and Cassius and the children but did not buy. For a while, it appeared that a buyer had been secured who wanted Phoebe and Jane as house servants and who would keep the family together. In late November, Mary wrote Charlie:

  Your father and myself think with you that if $4300 can be realized for that family, you had best close the bargain; for their present expense is very great, and increasing. Of course, as we are compelled to sell, we would like to realize their value, but are willing to let them go for less in view of selling all together. We are now much in want of funds to meet our liabilities in bank and for the house. I know that you will do the best for us in this matter. It will be a relief to have the business closed. It has caused me great distress.